David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
James Baldwin is not only one of the more notable Anglophone twentieth-century novelists to attempt continually and with minimal success to enter the theater. He is also one of the major inheritors ...
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James Baldwin is not only one of the more notable Anglophone twentieth-century novelists to attempt continually and with minimal success to enter the theater. He is also one of the major inheritors of the aesthetic and political problematic we have repeatedly encountered in the course of this book. Baldwin is perhaps the most important twentieth-century novelist to seriously explore what it means to make interiority the bearer of collective desire. This chapter argues that the novel of interiority reaches an impasse and a breakthrough in the work of Baldwin precisely when the contradictions inherent in the attempt to think collective problems through sexual interiority becomes unavoidably insistent—and does so through Baldwin's negotiation with the generic difference of the theater. His career makes clear that if the novel relentlessly personalizes collective issues, its theatrical preoccupation constitutes a record of the political costs of that reduction, one that demands to be read at the level of form.Less
James Baldwin is not only one of the more notable Anglophone twentieth-century novelists to attempt continually and with minimal success to enter the theater. He is also one of the major inheritors of the aesthetic and political problematic we have repeatedly encountered in the course of this book. Baldwin is perhaps the most important twentieth-century novelist to seriously explore what it means to make interiority the bearer of collective desire. This chapter argues that the novel of interiority reaches an impasse and a breakthrough in the work of Baldwin precisely when the contradictions inherent in the attempt to think collective problems through sexual interiority becomes unavoidably insistent—and does so through Baldwin's negotiation with the generic difference of the theater. His career makes clear that if the novel relentlessly personalizes collective issues, its theatrical preoccupation constitutes a record of the political costs of that reduction, one that demands to be read at the level of form.
Henry Plotkin
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- April 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198568285
- eISBN:
- 9780191584961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568285.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Models and Architectures
Conway Lloyd Morgan in Britain and James Mark Baldwin in the USA, near contemporaries of one another, shared several other characteristics. Each had a philosophical sophistication unusual amongst the ...
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Conway Lloyd Morgan in Britain and James Mark Baldwin in the USA, near contemporaries of one another, shared several other characteristics. Each had a philosophical sophistication unusual amongst the evolutionists and most psychologists of their day. Each was a pioneer, if in different ways. Morgan was one of the first experimental comparative psychologists; Baldwin made seminal contributions in developmental psychology, being the first to understand that human cognitive development proceeds through a series of stages, each of which is qualitatively different from those preceding it. Both wrote a form of memetics, the notion that ideas are the cultural analogues of genes that evolve by way of selection, some 70 and more years before Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Both also anticipated major ways of advancing thinking as to how evolution and learning may be linked to one another. It is the latter, of course, which is the primary concern of this chapter.Less
Conway Lloyd Morgan in Britain and James Mark Baldwin in the USA, near contemporaries of one another, shared several other characteristics. Each had a philosophical sophistication unusual amongst the evolutionists and most psychologists of their day. Each was a pioneer, if in different ways. Morgan was one of the first experimental comparative psychologists; Baldwin made seminal contributions in developmental psychology, being the first to understand that human cognitive development proceeds through a series of stages, each of which is qualitatively different from those preceding it. Both wrote a form of memetics, the notion that ideas are the cultural analogues of genes that evolve by way of selection, some 70 and more years before Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. Both also anticipated major ways of advancing thinking as to how evolution and learning may be linked to one another. It is the latter, of course, which is the primary concern of this chapter.
Joseph Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041747
- eISBN:
- 9780252050411
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041747.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This introduction provides an overview of James Baldwin’s work in the 1980s and why it has been overlooked. Against the conventional narrative of Baldwin’s “decline,” a fresh look at his late work ...
