On Stephen Henderson

 

On Stephen E. Henderson

 

"We as Black people don't have the luxury of abandoning interpretive criticism for the criticism of form."

 

From "Saturated Situations:  An Interview with Stephen Henderson. Obsidian 6.3 (Winter 1980: 82-92.

 

 

I interviewed Henderson on March 20, 1980 at Tougaloo College.  His comment about interpretive criticism is an integral part of my terms of engagement.  Henderson was speaking about practices in the academic world.  He knew, as he demonstrated in Understanding the  New Black Poetry, the importance of not slavishly following so-called mainstream  habits of analysis, especially dominated by varieties of Continental literary and cultural criticisms.

 

The interview revealed much about his scholarship, the remarkable power of his mind, and his commitment to making  criticism equipment for living.  It was crucial then that Black people should exercise independence in dealing with critical difference.  It is still prudent to refuse to bite the bait of "ism-for-the-sake-of-"ism."  Henderson did not dismiss the importance of having skill in the analysis of form, but he deemed it more important to be synergistic, to have the ability and agency to deal with the dynamics of history and distinguishing features of  cultures. At a watershed moment in the interview, Henderson provided a telling anecdote:

 

"Curriculum discussions that students had around 1966 and 1967, I was talking to a student about the need for putting certain things in the curriculum, certain things into history, so to speak.  I was thinking also in a kind of mechanistic way.  So the student said to me, "Well, you know, maybe, Mr. Henderson what you need to do is to pull it out , because it's already there."

 

Because it is already there --whatever it is---we need to pull out the complexity.

 

The best 21st-century criticism devotes more energy to pulling out than to putting in. Students can often teach their teachers, I think that was Henderson's point.  Students can often take the pulse of society and culture with greater accuracy than can teachers.  We may become better persons and effective scholars if we humble ourselves and listen passionately to students.  Listening may preclude our being led astray by dead-end formalism which pretends to be something other than formalism.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            July 20, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

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