56 TheNation. January 21, 1984

higher corporate taxes and a guaranteedright to strike, and is infused through-out with a desire "to end the domina-tion of nature by society, women bymen, blacks by whites, and labor bycapital." We are not told how variousmovements will be convinced to supportthis lofty agenda, nor do we get a senseof prioritieswhich demands are essen-tial and which should be laid on theideological shelf, to be admired but notfashioned into immediate tasks fororganizers and lobbyists.

Despite his insistence on the primacyof politics, Aronowitz is remarkablyoblivious to crucial political questionsthat radical unionists face every day.Labor has indeed been too dependenton the good will of New Deal liberals,but a more autonomous stance requiresa strategy, not a mere wish list. Howmight progressive unions capture lead-ership of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.? Shouldlabor leftists run for office withinand/or outside the Democratic Party,or continue to endorse the Kennedysand the Mondales? How does a unionlike the United Automobile Workerstake a resolutely anticorporate standwhen its membership rises and falls onthe health of one extremely powerful in-dustry? Will workers rally behind agrowth policy that does not involveeither greater military investment or thecostly restoration of basic industries,such as steelmaking and shipbuilding,which may never again be internationallycompetitive? Decisions on these matterscannot be delayed pending interunionagreement on a grand manifesto.

In addition, Aronowitz's call for anomnibus alliance of all left-of-centermovements needs elaboration. FormerUnited Automobile Workers presidentDouglas Fraser launched such an organ-ization in the late 1970s, but, after muchinitial hoopla, his Progressive Alliancedwindled into a set of press re-leases and expired. Aronowitz gives noreason why a second attempt wouldbe more fruitful, and is content to con-clude, in an aside, "The task of forginga new political bloc is difficult becauseit would break from the traditions notonly of trade unions but also of the sec-torally bound social movements." Inother words, it is a great vision, butsomeone else will have to figure out howto bring it to life.

Aronowitz's analytical gaps at leastprovide an opportunity for usefuldebate, but his sloppy style almostdefeats the whole enterprise. The bookoften reads like a college exam submit-

ted by a bright but disorganized stu-dent. Several times he vigorouslyasserts an important point (usuallyprefaced by "I wish to argue") and thenleaves it unexplored. He frequently re-iterates the same historical details andappropriates well-known information,such as the fact that "American unionshave retained their nominal independ-ence from party affiliation since thefounding of the AFL in 1886," as orig-inal contributions to knowledge.

Finally, Aronowitz only weakens hiscase when he states it in termsborrowed from the lexicon of struc-turalist Marxism. He writes, for exam-ple, "When workers did refuse the newsocial contract in practice, they neverarticulated its alternative discursively."^Siich sentences make one doubt that, ^s.a publisher's note promises, "This bookwill be of great interest to workingAmericans." All in all, I prefer StanleyAronowitz in the flesh.

Marley as Messiah

wGEORGE DESTEFANOCATCH A FIRE: The Life of BobMarley. By Timothy White. Holt, Rine-hart and Winston. 380 pp. $16.95.

hen Bob Marley called hisreggae sound "rebelmusic," he wasn't strik-ing a trendy pose to en-

thrall rock audiences and help movecountless units of what the recording in-dustry likes to call "product." Since the1950s, rock stars have adopted rebel-lious, "outlaw" stances, but in mostcases the revolt was a matter of style.Robert Nesta Marley was another story.The son of a British Army captain and ablack woman from the Jamaican coun-tryside, Marley grew up dirt-poor in theghettoes of Kingston, among the "suf-ferahs" for whom life on the island inthe sun is no tropical idyll.

