“No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul”: Black Madness, Metaphor, and “Murder!”

This brief interlude, “‘No Wiggles in the Dark of Her Soul’: Black Neurosis, Art, and Murder,” begins with a provocation from Clay, the protagonist of Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman (1964): “If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn’t have needed that music. . . . No metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles in the dark of her soul. Crazy niggers turning their backs on sanity. When all it needs is that simple act. Murder. Just murder! Would make us all sane.” Clay diagnoses a racialized madness afflicting black Americans and argues that it must be sated by “metaphor” or else “murder!” Launching from Clay’s jeremiad, the interlude ponders interrelations between murder and metaphor to set the stage for the next two chapters: one surrounding a mad black woman who commits murder and the other concerning a mad black woman who makes art.