Ralph Ellison’s Technological Humanism

Ralph Ellison emerged onto the literary scene as the concept of human rights was being formulated on the political one. He began crafting Invisible Man (1952) in 1945, 1 four years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union address to Congress. The “essential human freedoms” that Roosevelt hoped to instill across the world included freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—lofty international ambitions for a country that regularly denied these freedoms to its African American citizens. For Roosevelt and many Americans, these ideals were closely associated with the abstract notion of “technological progress.” In fact, the “Four Freedoms” address listed “[t]he enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress” alongside “the preservation of civil liberties for all” as parallel values that Americans demand from their government.