By the time he died of cancer in 1981at the age of 36, he was beloved by mil-lions as a partisan of the downtroddenand as an eloquent foe of racial and classoppression. His rhythmic reggae an-thems filled major concert halls inNorth America and Europe. They couldbe heard blaring in the souks of Moroc-co. Zimbabwean freedom fighters exer-cised to Marley cassettes in the bush,and in 1980 he was invited by RobertMugabe's government to perform withhis band, the Wailers, at independenceceremonies for the newborn republic. InJamaica, Marley was courted by politi-cal figures who sought his support fortheir agendas. In 1976 he was the targetof an assassination attempt by gunmenallegedly linked to right-wing factionsunhappy with his perceived ties to dem-ocratic socialist Prime Minister Michael

George DeStefano is a freelance writerand a contributing editor to the NewYork Native.

Manley. But perhaps the most tellingmeasure of his eminence as a radical,anticapitalist figure was that a dossier de-tailing his activities was kept by the C.I.A.

Marley's messages were often couchedin the argot of the Rastafarians, theJamaican millenarian religious and cul-tural movement which began in the1930s. Rastas lionized the late Ethio-pian Emperor Haile Selassie as "Jah,"the black Christ who would redeemthem from captivity in "Babylon"aterm which originally represented post-colonial Jamaica but has come to en-compass the entire capitalist West. Thedeath of Selassie has apparently donelittle to discourage hard-core Rastas.

Marley's tuneful, well-crafted songs -some of which have been recorded bysuch Babylonian superstars as EricClapton, Cariy Simon and Barbra Strei-sandare full of powerful images ofresistance and the conviction that a con-flict-ridden world can be redeemed byhuman beings. Jah is always for Marley"a living man." "Don't bury yourthoughts/put your vision to reality," headmonishes in "Wake Up and Live.""Get up, stand up/stand up for yourrights," he urges in another song. In"Babylon System," a scathing, anti-capitalist broadside set to languid,soothing rhythms, Marley sings, "We'vebeen trodding on the winepress muchtoo long./Rebel, rebel.'*

Mariey's righteous mien and penchantfor Bible-quoting often give him the airof a prophet, and it is this aspect of hispersona that Timothy White plays up inCatch a Fire. White, a former editor ofRolling Stone, places Marley within thepolitical and cultural landscape ofJamaica, giving particular attention tohow he was shaped by the religiousbeliefs and magical folklore of hischildhood. The book is fiawed, how-ever, by White*s tendency to mystify

January 21. 1984 The Nation. 57events and personalities, and by hisnovelized treatment of the subject.Readers who are knowledgeable aboutMarley, reggae and Jamaica will fre-quently find their eyebrows skepticallyraised and an Oh, really? on their lips.^Vhi fe establishes his perspective onMarley early in the book:

Historically certain figures sometimesemerge from stagnant, despairingand/or disintegrating cultures toreinterpret old symbols and beliefsand invest them with new meaning.An individual's decision to play such arole may be purely unconscious, but itcan sometimes evolve into an acuteawareness that he may indeed have thegift/burden of prophecy.

According to White, "Bob Marley wassuch a messianic figure.'* Now, BobMarley was clearly a gifted and altru-istic artist with extraordinary communi-cative powers, but the notion that hewas some sort of prophet/magiciancome to enlighten the oppressed and re-deem their suffering is an awfully heavymantle for a pop musician to bear.White casts Marley in the role of aThird World Jesus, much as the Rastasdeify Haile Selassie. This conceit lendsthe story mystery and atmospheretalesof spectral emissaries, magical powersand prophecies fulfilled undeniablymake for a good readbut it turns thebook into a flamboyant exercise inexotica.

