11/26/05

“I’m wit’ chu like a Monkey Tale:

Some thoughts while Signifyin’ on Black Art”
By Zeal Harris

This rather formal/informal/vernacular personal essay grows out of my attempts to

understand lectures on the concept of signification as presented by Otis College of Art
and Design professor, Nizan Shaked, in the graduate course Poststructuralism and
Postmodernism. The audience for this essay will include my instructor, classmates, and
my friends and family that have asked to read this paper so they too can understand more
about the importance of signifyin’, a vernacular word/concept that may be dying out in
our culture.

3-6-9,
The goose drank wine,
a monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line,
the line broke,
the monkey got choked,
they all went to heaven in a little row boat.
-black vernacular folk saying often said in moments of jest by my own grandma

From the first time the word signification was uttered in lectures, I was extremely
confused. No matter how many times, Prof. Shaked (Nizan) explained the Swiss-born
Saussurian notion that all meaning in culture is ascribed through interpretation of the
sign, and that the sign is thought to be divided into two parts, the signified and the
signifier, I was still having trouble. As the only African-American in the class, I asked,
“Is this the same idea as signifyin’ in black vernacular? Because, all I keep seein’ is the
signifyin’ monkey jumpin’ aroun’ in my head!” Fortunately, Nizan, a very sensitive,
hard-core, left-leaning Israeli feminist, possesses an admirable multicultural knowledge
base. She said, “Yes and no, signifying does mean something different in black
vernacular. You should go and read, “The Signifying Monkey” by Henry Louis “Skip”
Gates Jr.”

Struck by the fact that I could not define the word signifyin’—(a word used in my
childhood as often as other especially peculiar, big-meaning, old-fashioned soundin’
vernacular words like copascetic, mattafunction, conceited, onry, audacity, instigatin’,
rejubilation and volumptious, etc.)—words carefully reserved by my fellow poetic-
musical, black, working class Virginian community to decorate simple vocabularies, I set
out on a mission. I went to the Central library of Los Angeles, and checked out every
book that fell under the keywords; African-American—Black—Signifyin’. My search at
the nation’s second largest Library following the Library of Congress returned four items,
one of which was Skip Gate’s book. The other three texts included a poorly written

1
coffee-table book about 80s rap, an excellent book on the history of black comedy, and a
last book that was a totally incomprehensible, useless, academic treatise falsely
advertising itself as an analysis of signification within everyday life.

Upon poppin’ open Skip’s book (Gates is commonly called “Skip” by scholars and
bougies [boo′ • sheez]—black vernacular for the bourgeoisie) I realized that his high
falutin’ writin’ was gonna be as much of a challenge for me to read as Saussure, Lacan,
Freud, Derrida, Kaja Silverman, Best and Kellner and other white and non-black theorists
that I was struggling to understand in my classes. Fortunately, however, I’d read
virtually every African-American literary text that Skip cited—and if I hadn’t read a text,
I was at least familiar with the African-American authors that he referenced and I knew
the gists of their thought and themes. From Oladah Equiano and Phyllis Wheatley, to
Dubois and Ishmael Reed, to Zora Neale Hurston (my idol!) and Alice Walker, I was
elated to discover that Skip, the head of Harvard’s African-American literature
department and one of the nation’s so-called greatest intellectuals, found great value in
literature that has been incredibly and profoundly indispensable to my arriving at a
positive self-definition of myself as a black woman in America. I was even more elated
to discover that these stories held great keys to understanding that Skip’s theory of
signifyin’ is a main idea behind the meaning of “blackness” itself. 1

Although the idea of blackness is of interest to Skip, he explains in the preface to The
Signifying Monkey that his objective is to identify within African and African-American
traditions, “a system of rhetoric and interpretation that could be drawn upon both as
figures for a genuinely “black” criticism and as frames through which [he] could
interpret, or “read,” theories of contemporary literary criticism.” 2 A few sentences later,
he paraphrases himself by saying that, “the purpose of his project is not to “invent a black
theory”, but rather to locate and identify how the “black tradition” had theorized about
itself.” Virtually within the same breath, Skip goes further to reveal that he sees himself
as picking up a tradition of black criticism that began with Harlem Renaissance
writers/intellectuals such as Sterling A. Brown and Jean Toomer. To Skip (and to most
African-American scholars that I’ve encountered) it was during this period, that attempts
to bridge vernacular and formal traditions first became a widespread activity. Writings
precipitating the 60s Black Arts Movement written by novelist Ralph Ellison, provided
Skip with another prime model of “thoroughly integrated critical discourse, informed by
the black vernacular tradition and Western criticism.” 3

The above statements clearly show Skip’s thesis, but he breaks his thesis down into its
simplest language when he admits that he appreciates support and encouragement from
his collegues for his effort of lifting “the discourse of signifyin’ from the vernacular to
the discourse of literary criticism”. 4 This statement, Skip’s main idea, mirrors my own

1
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey, New York Oxford University Press,
1998), p. 182
2
ibid. preface p. ix
3
4
ibid. preface p xi

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immediate, current issues as a young black woman and an artist searching for identity
within dualisms and pluralities produced by race, class, and gender.

As I explained earlier, this essay is a way for me to figure out the meaning of meaning—
the similarities and differences, if any, between standard (white) English signification and
black vernacular signifyin’. However, as soon as I read the first few pages of The
Signifying Monkey, I became extremely excited by the prospect that I might learn not
only a new Afrocentric theory that I could use to understand semiotics, but also a “black
way” to look at art—a task that I’ve found daunting!

