Jes Grew's Resurgence and "Cyclic" Nature of History

After I read the last few chapters of Mumbo Jumbo, everything seemed to be coming to a nice simple conclusion, all of the ends of the story were wrapping up in a (admittedly long-winded) convenient ending. But the epilogue kinda threw me for a loop, with Jes Grew dying out and then the jump to the future with PaPa LaBas' speech at the university (and the Jes Grew holiday).

I went back and re-read the epilogue and the ending and after a bit of thought, it makes a little more sense to me now. Jonah mentioned in his latest blog post some stuff about "cyclic" history and I think that's what really made it click for me. The fact that Jes Grew comes and goes in waves can be seen as a metaphor for a number of different things throughout history. Think of the quote "those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." While this doesn't deal with social trends such as Jes Grew, it talks about how things seem to repeat themselves throughout history.

Another aspect of this is the different manifestations of Jes Grew. We are told in LaBas' ending narration that when Hinkle Von Vampton first brought the text to America, Jew Grew appeared in the manifestation of Ragtime music and culture. Then the main setting of the story has Jes Grew appear during the birth of Jazz and the era of the Blues. 

In class today we talked about modern aspects of Jes Grew, and a big one that came up was Rap and Hip Hop culture. It seemed to definitely follow the pattern of an "underground" origin story in the "low brow" African American neighborhoods, before breaking into the mainstream music scene. One thing that also came up in this discussion was whether or not rap is "dead" (Dr. Dre is in his 60's right now!).  Although we saw the beginning of what seemed to be a "takeover" of rap by white rappers with groups like the Beastie Boys and Vanilla Ice, in the present day rap is still almost exclusively dominated by African American artists and groups.

This cyclic "resurgence" of Jes Grew throughout history helped me have a framework for the history that Ishmael Reed is presenting in Mumbo Jumbo. In addition to Jes Grew, the cyclic view of history seems to be (as Jonah pointed) more straightforward and seems to explain most things. 

The things we can never know

 In our discussion of history being told as a fictional narrative, one of the main points that came up (or at least one of the points that I picked up on) was that since we can never know whether or not a supposedly fictional event happened, technically we can't differentiate between some of the fiction that Doctorow writes and the actual events that took place at that time.

One big example of this is the encounter between Houdini and Harry Thaw. In the story, Houdini is escaping from a cell on the same block that Harry Thaw is being kept in the Tombs. He is cuffed naked in the cell and must break free and put on his clothes as part of his act. As he completes this he sees Thaw across the gantry watching intently. When he begins putting his clothes on, Thaw begins taking his own clothes off until finally he is naked and Houdini is fully dressed. At this point, "The prisoner came up to the front of his cell and raised his arms in a shockingly obscene manner he thrust his hips forward and flapped his penis between the bars...Houdini was to tell no one of this strange confrontation" (34). This example depicts an event that while very strange, cannot completely be proven to be untrue. Because Doctorow says that Houdini never told anyone about this, there is a chance that this is all completely true and Houdini just never told anyone. This is an example of this blurred line between fiction and history that adds to the question of whether or not history is all just a fictional narrative. 

The argument for history being fiction is largely dependent on the fact that most of our history comes in the forms of anecdotes or personal accounts that have been verified by any number of means. This "human aspect" of our history is a crucial piece in this puzzle because there is a chance (although statistically minuscule) that every personal account we have is wrong and doesn't tell us what actually happened. While this is very, very unlikely, a result of this is that much of our history is clouded by perspectives, which only give one side of the event. 

As a result of this potentially unstable "human element" in history we tend to gravitate towards hard facts and "proof" of events when trying to verify things in history. Facts such as recorded statistics or hard evidence like video recordings from surveillance cameras. But even these things can be susceptible to perspective or not telling the whole story. One example that we discussed briefly in class was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is a very controversial example because although we had seemed to have "hard evidence" supporting the presumption that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assailant, video footage has emerged that seems to show a second shooter. 

These examples seem to serve only to complicate the question, as there is not one definitive answer. Personally, I was skeptical towards history being a fictional narrative, but after this discussion I have become more open to the idea and I now agree that the line between is definitely more blurred than I had previously thought. What do you guys think?