Bois's Work Research Articles

Appealing to the World: Du Bois and the Transnational Politics of Petition

As a mode of radical, anti-colonial politics, the petition and related genre of the appeal would seem to hold little promise. This paper uncovers the radical and transnational politics of petitioning in W. E. B. Du Bois's work with and against the United Nations in the 1940s. Examining a range of petitions beyond the more widely examined Appeal to the World (1947), this article argues that Du Bois subverts the familiar genre conventions of the petition and appeal. The effect is not an appeal to a higher political authority to correct domestic injustices but to contest the shape of the international order itself by highlighting the transnational connection between colonial domination and racial exclusion within the domestic jurisdiction of imperial nation-states and the racial hierarchies of the international order. Instead of leaving the authority of the international order defined by the primacy of the sovereign state system intact, Du Bois contests this authority by exposing how racial hierarchy and colonial rule cut against enshrined divisions between internal state sovereignty and international law. The essay closes by exploring how other anti-colonial figures in the twentieth century such as B. R. Ambedkar and Malcolm X similarly turned to the transnational politics of appeal.

W. E. B. Du Bois as Interactionist: Reflections on the Canonical Incorporation of a Marginalized Scholar

Recent scholarship explores the relevance and canonical status of W. E. B. Du Bois in sociological theory; yet less is said about his contributions to symbolic interactionism. This paper interrogates the emerging meaning of W. E. B. Du Bois for sociology, and the nature of his canonical incorporation. We explore the less “official” dimensions of Du Boisian theory, and in particular two of his contributions to symbolic interactionism: double consciousness and autoethnography. In the last part of the paper, we suggest that Du Bois's incorporation into the sociological canon can be viewed as a process of “centering,” and argue that this form of sponsoring of Du Bois's work can elevate some interpretations of Du Bois to the detriment of others.

W. E. B. Du Bois and the EVOLUTION OF ‘RACE’

AbstractThis essay situates the major works of W.E.B. Du Bois and some of his minor work between the 1880s and 1940 in the historical context of black people's writing about race since the eighteenth century. In offering examples of the evolution of black thinking and writing on this topic, it views Du Bois's work in the context of Moral and Ethical Philosophy (rather than the more obvious History, Sociology, and Political Economics) in order to reveal his efforts as a disruption, deliberately designed to shift the discussions of race and race relations from defense to offense, which he did most explicitly and profoundly in Dusk of Dawn (1940) but had been doing much more subtly throughout his scholarly career.

SOCIOLOGIA CRÍTICA E (PROTO) INTERSECCIONAL DE DU BOIS: CONTRIBUIÇÕES AOS DEBATES CONTEMPORÂNEOS SOBRE GÊNERO, INTERSECCIONALIDADE, MARXISMO E TEORIA CRÍTICA DA “RAÇA”

In this article, I analyse how Du Bois’ critical and (proto)intersectional sociological analysis, which demonstrates connections between, and is simultaneously critical of, racism, sexism, capitalism and colonialism, not only preceded, but also continues to influence, discussions on gender, race and class in contemporary debates of sociology of gender, black and intersectional feminism, as well as Marxism and critical race theory. By doing that, I will demonstrate how Du Bois's work has offered important contributions to the sociological knowledge, helping us to understand (and to criticize) racism, sexism and capitalism as (interconnected) systems of exploitation, marginalization and violence. I will do so by reading direct excerpts from Du Bois’ work, mainly from publications that have not yet been translated into Portuguese.

