In African-American Lit last year I remember there being a discussion on the use of the n-word by African-American writers. There has been a debate going on over it being used in the same sort of context by non African-Americans (namely Whites) and the appropriateness of it. Essentially those in favor of its use being "decriminalized" believe that if they can say it why cant we? I must admit I never agreed with this argument but I never really exerted much energy thinking about the issue. Then as I was reading Mumbo Jumbo I ran across something that I interpreted as a similar thing to me. Reed is telling the story of the Atonist rise to power in Ancient Egypt with a large section focusing on Moses. He relates Moses saying to the Osirian Egyptians that, "I will unleash the Holocaust upon you this time if you persist in this action" (Reed 185). Now I know that holocausts have happened to people all over the world throughout history up to the present, and that the Holocaust (which I grant you I am inferring to mean the one done by the Nazis under Hitler) happened to many more groups of people than just Jews, but this one short sentence out of the entire book offended me.
Earlier, Mr. Mitchell asked our feelings on the portrayal of Whites in Mumbo Jumbo, I didn't have any issue with it. But because it is Moses saying this, it was just too far for me. I shouldn't have been offended, and even when I first read this I realized that, yet I still was. Even nearly seventy five years after it happened, the Holocaust is still such an open wound for Jews worldwide. Perhaps because it is often misremembered in history as being something that only happened to Jews, or maybe for some reason that I can't think of but the Holocaust is something Jews seem to own now. My first reaction was along the lines of "What right has Ishamel Reed have to make any kind of ironic joke out of the Holocaust?" And to some extent I still feel that way, but I'm coming to see it now as less about it being Moses as a Jew and the Holocaust as something that happened in part to Jews, and more about history itself. Reed is totally rewriting the common understanding of Ancient Egyptian history, so why can't he also make Moses into a Hitleresque figure? Whose really to say that if you flip their lives that those two men would have been any different? I think that is the point Reed is trying to get across, though I am still disconcerted by his choice of topic and the language he uses to accomplish it.
I too tripped over the capitalized H in "Holocaust" in this passage, largely because of the dizzying and horrific irony of putting the term in Moses's mouth. But given that he proceeds to unleash a "mushroom cloud," in an explosion that later (anachronistically) is described as "nuclear," it does seem more like Reed is referring to a "nuclear holocaust" (as the word means massive death and destruction more generally, when it isn't capitalized; the "the" in "the Holocaust" is significant). So we're to take it that Moses just *happens* to use *this* word (it really is the appropriate term for what is described, esp. as the original meaning of the word specifically referred to massive devastation *by fire*)? And why is it capitalized? I don't know. I will say that Reed tends to deploy capitalization pretty randomly. But I'm also not ruling out the idea that he wants to associate a will to holocaust with Atonism--the desire to control and ultimately destroy anything different or unfamiliar--and Moses is an OG Atonist. And to link Moses with this impulse, in light of where this impulse led in the mid-20th-century, is provocative and, for some readers, no doubt offensive, with good reason.
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