To my knowledge no particular contemporary “black” theory exists for analyzing black

art (or any other art for that matter). I’m interested in discovering theories about art that
are of non-western or non Anglo-Euro origin (i.e. Classicism, Modernism, and
Postmodernism, etc.). The closest thing to a black art theory that I’ve identified is
detailed in Testimony, Vernacular Art of the African-American South. This book simply
indexes art by black folk artists under six categories that include: (1) Witness to History
(a.k.a. “bearing witness”) (2) Allegorical Animals, (3) Biblical scenes, (4) Iconic human
figures, (5) Spiritual and Protective messages, and (6) Direct observation. It is also
observed that many educated and trained black artists take up the similar subjects as
black folk artists. These include umbrella themes such as justice, freedom, and equality. 5

While I find indexing of black art useful, a theory seems like it would be better…
although, I’m not exactly why…maybe it’s because I think I might be able to come to a
deeper and more comprehensive level of understanding about art. Although, I’m a little
unsure about whether that’s a good enough reason! Maybe precisely because there I’m
not aware of a contemporary “self-determined” theory to explain black art—I have
virtually no interest in any art theory whatsoever at all!

My personal interest in art has, until this point, been concentrated on researching topics
such as the history of black, vernacular, diasporic, and multi-cultural art. After reading
The Signifying Monkey, and while researching the concept of signification, I realized that
I frequently come across numerous writers that cross-reference The Signifying Monkey
and other writings by Gates. Such writers include Richard Powell, Lucy Lippard, and
Paul Arnett. So I asked my buddy, a UCLA History professor and writer, Dr. Scot
Brown, if he’d read the book. He said, “No, not yet.” and indicated that The Signifying
Monkey is “Skip’s best book. It was groundbreaking. He created a storm with that one”. I
took his word and trucked forward to gain insights about black art theory from black Art
professors at my old alma mater, Howard University—(an institution reputable for
producing and sustaining many famous intellectuals and artists such as Toni Morrison,
Alain Locke, Lois Mailou Jones, and Sean “Puffy” combs.)

I telephoned Professor Sorrells-Adewale, a former art professor of mine who taught at

Howard for 30 years. He was unaware of a single “black art theory out there.” He
encouraged me to pick up pieces from various writers such as diverse as bell hooks, Jeff

5
Testimony, Vernacular Art of the African-American South, p

3
Donaldson, Samella Lewis, James Baldwin, and Michael Harris. Then he softly and
matter-of-factly indicated to me that to understand Black Art and my art within such a
context, I would need to personally identify important patterns and syncretize multiple
fragmented viewpoints.

This leads me back to the The Signifying Monkey. Skip does exactly this: In a profoundly
amazing way, he traces and picks up pieces of oral and written history—fragmented by
the realties of the African Diaspora, intense racism, and the “natural” changes that time,
distance, and new circumstances create, to weave a full pastiche for black literary
criticism—but he does more. Skip’s theory of signifyin’ is revolutionary to me because it
represents a new and “complete” Afrocentric ideology that can possibly be used to form
new, full articulations about everything black. As a beginning point, this would go
beyond literature to include black aesthetics, semiotics, identity, philosophy, folklore, art,
music, film, and social psychology.

Certainly, pursuing a hypothesis such as the one stated above would be the length of a
book, and since I’m only required to write 12-15 double spaced pages for this term paper.
I’m going to have to keep it simple. What I propose to do in this essay is to touch on
three main topics. First, I’ll attempt to define signifyin’, summarize the origins of black
vernacular signification according to Gates, contrast signifyin’ with the classic notion of
semiotic signification, and sprinkle in my own collection of contemporary, oral “folk
sayings” that answer the questions such as, “What is signifyin’? and “Have you heard of
the Signifying Monkey?” Secondly, I’ll attempt to apply the theory of signifyin’ to a few
carefully selected, historically important creative works— art objects by African-
Americans, and finally, I’ll attempt to look at a few of my own works of art through the
theory of signifyin’.

I’ll begin summarizing Gates theory after listing important points compiled by him from
major writings on black signifyin’ written by Roger D. Abrahams, a well known literary
critic, linguist and anthropologist.

1. Signifyin(g) “can mean any number of things”.

2. It is a black term and a black rhetorical device.
3. It can mean the “ability to talk with great innuendo.”
4. It can mean “to carp, cajole, needle, and lie.”
5. It can mean “the propensity to talk around a subject, never quite coming to the
point.”
6. It can mean “making fun of a person or situation”
7. It can “also denote speaking with the hands and eyes”.
8. It is “the language of trickery, that set of words achieving Hamlet’s ‘direction
through indirection.’ ”
9. The Monkey “is a ‘signifier,’ and the Lion, therefore, is the signified.”
10. “ To imply, goad, beg, boast by indirect verbal or gestural means. A language of
implication.” 6

6
ibid p 75

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Personally, I found the list featured above, to be of great use in understanding signifyin’
because of its clarity and succinctness. This list of connotations corresponded with what
I initially understood to be common meanings of signifyin’. Although, signifyin’ has
never (until now!) been a word in regular rotation in my vocabulary or one that I often
hear in daily life, I was surprised that one could find enough information to write a book
about signifyin’—and could claim that in standard English, signification denotes
meaning, and in the black tradition it denotes ways of meaning.” 7