White provides an engrossing andfrequently enlightening account of thedevelopment of Rastafarianism fromits beginnings as a "peasant squattermovement with religious underpinnings"to its emergence as a Weltanschauungthat captured the imaginations and loy-alties of hundreds of thousands of WestIndians. Rasta has spread throughoutthe Caribbean diasporato Canada,the United States, Great Britainandthere are even "white Rastas," al-though one suspects that young Cauca-sians are drawn to the movement pri-marily by its exotic trappings and by itselevation of marijuana to the status of"wisdomweed.*'

White is less good, however, at ana-lyzing Rasta's significance and short-comings. Rasta is, as White reports, theideological wellspring of most reggae,the source of its righteous indignationand apocalyptic vision. The movementhas asserted the Africanness of theJamaican people in a society where any-thing non-European was automaticallydisparaged by the ruling Creole elite.Rasta gives its followers pride in their

race and culture. Through its vision ofan eventual "repatriation" of believersfrom the New World to the ancestralAfrican homeland, it has provided poorpeoplethe movement's main constit-uentswith the psychological strengthto endure the hardships of Jamaican life.

But this movement of cultural resist-ance to poverty and oppression operatesmainly on the individual, not the collec-tive, level. Rastafarianism eschews par-ticipation in politics in the belief that theindividual Rasta has to do nothing tosecure liberation. When the time isright, devout Rastas believe, "Ethiopiawill stretch forth its hand," and Jah willsecure the repatriation of the faithful.

Rasta also has a deep streak ofmisogyny. White observes, "Women'srole in Rasta life is clearly a restrictedonethey are childbearers, fire-builders,cooks and honored servants." They areconsidered "unclean" while menstruat-ing. They may not wear makeup or anygarb considered masculine. They areforbidden to "join in discussions ofconsequence," and they may not drawfrom the "chillum," the ritual pipe forsmoking marijuana. White's prose,which is often rich and evocative, be-comes dry and dispassionate when he

cites the antiwoman proscriptions. Henotes that most of those tenets are takenfrom the Bible, but he doesn't draw theobvious conclusion from that fact: Ras-tafarianism, though often proclaimedan "African" religion by its adherents(Haile Selassie was a Christian, butnever mind), is, at least in its view ofwomen, squarely within the Western,Judeo-Christian tradition Rastas claimto reject.

White drops the subject hastily, fail-ing to explore how Rasta misogyny hascrept into reggae music. Bob Marleysang warmly and lovingly about wom-en, but since he took his Rastafarianismseriously, one doubts that he was toothrilled by uppity females. Othersingers, however, have been pretty hardon the "daughters," as women are pa-ternalistically called. In "Diseases," areggae hit from last year, singers PapaMichigan and General Smiley warnwomen that Jah will strike them withhorrible affiictions for the "abomina-tion" of wearing pants. In "Not theWay," Gregory Isaacs, one ofJamaica's most popular singers, advisesa fellow Rasta not to beat "his"woman, even if she is slow to fathomthe wisdom of Rastafarianism. "That's

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no way to treat a lady," he counsels.Rasta attitudes toward homosexualityare equally retrograde: gays are "sod-omites," deserving of death.

Rastafarianism clearly has a numberof atavistic beliefs and practices thatmust be overcome if the movement is todevelop into a collective force for thefundamental transformation of Jamai-can society. Sagacious and creativegrass-roots leaders will be needed, andone doubts whether the impetus for therefurbishing of Rasta will come from areggae musician, no matter how "pro-phetic" his voice.

White's treatment of Jamaican poli-tics is similarly attenuated. He gives anaccurate summary of the developmentof Jamaican political institutions andthe rise of the political bosses. Thoseleaders, he notes, have served mainly aserrand boys for the "silent aristocracy"and other powerful business interests.In the 1950s, "the slave boss was re-placed by political leaders of a certainstripe: fair and biscuit-skinned menwho resembled the planters of yore . . .but who could bark out their platformswith machine-gun bravado and werewiUing to use actual firepower to punc-tuate their sternest dicta." That assess-ment remains accurate, especially inlight of the grotesque, politically moti-vated mayhemintraclass violence di-rected from abovethat wracked Kings-ton's poor neighborhoods in the late1970s. But White completely misses thesignificance of the eight-year periodfrom 1972 to 1980 and Michael Manley'sattempts to transform Jamaica into ademocratic socialist state.

