Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars

Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars

Author: Anthony Dawahare

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-09-18

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1628469889

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During and after the Harlem Renaissance, two intellectual forces—nationalism and Marxism—clashed and changed the future of African American writing. Current literary thinking says that writers with nationalist leanings wrote the most relevant fiction, poetry, and prose of the day. Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box challenges that notion. It boldly proposes that such writers as A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright, who often saw the world in terms of class struggle, did more to advance the anti-racist politics of African American letters than writers such as Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey, who remained enmeshed in nationalist and racialist discourse. Evaluating the great impact of Marxism and nationalism on black authors from the Harlem Renaissance and the Depression era, Anthony Dawahare argues that the spread of nationalist ideologies and movements between the world wars did guide legitimate political desires of black writers for a world without racism. But the nationalist channels of political and cultural resistance did not address the capitalist foundation of modern racial discrimination. During the period known as the “Red Decade” (1929–1941), black writers developed some of the sharpest critiques of the capitalist world and thus anticipated contemporary scholarship on the intellectual and political hazards of nationalism for the working class. As it examines the progression of the Great Depression, the book focuses on the shift of black writers to the Communist Left, including analyses of the Communists' position on the “Negro Question,” the radical poetry of Langston Hughes, and the writings of Richard Wright.


Devil on the Cross: Ngugi's Marxist Invitation

Devil on the Cross: Ngugi's Marxist Invitation

Author: Bonaventure Muzigirwa

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 14

ISBN-13: 3656281947

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Scientific Study from the year 2010 in the subject Literature - Africa, , course: African Literature, language: English, abstract: This paper is a Marxist approach to Ngugi-Wa-Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross It seeks to show how Ngugi is committed to the struggle against Neo-colonialism and imperialism. It presents Ngugi’s Devil on the Cross as an invitation for the prole tariat and the oppressed people to act Key words: Commitment, Marxism, Socialist realism


Marxist Theory, Black/African Specificities, and Racism

Marxist Theory, Black/African Specificities, and Racism

Author: Babacar Camara

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2008-05-16

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0739165712

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book deals with substantive issues that have the potential to enhance our understanding regarding how Marxist theory can be quite useful in interpreting Black specificities and the race paradigm. So far, Marxist theory has been excluded because it is supposedly class and economy reductionist, but the essence of this theory-dialectic-not only proves that it is a meaningful way of seeing racism for what it truly is, but also a way of filtering through the plethora of interpretations of what constitutes race. The timeliness of the approach should help revive discussion on ethnophilosophy as an ideology. So much academic consideration has led scholars to seriously underestimate ideology's extraordinary efficiency in blending into lived experience to the point where much of its most telling effects have become undetectable. This work suggests that critical theory must reorient itself and offers an important discussion on the dominant discourse of poststructuralism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, Marxism, African socialism, NZgritude, and Afrocentricity. The book's approach sheds a radical light on the claim for Black specificities and racism. It shows that racial and ethnological discourses are ideological and political mystifications, masking exploitation. Under such circumstances, racial and racist ideologies become cards to be played by the perpetrators or the victims, as the case studies of Haiti and South Africa illustrate. As can be seen, then, the intelligibility of racism and its various forms can only stem from an analysis of the social structures upon which they rest. Just to show how inextricably linked ideology, race, racism, political expansion, and economic domination are, the book looks at Africa and its Diaspora, revealing how Africans remain the scapegoat for racial 'othering' in the global economy's ideological praxis. In so doing, the book is also able to include African intellectuals' perspectives that have often been omitted from the dialogue on critical theory, race, racism, and Black specificities.


Decolonial Marxism

Decolonial Marxism

Author: Walter Rodney

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2022-08-02

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1839764139

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and on the African continent. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism; in his efforts to build mass organizations, catalyze rebellious ferment, and theorize an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation, he can be counted among its prime authors. Decolonial Marxism records such a life by collecting previously unbound essays written during the world-turning days of Black revolution. In drawing together pages where he elaborates on the nexus of race and class, offers his reflections on radical pedagogy, outlines programs for newly independent nation-states, considers the challenges of anti-colonial historiography, and produces balance sheets for a dozen wars for national liberation, this volume captures something of the range and power of Rodney's output. But it also demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.


The Theory of African Literature

The Theory of African Literature

Author: Chidi Amuta

Publisher:

Published:

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 9781350223622

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ideological formations in the criticism of African literature -- Traditionalism and the quest for an African literary aesthetic -- Marxism and African literature -- A dialectical theory of African literature: categories and springboards -- Issues and problems in African literature: A dialectical revision -- History and the dialectics of narrative in the African novel -- Drama and revolution in Africa -- Poetry and liberation politics in Africa -- Beyond decolonization.


Theory of African Literature

Theory of African Literature

Author: Chidi Amuta

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-06-15

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1786990040

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This groundbreaking work, first published in 1989, was one of the first to challenge the conventional critical assessment of African literature, and remains highly influential today. Amuta's key argument is that African literature can be discussed only within the wider framework of the dismantling of colonial rule and Western hegemony in Africa. In exploring the possibility of a dialectical, alternative critical base, he draws upon both classical Marxist aesthetics and the theories of African culture espoused by Fanon, Cabral and Ngugi. From these explorations, Amuta derives a new language of criticism, which is then applied to works by modern African writers as diverse as Achebe, Ousmane, Agostinho Neto and Dennis Brutus. Amuta's highly original and innovative approach remains relevant not only for assessing the literature of developing countries, but for Marxist and postcolonial theories of literary criticism more generally. The author's elegance of argument and clarity of exposition makes this a distinguished and lasting contribution to debates around cultural expression in postcolonial Africa.


Marxist Literary Criticism Today

Marxist Literary Criticism Today

Author: Barbara C. Foley

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745338842

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the first introduction to Marxist literary criticism in decades, Barbara Foley argues that Marxism continues to offer the best framework for exploring the relationship between literature and society. She lays out in clear terms the principal aspects of Marxist methodology--historical materialism, political economy, and ideology critique--as well as key debates about the nature of literature and the goals of literary criticism and pedagogy. Examining a wide range of texts through the empowering lens of Marxism--from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey, from Frederick Douglass's 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' to Annie Proulx's 'Brokeback Mountain'--Foley provides a clear and compelling textbook of Marxist literary criticism.


The Growth of African Literature

The Growth of African Literature

Author: Edris Makward

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780865436596

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of papers results from the 15th annual meeting of the African Literature Association which was held in Dakar, Senegal, and was the first such meeting to be held in Africa. Topics covered include approaches and literary theory, language and history, thematic analysis, and literature in the African Diaspora.