Over the past few years of high school, we have been learning a lot about Eurocentrism and how much of history has been told with a Western perspective. Mumbo Jumbo turns this around on its head, offering an alternative point of view. Reed does this with one of the major themes of Mumbo Jumbo, anti-imperialism. For example, there is an entire organization, called the Mu’tafikah, dedicated to: “...looting the museums [and] shipping the plunder back to where it came from” (Reed 15). Reed reclaims history, showing the irony of how the stolen pieces of art that rest in Western museums are stolen from the thieves (the West). They also encourage Jes Grew, the African “disease” that makes people dance. A massive cultural movement with African roots spreading across America and Europe, Jes Grew is meant to be Afrocentric and, given the context of when the book was written, an Afrofuturist ideology. It represents the idea that decolonized African culture can thrive in Western civilization.
As Jes Grew is the representation of 1920s jazz, and how it spread so quickly the world during the Harlem Renaissance, there are of course the Atonists, or more specifically the Wallflower Order, who want to stop the spread of African culture, seeing it as a stain on the beauty of Western society. The Wallflower Order represents the enormous influence and power that the West exerts on the world, where nothing ever gets done without their approval and being portrayed as Western imperialists. For example, in chapter 5, the “...Wallflower order [attempted] to…install an anti-Jes Grew President, Warren Harding” (Reed 17), and they succeed. Harding wins but “Unbeknownst to him he is being watched by a spy from the Wallflower Order. A man who is to become his attorney general” (Reed 17). This shows how the Order controls many facets of Western life, and how they want to prevent any spread of African culture.
One of the major parodies of imperialism appears in chapter 52, where the Egyptian God Set is portrayed as the original embodiment of the West. Set tried using “...the death of [his] father as an excuse for invading foreign countries… He was [also] arrogant jealous egotistical” (Reed 162). As Reed is describing Set, he interjects a chart on page 163 showing the unbelievable amount of bombs dropped in the Indochina region during the Vietnam War, reinforcing his criticism of the West. On page 165, we learn that Set “...[yearns] for the old days when he out to tell the people to ‘Move that chariot to the side of the road, O.K. where’s your license,’” (Reed 165). This is another example of how Reed parodies Set as the original version of Western society, as he represents the average Western police officer. Reed’s representation of Set serves as a critique of America to provide a different approach than the common Eurocentric point of view.