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This introduction provides an overview of James Baldwin’s work in the 1980s and why it has been overlooked. Against the conventional narrative of Baldwin’s “decline,” a fresh look at his late work reveals a still-razor-sharp, provocative writer who, with the benefit of hindsight, holds up as one of the most prescient observers of the post-civil rights landscape. Indeed, while Baldwin is most often associated with earlier historical moments, he remained prolific in his final decade, publishing his most ambitious novel in 1979 (Just Above My Head), several noteworthy essays and articles (including landmark pieces such as “The Cross of Redemption,” “Notes on the House of Bondage,” “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” and “To Crush the Serpent”), a collection of poems in 1984 (Jimmy’s Blues), a major nonfiction book in 1985 (The Evidence of Things Not Seen), and arguably his best play (the as-yet unpublished The Welcome Table). In addition, he gave numerous illuminating interviews and speeches, narrated a documentary (I Heard It through the Grapevine), and even collaborated on a spoken-word-music album with jazz musician and composer David Linx (A Lover’s Question).Less
This introduction provides an overview of James Baldwin’s work in the 1980s and why it has been overlooked. Against the conventional narrative of Baldwin’s “decline,” a fresh look at his late work reveals a still-razor-sharp, provocative writer who, with the benefit of hindsight, holds up as one of the most prescient observers of the post-civil rights landscape. Indeed, while Baldwin is most often associated with earlier historical moments, he remained prolific in his final decade, publishing his most ambitious novel in 1979 (Just Above My Head), several noteworthy essays and articles (including landmark pieces such as “The Cross of Redemption,” “Notes on the House of Bondage,” “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” and “To Crush the Serpent”), a collection of poems in 1984 (Jimmy’s Blues), a major nonfiction book in 1985 (The Evidence of Things Not Seen), and arguably his best play (the as-yet unpublished The Welcome Table). In addition, he gave numerous illuminating interviews and speeches, narrated a documentary (I Heard It through the Grapevine), and even collaborated on a spoken-word-music album with jazz musician and composer David Linx (A Lover’s Question).
Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813175164
- eISBN:
- 9780813175195
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813175164.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Bigger Thomas, one of Richard Wright’s most memorable and distinctive fictional creations, has been interpreted in vastly different ways. This is partly because readers bring to Native Son different ...
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Bigger Thomas, one of Richard Wright’s most memorable and distinctive fictional creations, has been interpreted in vastly different ways. This is partly because readers bring to Native Son different sets of beliefs about US capitalism, about the psychology of US racism, about the spiritual resources of black communities, and about the commitments and priorities of the United States government. This chapter, by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, compares how Irving Howe, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright interpreted Bigger’s story. The comparison reminds us of the variety of political projects to which the story can be put to use, and the possible futures for the United States—from working-class fascism, to state-led progressivism, to black communalism, to interracial fantasies and nightmares—that Bigger’s tale can illuminate.Less
Bigger Thomas, one of Richard Wright’s most memorable and distinctive fictional creations, has been interpreted in vastly different ways. This is partly because readers bring to Native Son different sets of beliefs about US capitalism, about the psychology of US racism, about the spiritual resources of black communities, and about the commitments and priorities of the United States government. This chapter, by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, compares how Irving Howe, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright interpreted Bigger’s story. The comparison reminds us of the variety of political projects to which the story can be put to use, and the possible futures for the United States—from working-class fascism, to state-led progressivism, to black communalism, to interracial fantasies and nightmares—that Bigger’s tale can illuminate.
David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development ...
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According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly—the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin—writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies—this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, the book reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, the book shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. The book establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority by investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers. In the process, it illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, this book provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.Less
According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. This book challenges this consensus by re-examining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly—the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin—writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies—this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, the book reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, the book shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. The book establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority by investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers. In the process, it illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, this book provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.
Douglas Field
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- June 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199384150
- eISBN:
- 9780199384181
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199384150.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The book examines how James Baldwin’s fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. It is animated by an ...
