当代美国非裔作家查尔斯·约翰逊的黑人哲理小说观既受到约翰·加德纳的道德小说观的影响,同时又融合了他自己的哲学和宗教思想。在约翰逊看来,20世纪70年代的黑人文学已经陷入停滞状态,在形式和内容上都需要一些变革方能继续向前发展,而他所说的黑人哲理小说能够让黑人文学重新焕发生机。他拒绝把黑人小说简化为哲学公式或政治宣传工具,反对带着任何先入为主的观念去“嵌套”写作对象,也反对从本质主义的视角出发关注狭隘的种族政治问题,而是倡导从多元文化中吸取营养,开创一种再现黑人生活经验的“完整视野”。
Raised by contemporary African American novelist Charles Johnson,philosophical black fiction is aparticular literary category with rich and unique aesthetic merits,which results from his applying philosophical andspiritual thinking to the innovation of black literary creation under the guidance of John Gardner’s moral fiction.FromJohnson’s viewpoint,black fiction had already run into a stagnation by the1970s,and changes must be made both inliterary forms and contents to promote its development,while his philosophical black fiction is such a promotion.Withits rejection to any reduction of literature to philosophical doctrine or political propaganda,and its rejection torepresenting the object with preoccupied assumption,it refuses to narrow down its concerns over racial politics from anessentialist point of view,and argues for a multicultural aesthetics to bring out a“whole-sight”representation of blackexperience.