LINGUISTIC AND LITERARY DIMENSIONS OF POSTMODERN SATIRE IN THE WORKS OF ISHMAEL SCOTT REED

Abstract

This article investigates the linguistic and literary dimensions of postmodern satire in the works of Ishmael Scott Reed, concentrating on his landmark novels Mumbo Jumbo (1972), The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), and Flight to Canada (1976). Reed’s writing is distinguished by a deliberate play with linguistic forms—parody, irony, vernacular idioms, ritualized speech, and signifyin(g)—that challenges Eurocentric conceptions of history and validates African diasporic traditions of knowledge. At the literary level, the novels embody the principles of historiographic metafiction, blending official documents, pseudo-archives, and cultural mythologies to expose the fictionality of historical “truth.” At the linguistic level, Reed’s deployment of oral traditions, Hoodoo-inflected rhetoric, and dialogic voices demonstrates how satire can operate as a strategy of cultural resistance as well as a form of critical inquiry.

              The article carries out a qualitative interpretive analysis that combines close textual readings with theoretical frameworks drawn from postmodern theory (Hutcheon, Jameson), African American literary criticism (Gates, Baker), and diaspora studies (Gilroy). Through this method, the study identifies how Reed’s satirical language and narrative structures interrogate the authority of archives, rewrite dominant historiography, and reimagine American identity as plural, contested, and improvisational.

              The findings emphasize that Reed is not only a satirist but also a cultural theorist whose fiction continues to resonate with contemporary debates on race, representation, and multicultural democracy. In highlighting both linguistic strategies and literary innovation, the article affirms Reed’s enduring significance in the field of African American and postmodern studies.