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The book examines how James Baldwin’s fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. It is animated by an examination of how external forces molded Baldwin’s personal, political, and psychological development and gave shape to his writing. The book views Baldwin through a cultural-historical lens alongside a more traditional literary critical approach. Crucially, it breaks through the established critical difficulties caused by Baldwin’s geographical, ideological, and artistic multiplicity by analyzing his life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time. The book explores under-researched areas in Baldwin’s life and work—his relationship to the Left, his FBI files, and the significance of Africa in his writing—while also contributing to wider discussions about race, identity, love and sexuality in postwar US culture. In this way, the book contributes to a broader understanding of some key twentieth-century themes—including the Cold War, African American literary history, conflicts between spirituality and organized religion, and transnationalism—but also brings a number of academically isolated disciplines into dialogue with each other. By viewing Baldwin as a subject in flux, rather than trying to fix his life and work into a single paradigm, the project contradicts the accepted critical paradigm that Baldwin’s life and work are too ambiguous to make sense of. It argues that it is precisely by studying Baldwin as an individual and an artist in flux that one begins to uncover the ways in which his work coheres.Less
The book examines how James Baldwin’s fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. It is animated by an examination of how external forces molded Baldwin’s personal, political, and psychological development and gave shape to his writing. The book views Baldwin through a cultural-historical lens alongside a more traditional literary critical approach. Crucially, it breaks through the established critical difficulties caused by Baldwin’s geographical, ideological, and artistic multiplicity by analyzing his life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time. The book explores under-researched areas in Baldwin’s life and work—his relationship to the Left, his FBI files, and the significance of Africa in his writing—while also contributing to wider discussions about race, identity, love and sexuality in postwar US culture. In this way, the book contributes to a broader understanding of some key twentieth-century themes—including the Cold War, African American literary history, conflicts between spirituality and organized religion, and transnationalism—but also brings a number of academically isolated disciplines into dialogue with each other. By viewing Baldwin as a subject in flux, rather than trying to fix his life and work into a single paradigm, the project contradicts the accepted critical paradigm that Baldwin’s life and work are too ambiguous to make sense of. It argues that it is precisely by studying Baldwin as an individual and an artist in flux that one begins to uncover the ways in which his work coheres.
Carol Wayne White
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823269815
- eISBN:
- 9780823269853
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269815.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter illustrates Baldwin’s efforts during the mid-twentieth century to enhance race relations in the United States with an expanded view of humanity and our capacity to love each other. It ...
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This chapter illustrates Baldwin’s efforts during the mid-twentieth century to enhance race relations in the United States with an expanded view of humanity and our capacity to love each other. It examines how Baldwin conjoined religion and race, underscoring his warnings against investing in a religious vision that kept in place white racist constructs and problematic cultural practices. Of importance are the axiological import and symbolic meanings Baldwin associates with the constructions of whiteness and blackness inhering in religious doctrines and cultural systems. With an eye toward expanding his contemporaries’ views of their constitutive humanity, Baldwin emphasized embodied forms of love, which specifically demanded from whites and blacks unprecedented acts of courage and audacious choices. The discussion comments on Baldwin’s sense of the existential tasks involved in both blacks and whites embracing blackness as a goal towards achieving both national and individual well being.Less
This chapter illustrates Baldwin’s efforts during the mid-twentieth century to enhance race relations in the United States with an expanded view of humanity and our capacity to love each other. It examines how Baldwin conjoined religion and race, underscoring his warnings against investing in a religious vision that kept in place white racist constructs and problematic cultural practices. Of importance are the axiological import and symbolic meanings Baldwin associates with the constructions of whiteness and blackness inhering in religious doctrines and cultural systems. With an eye toward expanding his contemporaries’ views of their constitutive humanity, Baldwin emphasized embodied forms of love, which specifically demanded from whites and blacks unprecedented acts of courage and audacious choices. The discussion comments on Baldwin’s sense of the existential tasks involved in both blacks and whites embracing blackness as a goal towards achieving both national and individual well being.
Hiram Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter presents James Baldwin’s short story, “Going To Meet the Man,” as a rescripting of Freud’s Oedipal scene, introducing the black male as a triangulating figure vis-à-vis the (white) male ...