Navigation

Navigation Sara K. Day Late in 2018, FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology, Published Digitally released its first issue of young adult short stories. Each month since, three new stories by established and emerging voices in the field have been published online, making work by authors such as Dhonielle Clayton, Malinda Lo, and S. K. Ali available to readers and highlighting the breadth and power of young adult literature with the specific objective of "contribut[ing] to the changing landscape of young adult publishing to become more inclusive and diverse" ("About"). Edited by Emily X. R. Pan and Nova Ren Suma, FORESHADOW's literature and mission are beautiful, compelling, and inspiring, and I am excited to continue reading along with each new issue. A recent story by Mayra Cuevas particularly caught my attention with its timely representation of a young woman navigating a life very unlike the one that she had planned. In "Resilient," Puerto Rican protagonist Marisol ruminates on what she lost when Hurricane María swept across her island home. She had been accepted for a college degree in Latin American studies, but first, she says, "I was saving to pay for my dream trip through Latin America, with a teen tour company that follows the route Ché Guevara took in his Diarios de Motocicleta. According to the description on the website, it would be a time of awakening, of leaving my mark on the world and allowing it to leave its mark on me." Instead, when Puerto Rico remains dark months after María, Marisol finds herself on a very different journey, traveling to South Dakota to work in a turkey processing plant. Although her cousin Rosita tells her that it's "an adventure," she struggles to adapt to the chilly climate and the seeming hopelessness of her situation. It is only when Marisol calls on the memory of the palmeras that bent in the hurricane winds but refused to break that she begins to see how she can make her way in this new, uncertain future. Like Marisol, the characters discussed in this issue's four articles represent the theme of navigation as they literally or figuratively work to determine where they are going and how they should get there. In turn, their journeys pose challenges for readers to navigate, from confronting the historical and ongoing consequences of colonialism and the Jewish Holocaust to interrogating [End Page 247] the ways in which contemporary Western culture defines and limits our expectations regarding gender. Jocelyn van Tuyl's "What Goes Up Must Come Down: The Twenty-One Balloons and the Politics of Lighter-Than-Air Fantasy" reconsiders William Péne du Bois's 1947 novel with a particular eye to the ways in which the novel actively obscures the goals and effects of colonialism. The article puts Péne du Bois's work in conversation with other "empty island" stories in order to consider how it functions as part of a larger effort in US children's literature to privilege settler narratives that ignore or erase indigenous, enslaved, and oppressed peoples. Roni Sarig likewise looks to the past in "Under Empty Skies: The Absence of God and Parental Replacement in Israeli Children's Literature on the Jewish Holocaust," examining the ways in which late twentieth-century texts for young readers answer the question "Where was God during the Holocaust?" Focusing on a picture book and two short stories for young people written by Holocaust survivors, Sarig investigates how these texts position fathers and mothers as replacing a seemingly absent God during the atrocities. The second half of the issue turns to more recent young adult literature with a particular interest in the challenges of navigating contemporary Western cultural constructs of femininity. Wendy J. Glenn and Danielle King-Watson's "Being an Athlete or Being a Girl: Selective Identities among Fictional Female Athletes Who Play with the Boys" considers a number of recent works that portray young women struggling with the question of identity as they pursue athletic success in sports that have usually been limited to men. Noting the persistent, insistent binary constructions that define femininity in opposition to rather than inclusive of athleticism, Glenn and King-Watson particularly...

Speaking Truth to Power: Du Bois as Educator and Community Activist

This article uses W. E. B. Du Bois's work as an education and community activist to discuss race, oppression, and speaking-back to power in this time of racialized policies enacted by the Trump administration. This article centers a comparative discussion of the racialization of democracy by presidents Wilson and Trump to show the ways Du Bois was responding to similar political issues and how his work can be used to speak to the current political moment.

Historical multitasking

ABSTRACTA brilliant contribution to the field of the history of sociology, Aldon Morris's The Scholar Denied accomplishes four major tasks at once. First, it recovers the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois, convincingly demonstrating Du Bois's pioneering contributions both to the development of empirically based sociological research and to overturning ‘scientific racism’ through the formulation of a sociological theory of racial inequality. Second, it embeds Du Bois in his historical context, giving particular attention to the neglected Atlanta School of Sociology (Richard Wright Jr., Monroe Work, and George Haynes). Third, it analyses the reception of Du Bois's work in his own time and subsequently, bringing to light the egregious steps taken by Robert Part to obliterate Du Bois's ideas. Fourth, it furnishes a sociological account of how Du Bois and his colleagues managed to establish their School despite the racist obstacles they faced. Morris constructs this account by introducing a powerful pair of sociological concepts – ‘liberation capital’ and ‘insurgent intellectual network'. In these ways, Morris's meticulously researched book sets a high new standard for scholarship on the history of sociology.

Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity

Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity

<em>Josephs without Pharaohs: The Du Boisian Framework for the Sociology of Education</em>

INTRODUCTIONBlacks are generally disadvantaged at both the macro and micro levels of U.S. society. At the macro level, Blacks have historically suffered from low rates of social mobility. This holds whether mobility is measured as educational attainment (Kao & Thompson, 2003), residential mobility (Massey & Denton, 1993), or wealth accumulation (Oliver & Shapiro, 2006). At the micro level, Black students in U.S. schools are more likely than students from other backgrounds to have negative interactions with peers, teachers, and other school authority figures (Solorzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000). Both levels of inequality contribute to racial disparities in educational experiences and outcomes (Diamond, 2006). How should sociologists of education conceptualize these dual processes?As early as 1898, Du Bois argued that Blacks' micro level educational realities-number and condition of schools, illiteracy rates, and being unwelcome in schools and colleges with Whites - were inseparable from a macro level peculiar environment (Du Bois, 1898). Denials of Black humanity, anti-Black discrimination, fear of large scale Black socioeconomic mobility, and resistance to widespread educational opportunities for Blacks characterized this environment. Paradoxically, it would take education for Blacks to fully recognize the extent of their oppression. Because Du Bois articulated the interplay between education and oppression in this way, his writings and speeches on education reveal an innovative conceptualization of the macro-micro link. His work, therefore, also presents one resolution to the macro-micro issue within the sociology of education (Hammersley, 1984; Mehan, 1992; O'Connor, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007; Shilling, 1992; Willmott, 1999).In this article, the author outlines a Du Boisian framework for the sociology of education. The framework is based on Du Bois's numerous writings and speeches about the education of Black students. Also considered are sections of his major works (e.g., The Souls of Black Folk, 1994) that touch on education. The author uses Du Bois's work as qualitative data from which to generate a grounded theoretical framework (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Doing so demonstrates one way to connect Du Bois's broader educational philosophy to the investigation of specific educational realities facing Black students today. Du Bois is quoted at length whenever possible to enter his own words into the lexicon of the sociology of education, from which he currently remains largely absent.The Du Boisian framework's central problematic is the macro-micro feedback loop between racial inequalities in the U.S. political economy (Marable, 2000) and discriminatory treatment of Black students in schools (see Figure 1). The feedback loop perpetuates multigenerational educational inequality. That is, discriminatory treatment of Black students in schools is made possible by, and reinforces for another generation, racial inequalities in political economy. Du Bois's theoretical points of view on education will be identified as neo-Marxism (Bowles & Gintis, 1972, 2002, 2013) at the macro level and structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) at the micro level. Given the framework's central problematic of the macro-micro feedback loop, it is not surprising that both points of view focus on the bidirectional relationship between individuals and society, or agents and structures.The Du Boisian framework reconceptualizes issues currently facing Black students, who are the focus of much sociological and educational research (see O'Connor, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007). Issues are seen as ways in which political economic inequalities affect another generation of Black youth through or by way of the institution of schooling. This new intuition applies both within and between schools. Individual schools, even racially integrated ones, can be internally organized on the basis of race. Furthermore, the distribution of educational opportunity between schools and neighborhoods in the U. …

Amy Helene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere, editors. Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History.

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races was the monthly journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which began publication in 1910 and continues in print to this day. Its first editor was the renowned academic, intellectual, and activist W. E. B. Du Bois who helped to set the tone of the journal and the NAACP in its formative years. His editorship of The Crisis covered almost a quarter of a century (1910–1934), and this edited collection contends that Du Bois's work in this area has never been given the academic analysis or popular credit that it deserves. Indeed the title of the volume suggests that The Crisis is a milestone in American intellectual thought and cultural activism. While Du Bois has been the subject of biographies (as well as many autobiographies) the authors assert that The Crisis was the apotheosis of Du Boisian thought and activism: blending philosophy, politics, art, poetry, and culture into a sharp attack on American society and racism at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Phillip Luke Sinitiere says, “The Crisis remains a largely unmined archive for studying Du Bois's impressions and opinions about American politics and culture” (p. 190). Indeed this may be due to its attachment to the NAACP which, until recently, had not been focused upon with the historical respect it deserved. In short, it is a period of Du Bois's life that requires more attention and this book, with its ten compelling chapters, does this with great success.

INHERITING DU BOIS

What would it mean to treat W. E. B. Du Bois as a “living political thinker,” Tommie Shelby asks. The formulation of the question indicates one answer: acknowledging Du Bois's twofold legacy for political theory and philosophy. On the one hand, his body of work as a political theorist is rich and provocative enough that it ought to be, as Robert Gooding-Williams (2009) urges, the subject of serious inquiry in its own right. On the other hand, engaging Du Bois as a political theorist enables contemporary scholars to reflect on the political challenges of our own time, even when Du Bois offers answers we would not own for ourselves. Perhaps most crucially, taking Du Bois's work seriously requires a rigorous engagement with the past and an active refutation of declarations of a “postracial” age that belie yawning racial inequalities, the continuing devaluation of non-White lives, and the unredressed injuries—to American citizens, to the polity itself, and to women and men well beyond U.S. borders—of White supremacy. All of the participants in this symposium would, I think, endorse this view in its broadest strokes. But to inherit Du Bois as a political thinker is also to participate in an ongoing and often contentious conversation about race, democracy, and Du Bois himself. Accordingly, my comments will focus on two clusters of issues. The first is raised by Rogers Smith's and Tommie Shelby's vigorous disagreement with the idea of Black reparations that I explore in the second chapter of Democracy's Reconstruction. The second involves a set of unresolved tensions bequeathed by Du Bois and addressed in Gooding-Williams' extraordinary book and Cristina Beltrán's meditations on the Afro-modern political tradition and Latino politics today.

