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The logic of retribution: Amiri Baraka's Dutchman
African American Review, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Nita N. Kumar
The most condemning dimension of the stereotyped images in the play involves black sexuality. Although the sexual overtures here belong to Lula, they are made on the assumption of wayward sexual energy in Clay. Lula is undeterred by Clay's attempts to deviate from the image, and plays out the game of seduction, provocation, and castration determinedly. At the end, when she impales him, it is not clear whether the reason lies in the culpable sexuality she imagines in him, or in his refusal to conform to that image. When she begins to dance in "a rhythmical shudder and twist like wiggle," and calls on him to "rub bellies," he reacts with fury telling her, "You want to do the belly rub? Shit, you don't even know how" (30, 34).
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Historically the white woman was used to castrate the black man with the accusation of rape. Here, however, a refusal to rape is an equally good reason for the sentence of death. Lula is aggressive and menacing and emerges as the face of an orchestrated, destructive white power. Lula deals with Clay's long outburst near the end of the play, beginning with, "Shit, you don't have any sense, Lula, nor feelings either," in an extremely crisp and businesslike manner (33). "I've heard enough," she says, and proceeds to plunge her knife into his chest. In the subway, in the world of the play, Lula's authority is supreme and unchallenged. Clay's act of assertion is an offense, a sin for which the only retribution is death. Lula, and all that she represents, becomes the reason as well as the agent of the destruction of Clay and his world.
Clay's long, accusatory harangue talks about his "pure heart, the pumping black heart," and traces the connection between black rage and black art that has been the focus of much critical attention. It has assured life and hearing to the play as surely as it means death for Clay. The force and conviction of this climactic speech are palpable. Its interpretation and the question of its framing, however--precisely because Clay's words are so raw and direct--remain open to difference. The speech has often been interpreted as a definitive statement by Baraka on certain key issues faced by the African American artist. Seen this way, the statement has been assumed to be a retributive, hard-hitting one which preaches that only a reversal of the binary position, which would put the "black man" in the position of assault, would offer a possibility of change. While there is no denying that the speech raises important issues, to treat it as the meaning of the play and to lay the weight of the play on it is to judge the whole by its part. There seems to be very little justification--in spite of the fact that Clay, like Baraka, is a poet--for treating Clay's voice as that of the playwright, without framing the speech within the structure of the play.
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