Not Your Average Palaver

I would like to explore the implications of the double-meaning of "palaver" used in Invisible Man. The narrator uses the word to describe the interaction he and the doctor have after his brain surgery: "It's been quite pleasant, our little palaver, sir." According to the OED, a palaver is "action or talk" between characters. However, an older etymology reveals that a palaver can also be a negotiation between a "colonial official" and "local people," usually meaning West-Africans. You can imagine how fair this negotiation would be.

There are many ways Ellison could be winking at us by using the word "palaver" in a situation like this. In case you forgot, the narrator had just been on the receiving end of a completely unconsented medical experiment performed by a couple of white doctors. This scene is scarily reminiscent of the experiments done on enslaved black men, making the alternative definition of "palaver" even more powerful and relevant. The white doctors could easily be likened to colonial officials, asserting their white dominance wherever they please while framing their actions as carrying out fair transactions. Although there are strong similarities between the role colonial officials played and the role the white doctors played, I'd like to argue that the definition of "palaver" could also be reversed so that the narrator is the colonial official and the doctors are the local people. Let me explain.

There are various characters throughout the novel who play with this idea of role-reversal. The first and most obvious is the grandfather, who explicitly instructs the narrator to act cordially towards white people while pursuing your own identity on the down-low. The grandfather says, "life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days," implying that he was actually the one holding the reigns despite the illusion that white people controlled him. Bledsoe has a similar narrative. He reveals to the narrator that he spent a long time kissing up to white people to achieve his level of status. Bledsoe, like grandfather, was playing a game to reach a goal that white people would never allow him to reach overtly.

I think the narrator, perhaps consciously perhaps not, began toying with this idea of role-reversal when he used the word "palaver." The narrator had just finished interrogating the doctor about Mr. Norton, which left the doctor dismayed and confused but still secure in his authority over the narrator. However, there is reason to believe that the narrator is undermining the doctor's power by mentioning Mr. Norton and then using the word "palaver." The narrator asks the doctor if he knows Mr. Norton to point out how similar all of the authority figures in his life are. The narrator then laughs, possibly because he realizes how absurd it is that he once worshipped these authority figures. By then calling his interaction with the doctor a palaver, he mocks the power the doctor believes he has over the narrator. In this moment, the narrator is the colonial official and the doctor is the local. In this moment, the narrator holds the power over the doctor because the narrator understands something about the way the world works that the doctor doesn't. Although the narrator hasn't quite developed a secret goal for himself like his grandfather and Bledsoe, he is finally tapping into that idea of pretending to occupy one role while covertly occupying another.

This scene gives me (hesitant) hope for the narrator's development of consciousness. I'm hopeful because the narrator was able to laugh after coming to a nuanced conclusion about the way his world works. Laughter seems like a better response than anger, for example (I can't help but think of Bigger in this moment and how different Native Son would be if Bigger had laughed instead). I'm hesitant, however, because I don't know how successful this game is in the end. The most Bledsoe seems to get out of it is a couple of Cadillacs. We don't know the details of grandfather's life, or if the game he played was worth the effort. Nevertheless, I am confident that the narrator will continue to grow throughout the novel and eventually develop a consciousness that transcends what we ever expected of him in chapter one.