To test Gates’ theory, I polled (signified on) virtually every black person with whom I’ve
had a conversation in the last three weeks, to find out if they know what the word
signifyin’ means. This amounted to approximately 35 people who are 20 years to 92
years of age and of diverse backgrounds. I discovered that the older the person, the more
confidently they could explain the term. Many of my younger acquaintances couldn’t
define or had never heard the word, and if a person could define the word, they could
only capture one or two of it’s meanings. For example, the most common answer was,
“Isn’t that like the dozens?” (The “dozens” is an old-school word for a form of African-
American verbal dueling contests/rituals more commonly known amongst my generation
as battle rappin’, rankin’, jonin’, toastin’ or talkin’ shit). To another group of
acquaintances, signifyin’ means bein’ nosey, braggin’, showin’ off, or showing
something. Indeed, Skip tells me that I shouldn’t worry. He says, “Few black adults can
recite an entire monkey tale; black adults, on the other hand, can—and do—Signify. 8

This observation seems to be confirmed by my 92 year old great-great Aunt Marion of

Richmond, Virginia. After probing her to think hard tell me everything she knew about
the meaning of signifyin’, she gave me this example:

“Signifyin’ is like this. Say you go to yo’ fren house. She got a purse
sittin’ in a middle uh de room. You wont ta know whuss in her purse,
so you ask her every question you can think uh, to git her to show you
what’s in nat purse, wit’out askin’ huh direc’ly.” 9

Aunt Marion’s example of signifyin’ demonstrates one of Gates most important points,
that “When a black person speaks of signifyin’, he or she means a “style focused
message…styling which is foregrounded by the devices of making a point by indirection
and wit.” 10 In other words, the function of signifying is directive, and the tactic which is
employed is one of indirection. 11

Skip repeatedly refers to the nature of signifyin’, whether verbal, gestural, musical or
metaphorical/conceptual as having the characteristic of indirection. At first I was having
difficulty accepting this assessment because I assume that I usually “read” (signify on)

7
ibid p 81
8
ibid p 76
9
oral statement collected
10
ibid p78
11
ibid p 79

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these “cultural codes” of behavior and understand their meaning. I assumed that Skip
meant to say that signifyin’, to an “outsider” (someone that is not intimately familiar with
black culture) has the sound or appearance of some level of indirection. For example, a
contemporary outsider unfamiliar with the black vernacular slang word “jongt” may not
understand it’s meaning. “Jongt” is a word popularly used in Washington, D.C.. It’s
pronounced in such a way that it can’t accurately be spelled. During conversation, this
word is sometimes substituted for any noun—that is any person, place, thing or concept.
A person might say, “ I was at that jongt and that jongt was bangin’. I ain’t even know
that jongt was over there in that jongt.”

Or when I think of indirection, I think of whites hearing slaves singing “beautiful

spirituals” such as “Go Down Moses” in the cotton fields, while the black slaves singing
them understood them to mean that a slave was going to attempt an escape on that very
evening. This type of signifyin’ is often used in black-white encounters as masking
behavior. 12 Sometimes, this signifyin’ masking behavior is even more literal as in the
“Cakewalk,” a popular late 19th century dance, African American’s parodied whites
dancing, while whites believed that they were watching Negros who were seriously
trying to dance like white people. 13 I can think of endless examples of blacks, include
instances where I myself “wear the mask,” “a traditional African custom of protest
without confrontation, as a necessary method of survival.” 14 Often, this “mask” creates
direction through indirection and can make use of humor. Consider the following tale of
the slave who is confronted after appropriating one of his master’s turkeys:

“You scoundrel, you ate my turkey,” the master admonishes.

“Yes, suh, Massa, you got less turkey, but you sho nuff got mo
15
Nigger,” the slave replies.

Gates summarizes this point much more eloquently when he says that the mastery of the
tropes of signifyin’ creates the space in which:

“…the black person to move freely between two discursive

universes…linguistic masking, the verbal sign of the mask of
blackness that demarcates the boundary between the white
linguistic realm and the black, two domains that exist side by
side in a homonymic signified by the very concept of [standard
English] Signification. To learn to manipulate language in such
a way as to facilitate the smooth navigation between these two
realms has been the challenge of black parenthood. 16

12
ibid p77
13
14
On the Real Side p 69
15
On the Real Side p 32
16
ibid p 77

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I’ve already identified many of the tropes of signifyin’ that are mentioned in The
Signifying Monkey. Here is a final attempt to complete a sample list of the master tropes
or concepts synonymous with signifyin’ according to Gates:

• To talk “black” (ie. with tonality, emotional expressiveness,

style) 17
• To revise 18
• To rhyme with a musical nature of delivery 19
• To rap or be a rapper 20
• To improvise 21
• To perform 22
• To perform call and response (in performance to other
performers and/or audience) 23
• To tactically or performatively express deep feelings 24
• To use rhetorical strategies (i.e. metaphor, metonymy,
synecdoche, irony, hyperble, litotes, metalepsis, aporia,
chiasmus, and catechresis) 25
• To parody 26
• To employ satire 27
• To pretend to be stupid or naïve 28

Clearly, if there is anything to discern about signifyin’, my boyfriend, a Los Angeles

based rapper named Omari “Very” Trice, puts it like this, “then… signifyin’ is anything
that chu do. It’s always a verb.” But to white people, they signify, they say, “It’s
significant because.” This leads me to my second major task in this essay, to offer a
simple comparison and contrast of “white” Signification to black vernacular signifyin’.
According to this chart made by Gates, here’s the difference:

*Figure 1 29

17
ibid p 78
18
ibid p xxiii
19
ibid p 54
20
ibid p 72
21
ibid p 63
22
ibid p78
23
ibid p78
24
ibid p77
25
ibid p 52
26
ibid p110
27
ibid p112
28
ibid p156

