"A slightly different sense of time": palimpsestic time in Invisible Man

Breaking the chain

Of all the models of history on display in the novel, the vulgarly Marxist dialectics of the Brotherhood "present the most complete and seductive idea of the way the world turns" (O'Meally, "Rules" 264) to the Invisible Man and, consequently, they are the target of Ellison's "most prominent critique of the Western historical mystique" (Benston 92) of inevitable and teleological progress. As a result, the Brotherhood's concept of history has also received the most extensive critical attention, with most scholars concurring that the Brotherhood serves as the occasion for Ellison's criticism of the "limiting and domineering expressions" (Benston 92) of ideologies of historical inevitability. But the Brotherhood, most notably Brother Tarp, also presents the Invisible Man with a number of competing relationships to his past, a temporal competition that underlies the more apparent ideological dispute into which the Invisible Man is drawn.

Brother Jack first describes his organization's historical narrative to the Invisible Man in terms seemingly similar to Ellison's own analysis of African-American temporality. Jack identifies the Provos as

       agrarian types, you know. Being ground up by industrial
       conditions. Thrown on the dump heaps and cast aside.... It's sad,
       yes. But they're already dead, defunct. History has passed them
       by. (290-91)

But this account represents a distorted version of Ellison's observations about the feudal-to-industrial history and accelerated temporality of African-Americans. Rather than preserve the continuity with the past incarnated in Ellison's mode of the palimpsest, Jack implies that modernity creates a complete break from the past, and he therefore advocates a callous abandonment of those who are unable to change quickly enough. Most cruelly, he suggests that the Provos are "like dead limbs that must be pruned away so that the tree may bear young fruit or the storms of history will blow them down anyway. Better the storm should hit them--" (291). This florid speech culminates in the same storm metaphor the Invisible Man used earlier when speaking of history as a cyclone; Jack's rhetoric melds the deterministic philosophy of Norton with the chaotic circularity proposed by the historians at the Golden Day. This fusion of teleological and circular tropes constitutes Ellison's symbolic representation of a Marxist--or, more fundamentally, Hegelian--narrative of history.

The Invisible Man quickly and instinctively sees through these arguments, aptly calling Jack's dialectical tropes "double talk" (290). Yet despite this initial skepticism, he quickly internalizes the Brotherhood's philosophy; even his own erratic and unpredictable history does not jar his conviction that the world "could be controlled by science, and the Brotherhood had both science and history under its control" (381). He also overcompensates for his recent retreat into nostalgia, obeying Brother Jack's command to "put aside [his] past" (309) by breaking off all contact with Mary and his family, and by adopting a new name. This breach with the past isolates the Invisible Man from the revitalizing parts of his cultural tradition--an early incident at the Chthonian makes it clear that the singing of spirituals will not be tolerated (312-14)--yet it does not insulate him from the racist stereotypes of white culture. The Invisible Man still carries the smashed minstrel figurine in his briefcase even as he settles into his new, Brotherhood-purchased apartment, an early sign that the Brotherhood will do little to fight the evils of racism.