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This chapter presents James Baldwin’s short story, “Going To Meet the Man,” as a rescripting of Freud’s Oedipal scene, introducing the black male as a triangulating figure vis-à-vis the (white) male child’s identification with each parent. A desire both to possess and be possessed by the black man, to annihilate and be annihilated by him, functions to consolidate white indivisibility across the division of heterosexual and homosexual identifications that resolves the Oedipal. The chapter extends Baldwin’s reading of this race secret to the torture that occurred at the Abu Ghraib military prison in order to better understand not only the racialized and sexual nature of the violence but also to determine what about it was symptomatically American. This casting of the American race secret onto the globe recruits a gay cosmopolitan archive, especially in its imagination of the exotic, or “brown” (in this case, Arab, Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, Muslim, “Oriental”).Less
This chapter presents James Baldwin’s short story, “Going To Meet the Man,” as a rescripting of Freud’s Oedipal scene, introducing the black male as a triangulating figure vis-à-vis the (white) male child’s identification with each parent. A desire both to possess and be possessed by the black man, to annihilate and be annihilated by him, functions to consolidate white indivisibility across the division of heterosexual and homosexual identifications that resolves the Oedipal. The chapter extends Baldwin’s reading of this race secret to the torture that occurred at the Abu Ghraib military prison in order to better understand not only the racialized and sexual nature of the violence but also to determine what about it was symptomatically American. This casting of the American race secret onto the globe recruits a gay cosmopolitan archive, especially in its imagination of the exotic, or “brown” (in this case, Arab, Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, Muslim, “Oriental”).
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226554235
- eISBN:
- 9780226554259
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226554259.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter investigates the contingencies among American masculinity, American citizenship, and African American identity. It argues that James Baldwin's essays, like “The Fight,” punched out ...
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This chapter investigates the contingencies among American masculinity, American citizenship, and African American identity. It argues that James Baldwin's essays, like “The Fight,” punched out creative cultural space for his fictional characters to fill in with improvised narratives about manhood, democracy, and African American identity. “The Fight” presents Baldwin at a philosophical crossroads: he was completely invested in the fight for Negro political equality. His essays accentuate a striking style of black intellectual practice: the black intellectual as prizefighter. The improvised expression of suffering, community, and freedom inspires Baldwin's closing. By 1965 the rise in popularity of black nationalism, the aggressive, militant, and politically necessary ideas of Black Power and Black Art, crowded Baldwin out of his position as the primary independent public intellectual voice of the civil rights movement.Less
This chapter investigates the contingencies among American masculinity, American citizenship, and African American identity. It argues that James Baldwin's essays, like “The Fight,” punched out creative cultural space for his fictional characters to fill in with improvised narratives about manhood, democracy, and African American identity. “The Fight” presents Baldwin at a philosophical crossroads: he was completely invested in the fight for Negro political equality. His essays accentuate a striking style of black intellectual practice: the black intellectual as prizefighter. The improvised expression of suffering, community, and freedom inspires Baldwin's closing. By 1965 the rise in popularity of black nationalism, the aggressive, militant, and politically necessary ideas of Black Power and Black Art, crowded Baldwin out of his position as the primary independent public intellectual voice of the civil rights movement.
Cheryl A. Wall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646909
- eISBN:
- 9781469646923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646909.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter analyzes the work of one of the most influential essayists, James Baldwin. It is argued that Baldwin’s essays engage with what it means to be an American. It argues moreover that Baldwin ...