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Signifyin’ = rhetorical figures versus Standard English Signification = signified = concept
signifier signifier sound-image

Gates explains that in black vernacular English, the “Saussurian (Anglo-Euro) notion of
the sign appears to be doubled, at the very least, (re) doubled upon ever closer
examination” or that the “signifier has been doubled and (re) doubled.” When I first
looked at this chart, I didn’t understand it, and I must admit, I still have trouble with the
Standard English side. On the black vernacular side, signifyin’ appears to be, as I’ve been
discussing, making a way to make meaning. The signifier is then the person, thing, or
sign that utilizes, directs, redirects, indicates, interprets, delivers, represents, or makes
something that means something. The signified is then, any person, place, or thing
including all rhetorical figures – the elements and concepts of language, that the signifier
signifies on. Consequently, “Signs and interpretants (signifiers and signifieds) would
appear to be locked in self-containment.” 30 To put it another way, the signifier activates
the signified and this creates a chain of actions and reactions that are locked together in a
perpetually inseparable relationship. I can’t remember where I read the following true-life
anecdote, however I’ll do my best to reconstruct it from memory to illustrate this:

Some time ago, a white man visiting the deep south heard black voices singing. He went to a window to
locate the sound. He decided to go outside to get a better view. Once outside, he sat on a wall, and from
there he saw a chain gang working in the distance while singing. He strained to hear the words and thought
hard as he tried to analyze their meaning. He chuckled with surprise when he finally decoded the message.

White folks idle, do nuttin’ but play

White folks idle, do nuttin’ but play
White folks idle, do nothin’ no way
Sit on a wall, jus’ wastin’ they day

As you can see, it is a white man in this story who is the initial signifier because he goes
to sit on the wall to signify on the significance of the chain gang’s song. The chain gang
then becomes the signified, but the signified chain gang signifies back on the white man
who is doing the signifying and so…that is the significant lesson within this anecdote. I
hope that I’ve made black vernacular signifyin’ clear, so now I’ll attempt to articulate
how black vernacular signifyin’ differs from Standard English signification.

On the opposite side of Figure 1, Gates signifies on Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss
born, turn-of-the-20th century “godfather guru” of the field of modern lingustics.
Saussure passed away in 1913 and since then, many other linguists and philosophers
including Peirce, Barthes, and Derrida have “signified on” Saussure’s theories by
expanding and revising the concept of standard English Signification so that in addition
to language and writing, it privileges other systems, signs and signifiers of meaning.
“Such a matrix provides a useful framework for the systematic analysis of texts, broadens
the notion of what constitutes a sign, and reminds us that the materiality of the sign may

29
ibid p 48
30
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics, Oxford University Press, New York, 1983
p15

8
in itself signify.” 31 Indeed, it seems as if Standard English Signification is coming closer
to the black vernacular concept of signifyin’!

I’ve momentarily digressed to show that Standard English Signification has evolved since
Saussure first introduced and diagramed his concept. In my research, the only diagram of
the signification that is similar to Figure 1, is Saussure’s model. 32 Consequently, I am
curious as to why Henry Louis Gates Jr. selects this particular model and labels it
“standard English Signification” since, as I’ve already mentioned. The “sign” also known
as “signification” has changed. I suppose that Saussure’s model of signification was the
first diagramming of the concept, the most simple explanation of all later theories, and
the model most in contrast to black vernacular signification.

Saussure’s model (Firgure 1) shows signification “as the whole that results from the
association of the signifier with the signified. To Saussure, a signifier is the form which
the sign (of signification) takes; and the signified is the concept that it represents.” 33
This relationship of signified to signifier is analogous to the relationship of sound-images
(language and writing) to concepts. To Saussure “tree” is a sign that is significant
because there’s a visual and spoken signifier (the word t-r-e-e) that signifies the
connotative and denotative definitions of “tree”. Saussure’s emphasis on the visual and
spoken aspects of the sign appears more limited and rigid than Gate’s model of signifier
because in black vernacular, signifier is a person, thing, sign or symbol. When it comes
to the signified, in Saussure’s model, the signified seems restricted to the realm of
concepts or ideas, while in Gates model of the black vernacular, the signified is
represented by “rhetorical figures” that can be a person, place, thing, language, concept,
or idea, etc..

If the similarities and differences between signifyin’ and Signification are still not clearly
apparent, Gates suggests that:

“This level of conceptual difficulty stems from—indeed, seems to have

been intentionally inscribed within—the selected of the signifier
“Signification” to represent a concept remarkably distinct from that
concept represented by the stand English signifier “signification.” For
the standard English word is a homonym of the Afro-American
vernacular word.” 34

To better understand this statement, it might be helpful to look back to the origins of both
words—signifyin’ and signification. Signification as a semiotic concept was introduced
around the turn of the century by Ferdinand Saussure, but according to Webster’s
Dictionary, signification as an English word has been in the language at least since the
Middle English era, and certainly since before the forced “arrival” of non-English

31
Chandler, Daniel, Semiotics for Beginners: Signs. p 32 www.aber.ac.uk/media
documents/S4B/sem02.html. 11/26/05
32
ibid. p 1
33
ibid p 1
34
Gates, The Signifying Monkey p 45

