PARTISAN REVIEW
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culture makes them relative beings or mirrors of white ideas, the
blacks seek to "entertain" their projected audience in the White
Court, as well as an actual paying audience of Caucasians· with the
one black act of greatest interest to the white, the brutal rape and
murder of "his woman."
This
farce, whose function is to release
black animosity, edify whites with a caricature of their bogeys, and
affront them by the parody of their power establishment (the White
Court) is, in fact, only a diversion from the real action, the begin–
ning of an organized black revolution, inaugurated by the purge of
Uncle Tom.
The Blacks
is a turning point
in
Genet's exegesis of the politics
and psychology of oppression, marking a move away from defeated
self-hate to dignity and self-definition. And finally, to rage. Blacks,
colonials, women, all prisoners of definitions imposed on them by
others, must, if they are not to become the victims of their own self–
loathing (like the maids) or of their traditional illusions (like the
people of
The Balcony)
find freedom by an angry assertion of self–
hood and solidarity. Exploring the vexed and complicated problem
of sexual and racial politics, Genet suggests that whites have divided
blacks, as the colons did the Algerians, by introducing or capitalizing
upon a variety of sexual hostility which provides a particular set of
advantages for white ends. Among the blacks this has been effected
by the proposition that the white master's aesthetic is embodied in
"his woman," a bit of property he advertises so that
it
may be covet–
ed, coveted that the act may be punished. Meanwhile the black
woman is imprisoned as her master's whore - "Every brothel has its
negress"; "I made my troops tear off a piece every Saturday," the
White Governor chuckles.
For the white distorts the love and sexuality in his subjects, forc–
ing the black male to accept both the white woman's beauty, and
scorn of the black woman. "I hate you," Village confesses to Virtue,
"I began to hate you when every thing about you would have kindled
love and when love would have made men's contempt unbearable."
4 "This play, written, I repeat, by a white man, is intended for a white
audience, but
if,
which is unlikely, it is ever performed before a black au–
dience, then a white person, male or female, should be invited every eve–
ning. The organizer of the show should welcome him formally, dress him in
ceremonial costume and lead
him
to his seat, preferably in the front row of
the orchestra. The actors will play for him."-Prefatory note to
The Blacks