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This chapter analyzes the work of one of the most influential essayists, James Baldwin. It is argued that Baldwin’s essays engage with what it means to be an American. It argues moreover that Baldwin employs the form of the essay to provide crucial insights into the relationships among citizenship, race, the nation, and identity. At the beginning of his career, Baldwin deploys what the author deems “strategic American exceptionalism”. That is, he adopted the language of American exceptionalism to advance the political interests of African Americans. While this rhetorical strategy is deployed partially to be make his views comprehensible to the larger public, it also illuminated his belief in American democratic ideals. This chapter charts Baldwin’s engagement with national and democratic discourse to provide a political indictment of the failure of the U.S. to enact these principles as it engaged black Americans. This chapter charts Baldwin’s complex and ambivalent relationship to the nation and democracy.Less
This chapter analyzes the work of one of the most influential essayists, James Baldwin. It is argued that Baldwin’s essays engage with what it means to be an American. It argues moreover that Baldwin employs the form of the essay to provide crucial insights into the relationships among citizenship, race, the nation, and identity. At the beginning of his career, Baldwin deploys what the author deems “strategic American exceptionalism”. That is, he adopted the language of American exceptionalism to advance the political interests of African Americans. While this rhetorical strategy is deployed partially to be make his views comprehensible to the larger public, it also illuminated his belief in American democratic ideals. This chapter charts Baldwin’s engagement with national and democratic discourse to provide a political indictment of the failure of the U.S. to enact these principles as it engaged black Americans. This chapter charts Baldwin’s complex and ambivalent relationship to the nation and democracy.
Susan J. McWilliams (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813169910
- eISBN:
- 9780813174761
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813169910.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
In this text, a group of prominent scholars assesses James Baldwin’s relevance to present-day political challenges. Together, they address Baldwin as a democratic theorist, activist, and citizen, ...
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In this text, a group of prominent scholars assesses James Baldwin’s relevance to present-day political challenges. Together, they address Baldwin as a democratic theorist, activist, and citizen, examining his writings on the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women’s rights. They investigate the ways in which his work speaks to and galvanizes a collective American polity, and explore his views on the political implications of individual experience in relation to race and gender. This volume not only considers Baldwin’s works within their own historical context, but also applies the author’s insights to recent events such as the Obama presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement, emphasizing his faith in the connections between the past and present. These incisive essays will encourage a new reading of Baldwin that celebrates his significant contributions to political and democratic theory.Less
In this text, a group of prominent scholars assesses James Baldwin’s relevance to present-day political challenges. Together, they address Baldwin as a democratic theorist, activist, and citizen, examining his writings on the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women’s rights. They investigate the ways in which his work speaks to and galvanizes a collective American polity, and explore his views on the political implications of individual experience in relation to race and gender. This volume not only considers Baldwin’s works within their own historical context, but also applies the author’s insights to recent events such as the Obama presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement, emphasizing his faith in the connections between the past and present. These incisive essays will encourage a new reading of Baldwin that celebrates his significant contributions to political and democratic theory.
Michaela Bronstein
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190655396
- eISBN:
- 9780190655426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190655396.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, World Literature
What is the appeal and use of a charismatic character? Henry James’s attempt to preserve an ideal of vivid character associated with older genres like romance becomes part of James Baldwin’s set of ...
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What is the appeal and use of a charismatic character? Henry James’s attempt to preserve an ideal of vivid character associated with older genres like romance becomes part of James Baldwin’s set of rhetorical tools for demanding recognition of gay and black humanity. James shows the contagion of personality among characters not to reject a Victorian style of defined characterization, but as material for his protagonists’ decisive acts of self-definition. When Baldwin rejects the protest novel for failing to recognize the agency of individuals in resisting the roles society casts them in, it is through a Jamesian ideal of identity constructed out of, but not trapped within, one’s social context. The charismatically individual character provides a template for resisting the influence of social convention.Less
What is the appeal and use of a charismatic character? Henry James’s attempt to preserve an ideal of vivid character associated with older genres like romance becomes part of James Baldwin’s set of rhetorical tools for demanding recognition of gay and black humanity. James shows the contagion of personality among characters not to reject a Victorian style of defined characterization, but as material for his protagonists’ decisive acts of self-definition. When Baldwin rejects the protest novel for failing to recognize the agency of individuals in resisting the roles society casts them in, it is through a Jamesian ideal of identity constructed out of, but not trapped within, one’s social context. The charismatically individual character provides a template for resisting the influence of social convention.
Kevin J. Mumford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626840
- eISBN:
- 9781469628073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626840.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
At the height of the civil rights movement, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Bayard Rustin each spoke out for social justice, and yet their sexual lives deviated from the expectations of ...