9
speaking African slaves to the North American continent. Gates speculates that in the
antebellum period, slaves appropriated the word “signifying” from standard English,
dropped the (g) on the end of the signifying as a renaming ritual, emptied the “received
concepts of “signification” and filled the signifier with their own concepts” thereby,
effectively making black signifyin’ a pun on “white” signification. 35 Further Gates sees
this action as a reflection of “the political and semantic confrontation between two
parallel discursive universes: the black American linguistic circle and the white.” 36 And
as if his attitude was not already apparent, Gates emphatically believes that “few other
selections could have been so dramatic, or so meaningful…because to critique the nature
of (white) meaning itself [is] to challenge through a literal critique of the sign, the
meaning of meaning.” 37

While I appreciate how meticulous and thorough Gates is at explaining signifyin’, I feel
that his analysis of standard English Signification is a weaker analysis because he uses an
outdated model of signification. In addition, he spends very little time defining many of
the linguistic terms that he uses, working from what seems to be a presumption that the
reader is already familiar with concepts coined by famous philosophizers such as
Saussure, Barthes, Lacan, and Derrida and words critical to understanding his analysis of
signification such as semantics, hermeneutics, tropes, antanaclasis, and syntagmatic, etc..
I find that from Gates analysis, I learn a whole lot about black signification, and nothing
about white signification that I can practically apply to better understand how whites
thing, behave, use language or ascribe meaning. However, I will concede that it is very
realistically possible that Gates analysis “is above my head” and that I am not the
academic community that his language targets because his target more than likely already
shares his same knowledge base when it comes to theory of Anglo-Euro origins.

To break my point down to its basest level, I am saying that Gates is saying that you can
only compare signifyin’ and signification to a certain extent because they are the similar
but they are not the same idea. Another fascinating way of looking at this difference is to
examine a peculiar black vernacular symbol/sign of the word signifyin’. This would be
the signifying monkey himself, and the title of Gates book.

“Well, the signifyin’ monkey is the greatest signifyin’ person of all—

oh well, he ain’t really a person at all, but whatever he is. He’s the
greatest signifier.”

The words above were spoken to me by my 92 year old, great-great-Aunt Marion. This
statement is how she answered me when I asked her, “ What is the signifyin’ monkey?”
she came up with this definition after I asked her to recite some monkey riddles or tales.
Jokingly, she told me that I would have to, “go and find another old person for that”
because she couldn’t remember any. Aunt Marion’s short answer was a little
disappointing but it was at least insightful, it was the best response to my question by any

35
ibid p 46
36
ibid p 45
37
ibid p 47

10
friend, acquaintance or family member, and corresponds very well to this statement by
Gates:

The signifying monkey serves as the figure-of-figures, as the trope in

which are encoded several other peculiarly black rhetorical tropes…the
Monkey’s language of Signifyin(g) functions as a metaphor for formal
revision, or intertextuality, within the Afro-American tradition. 38

I’ll pick up the topic of formal revisin and intertextuality in a moment, but for now,
Here’s a sample of a folkloric signifyin’ monkey tale.

Said the Monkey to the Lion, one bright sunny day.

“There’s a bad motherfucker livin’ down yo’ way.
You take that sucker to be yo’ friend,
But the way he talks about yo’ mamma is a goddamn sin.
Talks about yo’ daddy and yo’ sister, too,
Matter of fact, he don’t show too much respect fo’ you.”
Now the Lion took off like a bat outta hell,
Bananas split open and coconuts fell.
Lion found the Elephant sittin’ under a tree,
Say, “Now, motherfucker, you belong to me.”
Elephant looked outta the corner of his eyes,
Say, “Go on motherfucker, play with somebody yo’ size.”
But the Lion wouldn’t listen, and he made a pass.
The Elephant kicked him dead in his ass.

Now they fought all night and they fought all day.
Don’t know how the Lion ever got away.
He crawled back though the jungle, more dead than alive,
And that’s when the Monkey started that signifying jive.
Say, “Hey Mr. Lion, you didn’t fare too well,
Seem to me, you caught all the hell.
You look like a ho’ with a seven-year-itch,
And you s’pose to be King of the Jungle, ain’t that a bitch.
Now mutherfucker, don’t you dare roar,
‘Cause I’ll jump down and kick yo’ ass so more.”
But the Monkey got frantic, started jumpin’ up and down.
His foot missed the limb, he fell dead on the ground.
Like a bolt of lightnin’ and a streak of heat,
The Lion was on with all fo’ feet.
Monkey looked up with tears in his eyes,
Say, “Please, Mr. Lion, I apologize.
But if you let me get my balls out of the sand
I’ll fight yo’ ass like a natural man.”
Say, “If you jump back like a good man should,
I’ll bounce yo’ ass all over these woods.”
Lion stepped back and was ready to fight,
But the Monkey jumped up and was clean outta sight.
And I heard him explain as he went outta view,
“Tell yo’ momma and yo’ daddy, too,

38
ibid preface p xxi

11
 39
Signifying Monkey made a fool outta you.

As you can see, the Monkey is the signifier that tricks the Lion with rhetorical antics,
figurative language, and many methods of signifyin’. The Lion gets signified on by the
Monkey, and the Elephant is the somewhat arbitrary component/sign that locks the
Monkey and Lion into a perpetual signifyin’ ritual. (Many of the Monkey Tales feature
the Monkey, the Lion and the Elephant. The Monkey always tricks the Lion to fight the
Elephant and the Lion always loses).

The formal aspects of the tale also signify. The tale demonstrates various types of
rhyming, dialogue, rhythm, and characters that must be understood in order to master the
art of signifyin’. These are “lessons” within the tale with which the speaker and the
listener identify in order to learn the method and meaning of signifyin’.

