Wake Forest Magazine June 2003 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

C a m p u s C h r o n i c l e
Eric Watts:
shaping reality
In the Harlem section of New
York City in the 1920s, there
concentrated a critical mass
of cultural energy so potent
that it sent shock waves
through white society as well
as black. Known as the Harlem
Renaissance, its literature in
its early stages was especially
incisive and influential. In portraying
the worth and dignity
of African-Americans, writers
such as Langston Hughes and
Zora Neale Hurston gave content
to concepts of civil rights
and social equality and context
to debates on race and democracy
that energized the activism
of W.E.B. Dubois and beyond.
That the Harlem Renaissance
ultimately veered toward the
salacious did not diminish its
power as a cultural catalyst;
indeed, it magnified it. It is that
power for social change that
captivates Eric Watts and is a
primary focus of his award-winning
career as a young scholar.
Watts, a recently tenured
associate professor of communication
at Wake Forest, specializes
in rhetorical theory, the study
of how public discourse affects
social and cultural consciousness.
He describes it as “the
production of meaning”–how
social reality is shaped. Among
other influences he studies in
this light is hip-hop, the phenomenal
contemporary youth
movement that has both transformed
and been co-opted by
mainstream commerce and
culture.
His work to date has earned
him the respect of colleagues at
the University and elsewhere,
as evidenced by his selection
for the 2002 New Investigator
Award by the rhetoric and communication
theory division of
the National Communication
Association. The award is given
annually to a junior researcher
in recognition of potential
excellence in rhetorical and
communication theory.
According to Watts,
rhetorical theory looks at the
discursive strategies speakers
and writers use to shape social
reality and attain their persuasive
objectives with the audience
at hand. In the wake of
September 11, for example,
President Bush employed primarily
emotional language in
his public comments, in consonance
with the country’s
mood. By contrast, at the
United Nations, American
diplomatic language tends to
be more intellectual and factbased,
he notes.
Its literary achievements
were only part of the power of
the Harlem Renaissance to penetrate
and transform the mainstream
culture of its era. Music
was another, and when exposed
to the unrestrained and ostentatiously
sexual rhythms of jazz
and blues, whites began migrating
uptown from Greenwich
Village hangouts to all-night
cabarets and speakeasies in
Harlem.
Ultimately, the civil rights
criticism of Hughes and Hurston,
published in such serious journals
as The Messenger, The Nation and
black periodicals like The Crisis
and The Opportunity, turned
toward analysis of what Watts
describes as an early strand of
“blaxploitation”–Harlem After
Hours, or Primitive Harlem,
with its trade in Prohibitionera
alcohol, drugs, and sex and
the portrayal of vice in the
films of Josephine Baker.
Literature with gay and bisexual
themes also emerged.
But while this shift wasn’t
anticipated or welcomed by
many of the more serious
Harlem Renaissance members,
Watts notes that it too is a
telling illustration of the
power of popular culture to
shape social reality. Another
is the literature of African-
American writers of the late
1940s and 1950s like Richard
Wright, Ralph Ellison, and
James Baldwin–early voices
of rage and indignation that
culminated in the civil rights
movement of the 1960s.
Watts, a native of Cincinnati
who earned his doctorate at
Northwestern in 1995 and
came to Wake Forest a year
later, has been writing about
hip-hop since the late 1980s. In
its early years a strictly African-
American genre with overtones
of Black Nationalism, it moved
over time into mainstream
white youth culture. The most
popular male musical artist in
the world today, Eminem, is a
white hip-hop singer.
The shift seems to suggest
that hip-hop’s core appeal all
along might have been socioeconomic,
which crosses the lines
of skin color, instead of racial. In
place of rage and aggression are
its “Stop the Violence”
appeals–an indication, in Watts’
opinion, of the symbiotic relationship
of transformation and
cooptation between a radical
new movement and the larger
culture it is within. Another
example he cites is the
Budweiser “Whaaaas’ Up?”
advertising campaign–black
speech and behavior adopted by
whites. Elvis Presley, Pop Art–
examples are numerous of the
new and the shocking becoming
the standard and the familiar by
its mutual interchange with
prevailing cultural norms.
In his research, Watts traces
the lineage of discourse over
time to show that fads rarely, if
ever, are totally original. Some
of the Harlem Renaissance
writers, for example, drew upon
the economic conservatism of
Booker T. Washington, who
two decades earlier had urged
blacks to spend money in their
own communities. Other writers
were influenced by black
folk culture, and still others by
Emersonian transcendentalism.
“A trend may be new in form,”
Watts says, “but it is an evolutionary
process. Over time the
substance is consistent.”
—David Fyten
8 W ake Forest Magazine