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At the height of the civil rights movement, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Bayard Rustin each spoke out for social justice, and yet their sexual lives deviated from the expectations of respectable leadership. Baldwin and Hansberry worked for racial justice, but also suffered privately and faced public criticism. Rustin organized the March on Washington, only to find himself side-lined from the movement due to the continual exposure of his past arrest for homosexual conduct.Less
At the height of the civil rights movement, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Bayard Rustin each spoke out for social justice, and yet their sexual lives deviated from the expectations of respectable leadership. Baldwin and Hansberry worked for racial justice, but also suffered privately and faced public criticism. Rustin organized the March on Washington, only to find himself side-lined from the movement due to the continual exposure of his past arrest for homosexual conduct.
Bill Schwarz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199296910
- eISBN:
- 9780191730887
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296910.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This is largely a theoretical chapter which reviews the debates about both racial identity – the question of racial whiteness – and about the role of memory in the making of racial identities. It ...
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This is largely a theoretical chapter which reviews the debates about both racial identity – the question of racial whiteness – and about the role of memory in the making of racial identities. It reviews the literature on the connections between memory and history. It also develops a new argument about the properties of racial whiteness, addressing the idea of ‘the abolition of whiteness’.Less
This is largely a theoretical chapter which reviews the debates about both racial identity – the question of racial whiteness – and about the role of memory in the making of racial identities. It reviews the literature on the connections between memory and history. It also develops a new argument about the properties of racial whiteness, addressing the idea of ‘the abolition of whiteness’.
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281886
- eISBN:
- 9780823286003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281886.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
James Baldwin worked out what decolonial love might mean from the experience of living within the center of the modern world-system as a result of colonialism in the Atlantic world. Within an ...
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James Baldwin worked out what decolonial love might mean from the experience of living within the center of the modern world-system as a result of colonialism in the Atlantic world. Within an orientation of decolonial love, Baldwin connects the categories of salvation and revelation. The task of revealing the reality that exists underneath the way Western modernity configures reality is itself an actualization of salvation. While Baldwin doesn’t use terms such as revelation and salvation in ways that are tied to religious discourse in the sense of being controlled by doctrines, creedal statements, or dogmatic theology, they do have religious—and this chapter argues theological—significance. Connecting Baldwin’s terms to a theological perspective demonstrates a connection between decolonial love and theology, and opens up decolonial love as a theologically pedagogic site.Less
James Baldwin worked out what decolonial love might mean from the experience of living within the center of the modern world-system as a result of colonialism in the Atlantic world. Within an orientation of decolonial love, Baldwin connects the categories of salvation and revelation. The task of revealing the reality that exists underneath the way Western modernity configures reality is itself an actualization of salvation. While Baldwin doesn’t use terms such as revelation and salvation in ways that are tied to religious discourse in the sense of being controlled by doctrines, creedal statements, or dogmatic theology, they do have religious—and this chapter argues theological—significance. Connecting Baldwin’s terms to a theological perspective demonstrates a connection between decolonial love and theology, and opens up decolonial love as a theologically pedagogic site.
Ronda C. Henry Anthony
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037344
- eISBN:
- 9781621039259
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037344.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Using the slave narratives of Henry Bibb and Frederick Douglass, as well as the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, and Barack Obama, this book examines how women’s bodies are ...
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Using the slave narratives of Henry Bibb and Frederick Douglass, as well as the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, and Barack Obama, this book examines how women’s bodies are used in African American literature to fund the production of black masculine ideality and power. In tracing representations of ideal black masculinities and femininities, it shows how black men’s struggles for gendered agency are inextricably entwined with their complicated relation to white men and normative masculinity. The historical context in which this study couches these struggles highlights the extent to which shifting socioeconomic circumstances dictate the ideological, cultural, and emotional terms upon which black men conceptualize identity. Yet, the book quickly moves to texts that challenge traditional constructions of black masculinity. It traces how the emergence of collaboratively gendered discourses, or a blending of black female/male feminist consciousnesses, are reshaping black masculinities, femininities, and intraracial relations for a new century.Less
Using the slave narratives of Henry Bibb and Frederick Douglass, as well as the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, and Barack Obama, this book examines how women’s bodies are used in African American literature to fund the production of black masculine ideality and power. In tracing representations of ideal black masculinities and femininities, it shows how black men’s struggles for gendered agency are inextricably entwined with their complicated relation to white men and normative masculinity. The historical context in which this study couches these struggles highlights the extent to which shifting socioeconomic circumstances dictate the ideological, cultural, and emotional terms upon which black men conceptualize identity. Yet, the book quickly moves to texts that challenge traditional constructions of black masculinity. It traces how the emergence of collaboratively gendered discourses, or a blending of black female/male feminist consciousnesses, are reshaping black masculinities, femininities, and intraracial relations for a new century.
