“Ain’t Nobody Clean”: Glory! and the Politics of Black Agency

Scott Poole

University of South Carolina-Aiken

 

            “History is, I am convinced, not something to be left to historians.” So writes Walter Susman in History as Culture, a seminal work in the cultural studies movement. Susman should be a happy man, since we live in a world where history never simply belongs to historians. This fact emerges clearly when we examine the creation of historical mythologies, the rendering of the messy details of the historical process into epics of gods and heroes. Myth-making allows humankind freedom from the exigencies of history—as well as perhaps absolution from the sins of history.[1]