Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo and Archaeology

I have resisted (and plan to continue to resist) commenting on the most recent article on pseudoarchaeology in the SAA Archaeological Record magazine. I’m sure the article is good and thoughtful and important. I’ve blogged here about my apprehension about how recent attacks on pseudoarchaeology have also laid bare the historical insecurities and challenges facing conventional archaeological practice and perpetuate exclusionary practices that gave rise to certain forms of pseudoarchaeology over the past 150 years. 

I particularly will not comment on the statement: “Pseudoarchaeology reinforces anti-science and anti-democracy conspiracy theories and is a threat to peace and democracy.”

It is a coincidence that I happened to be re-reading Ishmael Reed’s classic Mumbo Jumbo (1972) this summer, but not a totally unrelated. Reed’s work is a scathing indictment of the effort of White science, politics, and religion to suppress Black culture. The plot itself remains shockingly relevant (even at 50 years old). Pandemics, conspiracies, racism, and Crusaders collide in a remarkably prescient work of fiction. Reed’s novel sets Black culture, knowledge, and history against a deep conspiracy that he terms Atonism which is embodied in White conservatism.

It’s a detective story where two practitioners of “The Work,” Black Herman and Papa LaBas, defeat efforts by a 1000-year-old Knight Templar to suppress the spread of the Jes Grew pandemic through the use of an… android …  and control over the media. 

I won’t spoil the plot. If my one-sentence teaser isn’t enough to get you to read the novel, I’ll encourage you a bit more by saying that it doesn’t take much of a scholar to detect traces of pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and pseudoarchaeology throughout the novel. We can dismiss this as the fanciful imaginings of a creative soul or even as a satirical counterpoint to White science. At the same time, the footnotes and bibliography at the end (at least my edition) of the book whisper something more serious. Reed is playing with the conventions of scholarship, especially history, and twisting it to serve his story, but also his larger point. The plot of the novel requires the story’s heroes to divorce the conventional past from traditional centers of White colonial, racial, economic, political, and cultural power by exposing, and then blowing, up the methods and arguments designed to preserve White authority. In Mumbo Jumbo, Reed replaces these with alternative traditions from Haitian Hoodoo to Madame Blatavsky’s mystical reconstruction of Near Eastern history and religion. Understanding these traditions and this science allows the Black Herman and Papa LaBas to defeat their enemies, even if this doesn’t necessary result in total victory. The Jes Grew pandemic abates on its own accord (perhaps), but not before it finds a home in Charlie Parker’s tenor saxophone, Coltrane’s alto, and Chester Himes’ novels (among other places). I suspect Reed would detect more than a few traces in Sun Ra’s music as well. 

We can say that pseudoarchaeology is undemocratic, but that might imply that archaeology is somehow inherently democratic. Even a casual understanding of archaeology’s sordid past and problematic present mitigates against this interpretation. In fact, I’d argue that pseudoarchaeology and archaeology share the potential to be oppressive or liberating depending on the methods used, questions asked, communities engaged, and knowledge produced. Reed’s book, for all its satire and madness is a good reminder of the potential of pseudoarchaeology as a counterweight to the conventional archaeological knowledge making regime.