African American ethos and hermeneutical rhetoric: An exploration of Alain Locke's The New Negro

Abstract

This essay explores the ways through which Alain Locke's anthology of African American art and criticism, The New Negro: An Interpretation, constituted an African American ethos during the Harlem Renaissance. Loche enacted a hermeneutical rhetoric that reinterpreted black folk tradition, African artistry, and modem pragmatism as topoi for rhetorical practice, and his discursive strategies appropriated and modified divergent cultural traditions to invent a “New Negro. “Locke's hermeneutical rhetoric exhibits an aesthetic praxis that is sensitive to the ways in which the emotions habituate rhetorical and cultural practices, which inform the achievement of propriety.

Key words:

• hermeneutical rhetoric
• African American rhetoric
• Alain Locke
• ethos
• propriety