“I’m not what I seem. But that’s okay. Artists thrive on con­tra­dic­tions.“
Mar­vin Gaye

Occa­sion­ally, the results of mis­takes are much more inter­est­ing than those of hard work. Mar­vin Gaye’s hall­mark album What’s Going On (1971) serves as one of those mirac­u­lous exam­ples of serendip­ity. Dur­ing the mix­ing ses­sions of the title song and first sin­gle in 1970, a rather for­tu­nate acci­dent occurred. When the artist asked his sound engi­neer Ken Sands to play two alter­nate takes of the main vocals, the tech­ni­cian unwit­tingly played both tracks simul­ta­ne­ously. The unin­tended result was a duet between the singer and him­self. Gaye liked this side-​effect to such an extent that he not only decided to keep it, but even pushed this mis­take to the extremes. Not con­tent with mere dupli­ca­tion, the artist mul­ti­plied his voice sev­eral times on the final mix of the album. The har­monic, mul­ti­lay­ered vocals became this record’s most rec­og­niz­able feature.

By the time of the record­ing of his next solo album, Let’s Get it On (1973), Gaye had mas­tered this tech­nique of over­dub­bing to per­fec­tion. In fact, he used it so fre­quently that his ‘old-​school’ pro­ducer, Ed Townsend, even openly won­dered if the singer was still capa­ble of singing an entire song in one take. Nonethe­less, it was pre­cisely this exten­sive use of mul­ti­track record­ing that turned his mul­ti­lay­ered vocals into more than just a styl­is­tic nov­elty. On this album, the singer cap­i­tal­ized on the imma­nent pos­si­bil­i­ties of the tech­ni­cal medium to play out the doubts, dis­cus­sions and argu­ments that he had with him­self. As a result, Let’s Get it On released the dis­so­nant voices from the iso­lated exis­tence in Mar­vin Gaye’s head and har­mo­nized them on the mul­ti­ple tracks of the recording.

Nev­er­the­less, the album was more than just a ther­a­peu­tic exer­cise of a trou­bled artist. In my opin­ion, the acci­den­tal dupli­ca­tion and inten­tional mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of Gaye’s voice are not harm­less but have enor­mous philo­soph­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and prac­ti­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Mul­ti­track record­ing irre­versibly cut the per­son Mar­vin Gaye up into a wide range of alter egos. The con­tra­dict­ing voices that were cap­tured on Let’s Get it On can impos­si­bly be reunited into a sin­gle, coher­ent one. They are autonomous per­sonae rather than dif­fer­ent aspects of a schiz­o­phrenic personality.

Mul­ti­track tech­nol­ogy acci­dently ren­dered the uni­fied sub­ject obso­lete. The result­ing effect of polyphony, how­ever, has often been accused of being of mere esthetic inter­est. Accord­ing to this line of crit­i­cism, the mul­ti­ple voices of Mar­vin Gaye’s records and other works of art are purely fic­ti­tious, not part of any con­crete dis­cur­sive prac­tices and can there­fore impos­si­bly ini­ti­ate any social and cul­tural trans­for­ma­tions. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, I will argue that it is exactly the other way around. Per­sonae rather than indi­vid­u­als are the gen­uine sub­jects of dis­course. Any per­son is part of mul­ti­ple, diverse prac­tices and is there­fore inca­pable of fully iden­ti­fy­ing with the role that any par­tic­u­lar one of them forces on him. Cor­re­spond­ingly, I sug­gest a re-​conceptualization of the post-​human sub­ject as an arena in which the con­fronta­tion between dif­fer­ent roles takes place. The new intel­lec­tual pro­posed here, is an exam­ple of such a bat­tle field.

The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual

In his essay ‘The Dilemma of the Black Intel­lec­tual’ (1985) Cor­nel West vocal­izes the unique predica­ment of the title’s protagonist:

“Caught between an inso­lent Amer­i­can soci­ety and insou­ciant black com­mu­nity, the Afro-​American who takes seri­ously the life of the mind inhab­its an iso­lated and insu­lated world.”

Although it is quite easy to mis­in­ter­pret this quote as such, West actu­ally refuses to define the sub­ject of his dilemma in essen­tial­ist terms. The impor­tance of the black intel­lec­tual nei­ther con­sists in his skin com­plex­ion nor his eth­nic lin­eage but in the ongo­ing ten­sion between the con­tra­dic­tory roles that are imposed on him. Cor­nel West sit­u­ates this spe­cific indi­vid­ual in the strug­gle between the Amer­i­can soci­ety and the black community.

Instead of repeat­ing the exact details of West’s analy­sis of the black intellectual’s predica­ment, I will here focus on the text’s implicit but cru­cial, the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion to dis­course analy­sis. ‘The Dilemma of the Black Intel­lec­tual’ sub­tly shows that a sub­ject first emerges when an indi­vid­ual finds him­self caught between at least two prac­tices. As long as an analy­sis is lim­ited to a sin­gle dis­course, one can only speak of a sub­ject posi­tion or a per­sona. Sub­jects, on the other hand, emerge in the con­fronta­tions between mul­ti­ple prac­tices; they are bor­der­line fig­ures by definition.

It is pre­cisely such a clash of dis­courses that gives rise to West’s so-​called dilemma of the black intel­lec­tual. The sin­gu­lar­ity of this sit­u­ated indi­vid­ual con­sists in the fact that the white soci­ety and the black com­mu­nity both try to impose a par­tic­u­lar role on him. In the spe­cific case of West’s pro­tag­o­nist, the for­mer prac­tice pushes the intel­lec­tual to adapt to its “bour­geois model of aca­d­e­mic legit­i­ma­tion and place­ment”, whereas the lat­ter only seems to value his ‘life of the mind’ when it comes in the form of a per­for­mance or a ser­mon. Although West claims that the black com­mu­nity does not have an intel­lec­tual tra­di­tion in the aca­d­e­mic sense, he nev­er­the­less recognizes

“…two organic intel­lec­tual tra­di­tions in African-​American life: the black Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion of preach­ing and the black musi­cal tra­di­tion of performance.”

West, how­ever, neglects to fur­ther dis­tuingish between these two intel­lec­tual tra­di­tions and treats them as iden­ti­cal. In my opin­ion, he thereby misses a chance to fully cap­i­tal­ize on the oppor­tu­ni­ties that his method offers, because he does not take the sit­u­at­ed­ness of his pro­tag­o­nist seri­ously enough.

West’s jux­ta­po­si­tion of two prac­tices implies that in order to be acknowl­edged by both prac­tices the aspir­ing intel­lec­tual has to play the role of The Scholar and The Per­former at the same time. Both the white acad­emy as well as the black com­mu­nity try to impose a spe­cific set of norms, rules and expec­ta­tions on the black intel­lec­tual. In other words, these dis­cur­sive prac­tices force him to act out con­tra­dic­tory roles. It is of cru­cial impor­tance to notice that the black intel­lec­tual can never fully iden­tify with nei­ther The Scholar nor The Per­former. What con­sti­tutes the pro­tag­o­nist of Cor­nell West’s dilemma is the strug­gle between two dis­cur­sive prac­tices rather than a fixed iden­tity. Instead of lament­ing the loss of a coher­ent sub­ject, how­ever, he val­ues the trans­for­ma­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties that this split per­son­al­ity offers.