The Monkey Tales have historically existed as oral tales. Judging by the fact that I hardly
know anyone under the age of seventy who has heard of the Signifyin’ Monkey, and it
was difficult to find a full tale on the internet, this leads me to suspect that the tales are
dying out. During a recent discussion with my brother, he speculated that the younger
generations are not sitting down to listen to the older generations signifyin’, a ritual
bonding in which these stories would then be passed down. I think my brother’s
observation is astute. Due to the extreme changes in contemporary lifestyles, I recognize
sad truth in that statement.

As a related point, it occurred to me, after talking with my neighbor, “Vee”, a 60 year old
Los Angeles poet, that the Monkey tales not be abundant in written form for a cultural
reason. When I asked Vee if she knew any Monkey tales she replied “no” and admitted
that she should call some of her older relatives and write down some of their stories
before they passed away. She regretted not having done this previously, but informed me
that when the family and community storytellers told oral tales, they severely
admonished anyone who attempted to write them down. When I (and several other
young people in the room asked why), she replied,

“Because that wasn’t the protocall. You just didn’t do that. And not
only that, only certain people were allowed to tell the tales. ‘Cuz you
couldn’t mess up the stories. That stuff was sacred.”

Days later, I think I began to understand why the Monkey tales were enforced as oral
tales—because to learn the meaning of the tales is to decipher and master all the lessons
of signifyin’ literally and figuratively. One must learn to signify by doing—and doing
means listening and speaking, by coding and decoding, necessary skills for social
survival in human society.

A last point that I’d like to make before moving on to discuss signifyin’ in relation to
visual art, is that the signifyin’ monkey tales signify on another very important signifier
for blacks—and that signifier is the continent of Africa.

39
Watkins, Mel. On the Real Side. P 470

12
One of Henry Louis Gates Jr’s most difficult tasks in The Signifyin’ Monkey is to trace
the origins of this dynamic character. To do this, he cites many scholars, and combs
various texts, folkloric tales, folk sayings, and religious sculptures that abound in the
African diaspora—that is throughout the Caribbean, Latin-America and the United States,
while he is in search any kind of cultural reference to Monkeys. Gates works from the
present and moves “backwards in time,” backtracking the slaveship routes, until he
arrives in Nigeria among the Yoruba peoples.

Gates explains, that in the extremely complex and well-populated pantheon of Yoruba
deities, only two specific deities represent/guard language. Esu is a trickster deity that is
the master of figurative language, the guardian of all crossroads of meaning, and the
symbolic interpreter of sacred text. Sacred text is the domain of a different deity named
Ifa. Ifa and therefore writing, represents literal language and consequently literal
meaning. Esu and Ifa are locked into a symbolic signifying relationship because it is Esu
that interprets Ifa. In other words, one would “summon” or offer “sacrifices” to Esu to
explain writing.

What is extremely interesting about the way that Esu interprets meaning, is that he
interprets orally by way of signifyin’ rhetoric and analogies. In Skip’s words, Esu, god of
indeterminancy and fate, “rules the interpretive process: he is the god of interpretation
because he embodies the ambiguity of figurative language…and he is a divine metaphor
for the open-endedness of every literary text.” 40 Additionally, it is interesting to note
that in a particular sacred poem within Ifa, four monkeys in a tree provide Esu with the
incentive to travel the world, find meaning, go back to the Gods, and then “tell men what
you yourself have learned, and then men will also learn once more to fear you.” 41 This
particular piece of a very long sacred poem, resonates very strongly with me, for I can see
how an African, enslaved might read into their fate and identify the signifyin’ monkeys in
these trees that are being read by Esu.

It is well known that many slaves were of Yoruba descent and that Esu is a deity that
survived the transatlantic slave trade and continues to exist in folklore or be worshiped in
various syncretic religions such as Santeria, Vodun, and Candomble. 42 However, in no
other diasporic community, does the Signifyin’ Monkey exist as prominently in folklore
as it does in America, and Skip says “We lack written documents to answer the historical
questions of how this occurred nevertheless. 43

“a small black man/woman possessed of long hair and large eyes,

emerges from the waters of Oriente province as a conflation of Esu,
with a partner, the Monkey. [But] only the Monkey survived the
passage from Cuba to the United States. Perhaps the racist designation
of the Afro-American as a monkey informed the North American

40
ibid p 40
41
ibid p 14
42
ibid p 5
43
ibid p 5

13
 features of this figure; perhaps the explicit aporia between speech and
writing that forms such a crucial and dynamic aspect of Ifa divination
was forced underground into the implicit by the hostile terms of
survival demanded of the monkey. We do not know. But we do know
that the Signifyin’ Monkey tales inscribe the nature and function of
formal language uses and its interpretation, just as does Ifa. 44

In reading this paragraph, extracted from its rich context in the book, it seems as if Gates
is saying that there is no exact proof that the Signifyin’ Monkey came from Africa. As I
mentioned before, Gates assembles and compares folkloric tales, riddles and visual
representations across the diaspora in search of Esu, Ifa and monkeys, and while his
method and documentation are impressive, I still felt as if I needed more convincing.

So to do my own research, I visited the home of my neighbors, “Judee,” a recent Haitian

immigrant with strong knowledge of Haitian Vodon and as well as African folklore,
words and concepts that survive in Haitian culture. I asked her if she could think of any
monkey tales, or riddles, or any instances of a monkey connected with Vodun deities.
(Meanwhile, her neice pulled out a “dictionary of Vodun” from a nearby shelf beside
Judee’s bed to do her own signifyin’). Judee told me that as far as she knew, she couldn’t
think of any folkloric or spiritual monkey, although she confirmed that in Haiti too,
whites, before Haitians threw them out, often referred to Africans as monkeys. Since, I’m
well aware of that discourse in America, I didn’t find Judee’s information particularly
insightful.

