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• 1 2024-03-05T23:27:45-08:00 Vernacular Intellectualism and Visionary Artistry 20 plain 2024-03-08T13:41:52-08:00 James Baldwin in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is,” notes that language “reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.” Language, when in the hands of vernacular intellectuals, establishes connections with history and culture in addition to informing on and critiquing social customs, gender norms, and institutions of power.
  I come to the concept of the vernacular intellectual from Antonio Gramsci and Carmen Kynard. The organic intellectual is a layman or a working-class person who has had no formal training in the academy, but as Gramsci notes, they become enlightened by the environment’s inner workings and educate the masses of laymen on strategies to negotiate institutions of power. The vernacular, as described by Kynard, turns one away from the dominant and accepted modalities and vocabularies and focuses on the adoption of language and thought that connects with the innate experiences of a culture and community. Vernacular intellectuals [1] use their identity to employ language varieties and performances for storytelling purposes. The storytelling techniques these intellectuals use help to espouse cultural and societal issues that relay narratives which connect cultural and critical memories to inform on generational experiences [2]
  
  Harryette Mullen describes the visionary artist and writer whose work “serves as a medium” for the spirit of African cultural traditions. She says:

  For visionary artists, as for these spiritual autobiographers, the art work or text is an extension of their call to preach. It functions as a spiritual signature or divine imprimatur, superceding human authority. The writer as well as the artist can become ‘an inspired device for the subconscious spirit,’ … The work of such individuals, while resonating with ancient [African] traditions, ‘is conceived out of [a] deeply intuitive calling and spiritual need’.

  Visionary artists, who are called by our ancestors and our vibrant cultural history to profess, pick up tools – pens, paintbrushes, dancing shoes, keyboards, and cameras – to participate in a storytelling tradition. Mullens suggests that this work comes from a spiritual need and desire to collect, examine, and interpret the ideas of the world. Visionary artists, in essence, are vernacular intellectuals that do this work of archiving and storying as a rhetorical practice to bring awareness to, and examine ideas and issues that speak to, about, and for the Black experience in America.
  
  
   

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  [1] Vernacular intellectuals for the purposes of this essay constitutes writers, orators, artists, and creatives that operate within African American Expressive tradition. This list includes several African American storytellers, ranging from Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, August Wilson, Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara to Tupac Shakur, Victor Lavalle, Jesmyn Ward, Dave Chappelle, and more.

  [2] The common traits of a vernacular intellectual include: challenging racial barriers, class distinctions, and oppressive political structures. A vernacular intellectual can critique class distinctions by poking fun at labor and economic disparities in the form of sarcasm. They also challenge oppressive political structures by suggesting either explicitly or implicitly that these select institutions are inherently oppressive in that they hold back advancement or achievement by people of color. Vernacular intellectuals, by definition, help to identify these issues, discuss them in nuanced ways, and attempt to challenge and/or subvert them by using their language to educate the masses and incite change in others.