‘[F]lung out in a jagged, uneven but progressive pattern’: ‘Culture-citizenship’ in The New Negro

The honeycombed structure of The New Negro has not gone unnoticed by critics. In one of the most detailed accounts of the volume’s textual content, George Hutchinson describes the anthology as a ‘diverse and self-divided text’ (1995, 433). For Hutchinson, Locke’s orchestration of contradictory views is at once a strategic attempt to undermine reductive stereotypes, and the inevitable product of a moment of instability when concepts of racial identity were in transition. More recently, the anthology’s multimedia format has received considerable critical attention. A particular focus of such research has been its emphasis upon the editor’s ability to control textual meaning. Anne Elizabeth Carroll, for instance, explores how Locke orchestrates conflicting approaches to reinforce his own views. To take only one example, she argues that African thematic and stylistic motifs in the illustrative material build a coherent narrative about African cultural retentions, which is often at odds with claims made by contributors (2005, 173-9).