Nancy's Myth Interruption Essay

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last,” are not only the words spoken by a legend deemed one of the most effective leaders in the history of civil rights , but are the words that were spoken during an evil time in American history in an attempt to bring to attention the consequences of which the nation suffered (King 34) It was at this time in history that world renowned activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historical “I Have a Dream” speech detailing the idea that our society was being driven by the mindset “us” vs “them” establishing the “communities and enemies” concept that is continuously discussed today. Before Gloria Naylor wrote The Women of Brewster Place or Jean-Luc Nancy even began to compose
Kings speech on the concept of how a community is formed. Within the text, Nancy proposes the question “What defines a community” by asking “What is myth?” She then proceeds to answer “Homer’s muthos, meaning speech or spoken expression, “becomes ‘myth’ when it takes on a whole series of values that amplify, fill and ennoble a speech, giving it the dimensions of a narrative of origins and an explanation of destinies.” (Nancy 48) This statement alone explains the concept of myth defining a community, being that it tells the origins and destinies of a culture. In addition to the previous concept, because Dr. King Homer muthos or speech tells of origins and destinies of a culture, it is only right to assume that a community is created and set up in the standards of which Nancy wrote about. In the same manner, Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political written prior to Dr. King’s speech, supports and connects to the same classification of enemies as Dr. King describes. Schmitt states that “in the private sphere only does it make sense to love one’s enemy, or one’s adversary” (Schmitt 29) in which correlates with Dr. King’s decision to continuously show love for whites in particular as he states “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners
King’s concept of “communities and enemies.” Within her story she describes a “group of homosexuals who are classified as enemies that are often given the bad end of the stick in every situation.” (Naylor 130) In correlation, Dr. King speaks of “African Americans who are the enemies of America’s community at the time receiving insufficient funds and pushed to believe that the court of justice to all had ran bankrupt.” (King 27) He goes further in depth to connect with Gloria Taylor’s enemies of her novel by stating how the enemies of his speech “refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt and that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity.”(King 27) In the same manner, the homosexuals from Gloria Naylor’s novel also refuse to settle for the bad end of the stick when one of them states explicitly “that they are not moving anymore whether the community in which they live accepts them or not.” (Naylor