Signifiers and the Black Aesthetic

I will be honest--the "Black Aesthetic" is something I know very little about. However, I am fascinated by the Black Writing model, which compares black literature world wide as sharing certain characteristics. Such a wide race-based model seems a little improbable, or perhaps too general to be especially helpful. However, the specific characteristic of "signifyin(g)" (the use of words which have multiple connotative meanings) does seem to have relevance in this area of study.

Just thinking about the spiritual (referring to heavily encoded and symbolic religious songs) tradition, the importance of name symbolism, and symbolic storytelling in Black culture (and I'm aware I'm painting with a VERY broad brush at this point...but then, so are Black Aestheticists), signifying makes sense.

In the Angela Johnson book, First Part Last (winner of the Coretta Scott King Award) there is much she does not make explicit, there are whole worlds of implications in the structure of the story, its settings, even the rhythm and language of the book seems to be signifying something greater than a tragedy in the life of one teenage boy.

However, to say that Bobby, through the lens of signifying represents all hopeless black teenage boys who have disappointed the high hopes their families had for them is taking it too far...so clearly this signifying tool can be a dangerous one. I don't think I know enough about the theory and its applications to fully explicate where the line is between viable connotation and conjecture, but I do find this idea interesting and would be interested to further study it.