Joseph Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041747
- eISBN:
- 9780252050411
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041747.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines Baldwin’s unpublished play, The Welcome Table, within the context of the AIDS epidemic. While it is only mentioned explicitly in a few early passages, the AIDS crisis serves as ...
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This chapter examines Baldwin’s unpublished play, The Welcome Table, within the context of the AIDS epidemic. While it is only mentioned explicitly in a few early passages, the AIDS crisis serves as a significant backdrop to the events that follow. AIDS, that is, is not merely a trivial, passing reference in the text; it plays an important role as subtext and context. Since The Welcome Table remains unpublished and largely unavailable to the general public, the chapter also attempts to showcase a relatively unknown but significant work from Baldwin’s final decade.Less
This chapter examines Baldwin’s unpublished play, The Welcome Table, within the context of the AIDS epidemic. While it is only mentioned explicitly in a few early passages, the AIDS crisis serves as a significant backdrop to the events that follow. AIDS, that is, is not merely a trivial, passing reference in the text; it plays an important role as subtext and context. Since The Welcome Table remains unpublished and largely unavailable to the general public, the chapter also attempts to showcase a relatively unknown but significant work from Baldwin’s final decade.
Joseph Vogel
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041747
- eISBN:
- 9780252050411
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041747.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Few literary figures are as commonly referenced in contemporary culture as James Baldwin. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the election of Donald Trump, and daily debates about walls, ...
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Few literary figures are as commonly referenced in contemporary culture as James Baldwin. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the election of Donald Trump, and daily debates about walls, borders, and bans, Baldwin’s righteous indignation and prophetic warnings speak to the urgent mood of the present. His words appear on signs at rallies, in speeches, and on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook; he has been the subject of countless features in major magazines, as well as the inspiration for a new academic journal (the James Baldwin Review) and an Oscar-nominated documentary (I Am Not Your Negro). This Baldwin renaissance, however, follows decades of dismissals and neglect, particularly of his late career. James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era zeroes in on his final decade, revealing a still-razor-sharp, provocative writer who, with the benefit of hindsight, holds up as one of the most prescient observers of the post-civil rights landscape. Indeed, contrary to the conventional narrative of his decline, Baldwin’s work in the 1980s proves remarkably engaged with the cultural milieu of a new generation, commenting on everything from the culture wars to the deterioration of inner cities, from the Reagan Revolution to the religious Right, from gender-bending in pop culture to the AIDS crisis. A groundbreaking new assessment of Baldwin in the context of the media-saturated Reagan era, James Baldwin and the 1980s offers the first in-depth study of the author’s final decade -- and shows why his work from this period is so relevant to the world we live in today.Less
Few literary figures are as commonly referenced in contemporary culture as James Baldwin. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the election of Donald Trump, and daily debates about walls, borders, and bans, Baldwin’s righteous indignation and prophetic warnings speak to the urgent mood of the present. His words appear on signs at rallies, in speeches, and on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook; he has been the subject of countless features in major magazines, as well as the inspiration for a new academic journal (the James Baldwin Review) and an Oscar-nominated documentary (I Am Not Your Negro). This Baldwin renaissance, however, follows decades of dismissals and neglect, particularly of his late career. James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era zeroes in on his final decade, revealing a still-razor-sharp, provocative writer who, with the benefit of hindsight, holds up as one of the most prescient observers of the post-civil rights landscape. Indeed, contrary to the conventional narrative of his decline, Baldwin’s work in the 1980s proves remarkably engaged with the cultural milieu of a new generation, commenting on everything from the culture wars to the deterioration of inner cities, from the Reagan Revolution to the religious Right, from gender-bending in pop culture to the AIDS crisis. A groundbreaking new assessment of Baldwin in the context of the media-saturated Reagan era, James Baldwin and the 1980s offers the first in-depth study of the author’s final decade -- and shows why his work from this period is so relevant to the world we live in today.