Manley assumed leadership of thePeople's National Party at the close ofthe 1960s, when Black Power sentimentwas at a peak among the island's urbanyouth. Manley incorporated BlackPower exponents and ideas into his strat-egy; he also hfted the previous govern-ment's ban on black nationalist andother radical literature. (The govern-ment of Jamaican Labor Party bossHugh Shearer, who preceded Manley,not only banned "subversive" htera-ture, it also expelled from Jamaica thenoted Marxist intellectual and activistWalter Rodney. The Guyanese-bornRodney radicalized many young Ja-maicans, and his expulsion was fol-lowed by widespread rioting in Kings-ton. For some inexplicable reason, Rod-ney is absent from Catch a Fire.)

Manley cannily exploited Rastareligiosity as well as reggae music tomake his pitch to the "sufferahs."

White sees Manley as a "West IndianElmer Gantry," a sleazy manipulatorwho deceived the gullible, superstitiouspoor. But Manley's experiment insocialism, which was just European-style social democracy combined withanti-imperialist rhetoric and gestures,was a response to sustained and intfcii-egrass-roots agitation both within andoutside the established political partiesand trade unions. The Manley era saw amobilization of the poor in behalf ofradical social change, a fact White failsto grasp. Nor does he examine the wayin which the political climate of thoseyears affected Bob Mariey. During theManley years, socialism, which had pre-viously been consigned to the outerhmits of acceptable political discourse,suddenly became not only a legitimatetopic but an urgent issue, along withquestions of imperialism and solidaritywith other developing nations. Onedoubts that Bob Marley would havesung, "Rasta no work for no C.I.A."had consciousness about foreign inter-vention in Jamaica's political and eco-nomic life not been raised during theManley era.

But mystical falderal and pohticalconsiderations aside, Marley was firstand foremost a musician, and it is herethat White's book really disappoints.Natty Dread, a superb 1974 albumwhich offers militant Rasta polemicset to earthy yet sophisticated reggaemusic, deserves detailed commentary,but White talks more about the arton the LP jacket than the music.With the exception of Catch a Fire,Marley's 1973 debut album on IslandRecords, the singer's other recordingsare slighted. The Bob Marley of Upris-ing (1980) was a far more assured andauthoritative singer than the reedy-voiced Marley of Catch a Fire, butWhite pays scant attention to thtgrowth and maturing of the man's art-istry. And what about his musical influ-ences, the manner in which he composedand arranged his songs, the nature ofthe working relationship between himand his musicians? If White is sofascinated by "magic," one wonderswhy he has so httle to say about Marleyas a concert artist.

Catch a Fire is limited by the concep-tion of Marley as a prophet and mystic,a role that is both too large and too con-fining for the man. This prophet couldwax enthusiastic over a piece of apoca-lyptic, right-wing nonsense like TheLate, Great Planet Earth and brandishthe Bible with fundamentalist fervor.

January 21, 1984 TheNation. 59No great savant or leader, Marley wasas confused as any of us by the madden-ing contradictions of life. He was, how-ever, also a unique artist who articu-lated the hopes and sufferings of thepoor and powerless through his direct,unaffected folk poetry and protest

. Perhaps what is most significantout Bob Marley is that for a brief

while he managed to alter the terms of

cultural exchange between the First andThird Worlds. Until he came along.Western domination of the black WestIndian psyche was near-total, encom-passing everything from standards forhigh art to gangster movies and Coca-Cola. Marley seduced Babylon with abeat and a hard-won moral authoritythat no pop music figure before or sincehas managed to achieve.

Does Literature Exist?LENNARD J. DAVISLITERARY THEORY: An Introduc-tion. By Terry Eagleton. University ofMinnesota Press. 244 pp. S9.95.

