ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the increased critical attention to Charles Johnson's work has, to a large extent, ignored the politics of his fiction, a politics which is conservative in terms of both race and gender. Without a critique of the politics of his works, selection of Johnson for literary canonization cannot be looked at as an entirely promising development in African American literary studies. The chapter examines the directions criticism of Johnson's work has taken and suggests ways that this criticism can be politicized and enriched. It also argues that Johnson's own fictional worlds belie any possibility of a universal phenomenological reduction. Johnson's philosophical schema accepts the existence of difference, including racial difference, only as a moment in the movement towards a higher Hegelian unity. So when so much African American writing is now being published and so many Black male writers are producing remarkable work, it is appropriate to interrogate the current, near ubiquitous critical celebration of Johnson's fiction.