Marta Figlerowicz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501714221
- eISBN:
- 9781501714245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501714221.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
“Bedroom” describes representations of supposed cognitive autonomy, through self-seclusion, in the novels of Marcel Proust and James Baldwin. The protagonists of Proust’s and Baldwin’s novels retreat ...
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“Bedroom” describes representations of supposed cognitive autonomy, through self-seclusion, in the novels of Marcel Proust and James Baldwin. The protagonists of Proust’s and Baldwin’s novels retreat from forms of uncertain dependence such as the ones explored by Woolf and Fitzgerald into ever smaller and secluded physical spaces. Only in such spaces does their sense of themselves seem autonomous and complete. Both novelists affirm the value of the insights their characters gain in such constrained settings; yet they also highlight the difficulty with which such insights can be brought back into a larger, more dispersed social sphere. Sianne Ngai’s notion of ‘minor affects’ provides this chapter with a model for the paradoxical sense of completeness and untranslatability to which these represented forms of affective introspection give rise.Less
“Bedroom” describes representations of supposed cognitive autonomy, through self-seclusion, in the novels of Marcel Proust and James Baldwin. The protagonists of Proust’s and Baldwin’s novels retreat from forms of uncertain dependence such as the ones explored by Woolf and Fitzgerald into ever smaller and secluded physical spaces. Only in such spaces does their sense of themselves seem autonomous and complete. Both novelists affirm the value of the insights their characters gain in such constrained settings; yet they also highlight the difficulty with which such insights can be brought back into a larger, more dispersed social sphere. Sianne Ngai’s notion of ‘minor affects’ provides this chapter with a model for the paradoxical sense of completeness and untranslatability to which these represented forms of affective introspection give rise.
Vincent W. Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823277636
- eISBN:
- 9780823280575
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823277636.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The black American writer James Baldwin famously broke with his youthful formation as a preacher, transferring his creative energies from the pulpit to the pen. The chapter argues that Baldwin’s ...
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The black American writer James Baldwin famously broke with his youthful formation as a preacher, transferring his creative energies from the pulpit to the pen. The chapter argues that Baldwin’s literary endeavors can be read as black theological reflection—not in the sense that they employ theological images and tropes but in the deeper sense that they engage with theological ideas. Specifically, the chapter argues that Baldwin puts forward a black negative theology: He argues that black theology goes wrong when it tries to make positive claims about God, it goes right when it reflects on God’s continuing influence despite our inability to name God accurately. In other words, Baldwin presents a way of doing black theology in a context of secularism, where religion is managed or excluded. The chapter further argues, however, that Baldwin himself falls prey to the dangers of secularism when he prescribes love to solve the theological problem he diagnoses without sufficient attention to judgment.Less
The black American writer James Baldwin famously broke with his youthful formation as a preacher, transferring his creative energies from the pulpit to the pen. The chapter argues that Baldwin’s literary endeavors can be read as black theological reflection—not in the sense that they employ theological images and tropes but in the deeper sense that they engage with theological ideas. Specifically, the chapter argues that Baldwin puts forward a black negative theology: He argues that black theology goes wrong when it tries to make positive claims about God, it goes right when it reflects on God’s continuing influence despite our inability to name God accurately. In other words, Baldwin presents a way of doing black theology in a context of secularism, where religion is managed or excluded. The chapter further argues, however, that Baldwin himself falls prey to the dangers of secularism when he prescribes love to solve the theological problem he diagnoses without sufficient attention to judgment.
