Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

“I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World—without the mandate for conquest.” 

Morrison opens her book stating that she is going to draw a new kind of map. This is a metaphor for the type of investigation she is undertaking. She wants to examine the way in which the African-American presence has affected white American writers, and she likens this investigation to a process that is as revealing as charting the New World. 

“I am interested in what prompts and makes possible this process of entering what one is estranged from—and in what disables the foray, for purposes of fiction, into corners of the consciousness held off and away from the reach of the writer’s imagination.” 

Morrison is approaching the study of literature not as a literary critic but as a writer. As a writer, she is interested in examining other writers’ minds and imaginations. In particular, she wants to find out what writers access in their minds and what they keep at bay.

“This knowledge holds that traditional canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African-Americans in the United States.” 

This is the primary claim that Morrison wishes to investigate and challenge. Traditionally, literary critics have stated that the presence of African Americans has not affected white American literature.