Terry Eagleton's new book is aconcise guide to the most in-teresting and mystifying trendsin the study of literature overthe last fifty years. Judging fromLiterary Theory's positive reception inBritain and now America, it answers aneedand answers it well. But as I readalong, I kept imagining a TV ad: "Can'tdecide between hermeneutical and struc-tural approaches to literature? Embar-rassed at parties by your faulty knowl-edge of deconstructionist or Marxistcriticism? Let Terry Eagleton help youthrough with his handy patent-pendingguide to the wonderful world of literarycriticism." It is a strange moment in latecapitalism when a Marxist guide toliterary criticism seems as necessary tomiddle-class life as a Sony Walkman andan I.B.M. personal computer.

One might point out as a caveat to thegeneral public that Eagleton's history ofliterary theory is not a disinterested one.As a Marxist, he has axes to grind alongwith the wares he displays. Rather thanpresenting a traditional literary history,he begins with the striking and contest-able notion that there is no such thing asliterature. Rather, he claims, literatureand the cult of the literary are ideologiesthat exalt high cultural artifacts likenovels, poems and plays over otherforms of writing and representation.

An opening chapter explains that inthe nineteenth century, English (as op-posed to classical) literature served as apedagogical tool to civilize and pacifymarginal political groups, particularly

Lennard J. Davis teaches English atColumbia University and is the authoro/Factual Fictions (Columbia Univer-sity Press).

women and the lower classes. Witness astatement by an early professor of Eng-lish literature at Oxford:

England is sick, and . . . English liter-ature must save it. The Churches . . .having failed, and social remediesbeing slow, English literaiure has nowa triple function: still, 1 suppose, todelight and instruct us, but also, andabove all, to save our souls and healthe State.

Matthew Arnold, among other critics,fostered the idea that literature wouldcivilize the lower classes, particularlysince the middle classes "with their nar-row, harsh, unintelligent, and unattrac-tive spirit and culture, will almost cer-tainly fail to mould or assimilate themasses below them." State schoolsteaching English literature would haveto do the trick, since, as Eagieton putsit, "English was literally the poorman's Classics." Or, as one Royal Com-mission report recommended, Englishwas suitable for civilizing "women . . .and the second- and third-rate menwha . . . become schoolmasters." AsEnglish replaced religion and traditionalmorality as a means of social control, itbecame an ideology in itself.

To debunk the myth that literature isan overarching civilizing influence,Eagleton marshalls contemporary crit-ical theories that have focused on the"literariness" of literary works. In ex-plaining those, Eagleton works at a highlevel of generahzation and superficial-ityas indeed he must if he is to presentall the acts in this circus. The Big Topincludes formalism, English and Ameri-can criticism (Arnold, Leavis and theNew Critics), phenomenology, herme-neutics, reception and reader responsetheory, structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism and deconstructionism,feminist and psychoanalytic criticismand, of course, Marxist literary theory.We get roughly ten pages of text foreach theory, an overview that cannot

hope to produce instant enlightenmentin all cases. But on the whole, Eagletonis clear and cogent, and the generalreader will certainly get some sense ofthe variety of critical approaches. Shortbibliographies provide directions forfurther study of each theoretical school.

Still, he does present a stacked deck.Each of the methodologies is criticizedfor the same deficiencyfor lacking thehistorical and materialist approach ofMarxist criticism. But for Eagleton,even Marxist theory as it has been prac-ticed is suspect because all literary criti-cism assumes that there is such a thingas literature. Bui if you recognize thatliterature is an illusion, as Eagleton sug-gests, since it is just "a name which peo-ple give from time to lime for differentreasons to certain kinds of writingwithin a whole field of what MichelFoucault has called 'discursive prac-t ices, '" then literary theory must alsobe an illusion. Consequently, Eagietonsuggests that leftists and others shouldstudy all types of writing and represen-tationfilms, advertisements, text-books, legal briefs, product warrantiesand the thousand other natural shocksthe signifying system of a culture isheir to.

While Eagleton's proposal cannot besimply dismissed, it is difficult to im-

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