Rethinking the Concept of Double Consciousness in Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folks (1903)

Abstract

Summary In an essay titled “Of our spiritual strivings”, W.E.B. Du Bois coined and elaborated the concept of “double consciousness” to refer to the ambiguity of being black and American. The ambivalence and unstable identities suggested by the term imply living a life characterised by seemingly irreconcilable dualities. On the one hand, blacks are entitled to become Americans because the slave labour they were forced to provide created the material and economic basis of modern America. On the other hand, the black people who created the wealth of the American nation find themselves marginalised or occupying low-paying jobs, leading to the condition of double consciousness being seen as a hindrance to the progress of the black race. In the American South, before the emancipation of slaves, black people were raped, racially segregated, lynched, and denied equal opportunities. Du Bois explains the ruthless experiences that the Negroes endured because of double consciousness as he asserts that the feeling of both belonging and not belonging to America often sent black people to court; thus, false gods invoking false means of salvation. At times blacks felt ashamed of themselves. Du Bois perceives the evil experiences endured by black people as concretised in the musical form of the Negro Spirituals. An analysis of selected songs suggests that these songs are the most beautiful expression of human experience because the songs manifest an awareness of the self that is more than the two-ness implied in the concept of double consciousness. The paradox indicated above confirms double consciousness as on one level a source of evil experiences of the Negroes, and on another, positive level, the condition that enabled them to fashion new discourses of resistances in order to express their desire to escape slavery. This article uses Gilroy’s notion of the ambiguity of modernity in fashioning identities of the Black Atlantic in order to rethink the idea of double consciousness, and at the same time amplify the multiple ways in which black people experienced slavery in America.