On the next day after picking Judee’s brain, she came to my house to tell me that she
remembered two Haitian sayings that might be useful for my research. She spoke the
statement in Creole and translated. The first expression she revealed would be used if
two people were arguing. One might say, “I’m going give you monkey!” And this would
mean, the person was going give you a really bad whipping with a thick branch or stick.
The second expression, “ I’m with you like a monkey tail” or “stiff like a monkey tail”
meant something exactly opposite. It meant that the person would be loyal and with you
forever and ever.

Even though the conversation with Judee was rather personal and casual, it actually
provided a link that match with my observations of the images of Esu sculptures that
Gates provides in his book. In these sculptures, Esu is depicted with or holding a large,
stiff, phallic symbol or stick and/or possessing a long stiff tail. 45 After rereading Chapter
2 of The Signiyin’ Monkey, I realized that I’d only lightly grazed over this riddle cited by
Gates from Afro-Cuba:

The jigue was born in Oriente

And brought here from Africa,
Where he had been a monkey: the last
Monkey who fell into the water;
The monkey who drowned

44
ibid p 42
45
ibid p 16

14
 For the sake of the nganga-
The nganga forever floating
Over the waves of water. 46

Jigue and Nganga are the only two words of African origin in this riddle originally
recorded in Spanish. Jigue is etymologically related to the word jiwe an Efik-Ejagham
word for monkey, and Nganga translates from Kiswahili (east sub-saharan Africa) as; to
experience an attack of wrath, to cause pain, to reflect or question, to clutch hold of a
swinging branch or tree, to beg earnestly until one gains a desired end, and in KiKongo
(Congo), Nganga translates as; magical object or interpreter. 47 Consequently, there may
be no written documentation to show the connection of the signifyin’ monkey to Africa,
however, there is oral documentation that one need only assemble to discover the trace of
Esu in America. And even if the Signifyin’ Monkey is not the trace of Esu, the monkey
certainly signifies like Esu.

Skip Gates pushes this proposition that the Signifyin’ Monkey is a manifestation of Esu
by claiming that within the Signifyin’ Monkey Tales, resides the embodiment of the
principle of Ifa. Gates says, “Esu is meta-discourse, the writing of the speech act of
Ifa.” 48 And it is on this principle of Esu as “a figure of doubled-duality, or unreconciled
opposites, living in harmony”, 49 a figure sometimes represented in folklore with two
mouths or two heads 50 , that Gates establishes his elaborate theory of Signifyin’.

Gates shows that, where the trope-of-tropes of black vernacular behavior and oral
language is the double talkin’ Signifyin’ Monkey, (which can be traced back to Esu), that
the trope-of-tropes for signifyin’ in black literature is the tradition of creating double
talking texts. Gates calls this tradition, “double-voiced” and defines four sorts of double-
voiced textual relations:

(1) Tropological Revision: The manner in which a specific trope is repeated with
differences between two or more texts. 51

(2) The Speakerly Text (or talking book): A narrative strategy that seems to concern
itself with the possibilities of making text speak. To represent these possibilities
black writers play with black voice(s) and often create a hybrid character who is
neither the text’s disembodied narrator, nor the protagonist of a novel, but a blend
of both, an emergent and merging moment of consciousness. 52

46
ibid p 18
47
ibid p 18
48
ibid p 42
49
ibid p 30
50
ibid p xxv
51
ibid p xxv
52
ibid p xxvi

15
 (3) Talking Texts: A black form of intertextuality in which black texts “talk” to other
black texts and signal close reading, revision, and critique. 53

(4) Rewriting the Speakerly: Another form of black intertextuality that makes little
attempt to critique and instead attempts to engage in refiguration as an act of
homage. 54

In my own words, a double-voiced text means that historically, black writers write in a
way that signifies a black “voice”, while they signify upon other black writer(s) writings.
Historically, the black voice is a point-of-view that is a “particular, sometimes
paradoxical, (and when done effectively)—a dynamic representation of both black
vernacular and the formal English language traditions. 55 Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their
Eyes Were Watching God, is a clear paradigm of what skip calls “free-indirect
discourse” 56 , the double-voiced point-of-view because Hurston flips back and forth
between omniscient narration and first person narration (or subject/object), while code-
switching between long passages or exchanges of direct, oral black vernacular and formal
standard English with a black “accent”. Consider the following excerpt from her most
well-known text:

[insert quote] 57

The other aspect of a double-voiced text occurs when a writer significantly signifies upon
another well-known black writer’s writing. An example that Skip gives is Alice
Walker’s, The Color Purple. In this novel, Skip sees Walker’s narrative strategy of letter
writing as first, a way of telling the fact of showing Celie’s story as a working out of the
paradox of representing both oral, black vernacular and written black vernacular language
at once. And secondly, Gates believes that The Color Purple signifies upon the narrative
strategies of free indirect discourse (language code-switching) used in Their Eyes Were
Watching God. Gates offers his most compelling evidence for this argument in a passage
from The Color Purple that begins with this sentence written by Celie to her estranged
sister living in Africa named Nettie.

Dear Nettie,
I don’t write to God no more, I write to you.

And
Man corrup everything, say Shug…He try to make
you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever
you trying to pray, man plop himself on the other end of it. Tell him to

53
ibid p xxvi
54
ibid xxvii
55
ibid preface p xxv
56
57
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God….

