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Loretta G. Woodard
Signifying Monkey, The: A Theory of
African-American Literary Criticism
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1988)
The Signifying Monkey is a seminal text in African-
American literary theory. In it HENRY LOUIS GATES,
JR., argues that there is a discrete and distinct black
vernacular voice located simultaneously within
early African-American folk traditions and in in-
digenously derived West African cultural origins.
Specifically, Gates maintains, black signifying (sig-
nifyin’) unites the figures of Esu Elegbara, a West
African Yoruban god of indeterminacy, and the
Signifying Monkey, a TRICKSTER who is the central
figure of the African-American signifying monkey
tales that date back to slavery, to create a theory
of African-American literary criticism. To derive
meaning from a black text, Gates theorizes, it is
necessary to analyze or interpret it through struc-
tures that came from black and African cultures.
The Signifying Monkey points out “signal” dif-
ferences between black speech and white speech
or language. According to Gates, the critical focus
is on the way in which words are used or signi-
fied, rather than on the actual meaning assigned
by words. As in the signifying monkey tales, in
which three animals (monkey, lion, and elephant)
are involved in a conversation in which meaning
is “comically” confused, black signifyin’ relies on
misinterpretations to supply true meaning. In
the tales, the monkey is said to be signifyin’ on
or mocking the lion through an indirect reference
to the elephant as the carrier of the tale about the
lion. An insult is misunderstood by the lion to
have come directly from the elephant through the
monkey—as in the monkey’s claim that “I heard
the elephant said you were too small to be king of
the jungle.” While these African-American folk-
tales are told in a variety of ways, with similar re-
sults—a thrashed lion, after foolishly confronting
the elephant, returns to find the monkey sitting
safely in a tree laughing at him. In a similar fash-
ion, this text uses Esu, the “Pan-African cousin,”
as the African trickster figure who also obscures
meaning in order to convey.
Key points have emerged in African-American
literature and criticism as a result of The Signifying
Monkey. Specifically, meaning in black literature
is based on an understanding of black language
as double-voiced and indirect. To interpret black
literature properly one must look for meaning not
only in what is directly stated but also, and more
important, in what is not said, what is implied,
and what is repeated. Consequently, a reader must
pay close attention to the way in which words are
presented rather than in their literal meaning. Fur-
ther, signification in the African-American literary
tradition is as much about the mode and manner
of the text’s signifying upon itself and other texts
as it is about the content (what is being signi-
fied about). Formal aspects, such as indirection,
double-voicedness, pastiche (or motivated signifi-
cation), parody (unmotivated signification), self-
reflexiveness and referentiality, hidden polemic,
and “narrative parody and critical signification”
also constitute formal aspects of signifying.
A key concept in this system of writing and
making meaning out of words and wordplay is
the relationship between identity and difference.
Words signal difference and difference constitutes
identity. In this case, black difference (blackness,
Africanness) is located in the black vernacular—
black identity is located in black speech. White
and black critics have overwhelmingly questioned
this tenet of Gates’s theory of signifying. The
strongest opponents have been African-centered
critics who argue that Gates fails to sufficiently
analyze underlying indigenously derived African
knowledge bases and therefore misrepresents Af-
rican ontology and epistemologies that are foun-
dational to African language and subjectivity and
inform the cultural and linguistic fusion incorpo-
rated in the theory of signifyin’. Rowland Abio-
dum suggests the following remedy: “we must
look beyond what is easily observed if we are to
understand something... an artwork in its cul-
tural depth as the expression of the local thought
or belief system, lest we unwittingly remove the
‘African’ in African Art” (qtd. in Badego, 47).464 Signifying Monkey, The: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism