Abstract
W. E. B. Du Bois often appropriated and deployed the metaphor of “Prometheus,” drawing from Hesiod’s Theogony, Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, Goethe’s poem “Prometheus,” and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Throughout Du Bois’s career, he employed this figure in order for the reader to better understand the racialized social order in general and White supremacy in specific. In what follows, I cover the eighteenth and nineteenth century use of the Prometheus metaphor in regard to critiques of racism and slavery. I then establish how Du Bois stepped into this tradition to advance a multifaceted critique of global White supremacy that continues to resonate today. Precisely, Du Bois rendered this character in six patterned forms: (1) as an embodiment of de jure and de facto segregation; (2) as newly conscious Black people that would soon revolt against White supremacy; (3) as the paradoxical capture and harm of White people by their own design; (4) as the prejudice, discrimination, and racism born of White supremacist politics; (5) as the struggle of Black folks against White supremacy; and (6) a Black-centered spiritual worldview of eventual liberation. Together, these six deployments signal the early manifestations of both critical race theory and Afrofuturism—two modes of inquiry that help us to reconsider not only the material repercussions of racial inequality but the pathways and roadblocks toward racial utopia.
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Notes
Depictions of Prometheus have changed overtime, oscillating from lowly trickster, cultural hero, to monster. Many point to the origin of the Prometheus myth in Hesiod’s (circa 750–650 BCE) poem Theogony. In Greek mythology, “Prometheus” is a titan who stole fire from the gods, was chained to a rock as punishment where an eagle plucked out his liver, which regenerated overnight for the eagle to return for eternity. Later Aeschylus (circa 525–455 BCE) used the myth in the play Prometheus Bound. Between 1772 and 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the poem “Prometheus" and paints the character as a god-hating and defiant character. And in 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus which appropriated the Greek character as a device to construct the characters of both Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the “creature.” Importantly, Frankenstein (“The Modern Prometheus”) would often be conflated with his “creature” in popular renderings. In both cases, Shelley’s work stands as a metaphor for how creation, change, and how even well-meaning actions might have monstrous effects.
“Prometheus” is derived from the Greek pro (before) and manthano (learn). Plato contrasted Prometheus with his somewhat naïve brother Epimetheus (which means “afterthought”) (cf. Hansen 2020:159).
A reference to both Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery (1901).
I borrow this turn of phrase from Marx’s redeployment of Hegelian dialectics.
In the same spirit as Du Bois, in 2016 the group “We Charge Genocide” emerged as a grassroots, inter-generational effort—explicitly drawing from the 1945 document—to draw attention to police violence and the underlying causes of unequal relationships between marginalized racial communities and the state (We Charge Genocide, 2016).
An umbrella term for White supremacist, White nationalist, and White segregationist groups.
“Fetishism” was a term, often used derogatively, to describe African indigenous peoples supposedly arbitrary and ultimately erroneous valuation of material objects, especially as pertained to religious ceremony or magical power. Here Du Bois cites from Mary Kingsley’s book Travels in West Africa (1899). Kingsley (1862–1900) was a well-known English ethnography whose work was influential in shaping European perceptions of Africa, colonialism, and indigenous religion.
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Hughey, M.W. Prometheus as Racial Allegory: The Sociological Poetics of W. E. B. Du Bois. J Afr Am St 25, 102–123 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09520-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09520-y