16
 get lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water,a big rock. (p168)
58

These sentences seem to signify the double voiced text in important ways. Celie, up to
this point always addresses her letters to an omniscient God, but switches her audience
from an omniscient figure to a real black, female character in the story whom she
addresses by way of 2nd person as “you” and “you” also implicitly signifies to Celie, a
self that like black and female like herself. The double-voicing is also the fact that Celie
is both the protagonist/1st person narrator and the “tool” that Alice Walker uses or “talks
through” to signify her own point-of-view as the “omniscient” black feminist author of
the book. Gates explains that Celie learns a new way to write herself into being in
relation to God and in relation to other black men and black women. On the other hand,
Janie, the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God, learns to speak herself into
being which is signified when Hurston writes her language in dialect. However, Hurston
also writes Janie’s character using an omnipotent point-of-view that signifies upon God.
Gates says,

Walker signifies upon Hurston by troping the concept of voice that

unfolds in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Whereas Janie’s
movement from object to subject begins with her failure to recognize
an image of her colored self…Celie’s ultimate moment of self-negation
is her self-description in her first letter to God: “I am.”, Celie, like
Janie, is an absence, an erased presence, an empty set. Celie,
moreover, writes in “Janie’s voice,” in a level of diction and within an
idiom similar to that which Janie speaks. Celie on the other hand,
never speaks; rather, she writes her speaking and that of everyone who
speaks to her. 59

Of special concern to both Celie as the narrator/protagonist and to Alice Walker the
author, is the idea of replacing a white, male, all-knowing God who looks down onto
humans with figures that are black, female, non-white or even non-animate. Walker
creates a character that writes for the length of a whole book, in black dialect and never in
standard English. Celie’s writing looks exactly as black vernacular speech sounds.
Sometimes this creates a certain awkwardness that can be difficult for the reader because
it forces the reader to do their best to construct meaning from Celie’s vernacular language
and “improper” story formatting. As an example, Celie never uses quotation marks to
identify who has spoken to her when she writes what they’ve said.

Looking through a lens of postmodern theory, one could even read into Walker’s
narrative strategy as an effort to reject the trope of the all knowing, formal, white, male
writer often associated with the Western Classical Era. Walker could easily be a model
writer practicing theories uttered by infamous postmodern theorist, Roland Barthes who
writes in his critical essay, Death of the Author

58
Gates, . p 257
59
Gates. The Signifying Monkey p 243

17
 The removal of the Author…is not merely a historical fact or an act of
writing; it utterly transforms the modern text (or- which is the same
thing—the text is henceforth made and read in such a way that at all its
60
levels the author is absent).

This statement expressed by Barthes is a landmark theory that seeks to define, identify
and advocate what may be categorized as a postmodern text. Walker in a postmodern
writer in that she “removes” herself as the “writer” as much as could be possible to have
Celie tell her own story. Consequently, we can conclude that Alice Walker, a well-
educated writer who consciously writes issues of the black vernacular, radically places
herself within postmodern discourse. In a sense, it is Alice Walker the author as
opposted to Celie, who represents double-voicing to its greatest extent.

Additionally, I should mention that Alice Walker is often solely credited with “finding”
Zora Neale Hurston’s texts and situating them within postmodern literary discourse. It is
also known that prior to writing The Color Purple, Walker reviewed extensive,
autobiographical letters and writings written by an early 19th century free-black Shaker
woman named Rebecca Cox Jackson. These writings had been “lost” but resurfaced in
1981 and were examined closely by scholars—especially those who were black and
feminist. 61 Gates explains that Rebecca Cox Jackson was an antebellum black woman
who begged her brother, who was a clergyman, to teach her to write. To Jackson, her
brother seemed disinterested in helping her learn. What was most unforgivable to
Jackson, is that when she would dictate personal letters to her brother, he would edit her
writing. Frustrated with her brother’s male-domination-like behavior, Jackson explains in
her writings that a white, male, “supernatural” figure guided her to understanding. After
gently leading her around a room in dream-like time, the figure says, “I will instruct thee,
yea, thou shall be well instructed. I will instruct.

These facts are important to Gates because as his final sentence in “the Signifyin’
Monkey

The particular words that Gates uses to describe “double-duality”, echo the 1903 theory
of “double-consciousness,” set forth by W.E.B. Dubois, who is regarded as one of the
most important intellectuals in African-American history and philosophy. This duality,
first proposed by first W.E.B. Dubois, is being expanded upon by Gates. Consider the
following, and arguably, the most recognized quote by Dubois,

…the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with
second site in this American world,--a world which yields him no true
self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation
of the other world. It is this peculiar sensation, this double-
consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the

60
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. 1977 p 145
61
Gates, . The Signifying Monkey. P 241

18
 eyes of the other, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that
looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness-- 62

Dubois reference to a self-conscious “two-ness”, and Gates idea of paradoxical,

unreconciled opposites is for both scholars, the duality that is a metaphor for the
psychological process of negotiation of both “blackness” and “whiteness” within an
individual African-American. (As an example, you may be witnessing this kind of
duality while reading this essay as I switch back and forth, sometimes rather awkwardly,
between informal and formal English, or personal or impersonal “subjectivities”, as I
attempt to write a readable essay that expresses by “black voice”, through formal, rather
restrictive rules and structure).

I can give another, very personal example that directly addresses this duality that Gates
identifies in black texts. Although this example is not a “black text” in the strict sense of
the term, this text is a painting, and the painting is a painting that I painted three years
ago entitled, “Double Consciousness”.

62
Dubois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk, Fawcett World Library, New York, 1970
(originally published 1903) p 16

19