Art as Propaganda: Bringing Du Bois into the Sociology of Art

AbstractWe examine WEB Du Bois's writings about the arts in the NAACP journal The Crisis from 1910–1934 in order to construct a Du Boisian social theory of the arts. The key elements of this theoretical framework are: artists, money, freedom, organization, truth, beauty, and propaganda. The most surprising element is propaganda, which for Du Bois meant that art needs to address racial politics. There is a strong sense in Du Bois's writings that art can and should have socially transformative effects. Comparing Du Bois's work to current theories from the sociology of art, we find that Du Bois emphasizes the role of art in social change, while current work treats art primarily as a tool for social reproduction. We argue for expanding the theoretical toolbox of the sociology of the arts through greater consideration of Du Bois's propaganda concept.

Then and Now: Reading the Texts of Race

Edwards, Brent Hayes. 2003. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. $55.00 hc. $24.95 sc. 397 pp. Kosek, Jake, Donald S. Moore, and Anand Pandian, eds. 2002. Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference. Durham: Duke University Press. $84.95 hc. $24.95 sc.475 pp. Spillers, Hortense J. 2003. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $75.00 hc. $27.50 sc. 552 pp. Though W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 declaration that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line" proved to be prophetically correct, more than prophecy informed this unequivocal statement (1996, 3). Du Bois substantiated his prescient vision of the twentieth century with an [End Page 217] archive of historical investigation and personal reflection that became a theoretical apparatus capable of exposing the reciprocal constructions of race and racisms. Though the publication of The Souls of Black Folk (1903) inaugurated new possibilities for critical questioning, race was still a nineteenth-century certainty, and Du Bois's knowledge of how fundamental race had become to mapping and organizing the world informs this declaration. For his reconfiguration of race as a spatial concept, for his attention to literature's role in the construction and deconstruction of race, for his commitment to the national, international, and global manifestations of racism, and for his suggestion that race should perhaps be defined as "a group of contradictory forces, facts, and tendencies," Du Bois's work is the intellectual predecessor of the texts I review here (1986, 651). Then as now, there is no border race has not crossed, no conceptual or lived space unmarked by its divisions. Together these studies reveal the wide range of approaches contemporary scholarship now harnesses to analyze the discursive monumentality and infinite reproducibility of race. Since it often defines what is natural and irrefutable, science haunts the study of race. Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference charts the growing contributions of science studies to anti-racist projects. In his well-known essay "The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race" (1985) Anthony Appiah delineates Du Bois's struggle with race as a biological entity. While Du Bois argued against scientific notions of race, he continued to rely on it as a site of geographical, cultural, and even physical belonging. What exactly constitutes race is left incomplete, and Appiah argues that Du Bois was "unable to escape" biological definitions (2002, 36). The "Uncompleted Argument" appeared in "Race," Writing, and Difference (1985), a well-known and often cited collection that highlighted the productive intersections between literary theory and critical race studies. While the collection Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference emerges from research in geography, anthropology, and sociology, not philosophical or literary studies, it does engage with the earlier volume's conversations. By analyzing the roles race plays in the construction of nature and the work nature performs in the reproduction of racial differences, the volume argues that "nature" bonds race to old and stubborn assumptions and therefore allows race to unpredictably proliferate into the future. "Working together," the editors argue, "race and nature legitimate particular forms of political representation" (3). In order to expose the political consequences of the race/nature bind, Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference maps a broad and shifting terrain of theory, history, and materiality. Posing the question—How do race and nature "claim authority as foundational truths"?—the editors remark upon both the breadth and specificity of their effects: "[T]hese very ideas traverse vast scales—indeed [End Page 218] participate in the production of those scales—moving fluidly across radically different historical and geographic contexts: from blood to soil, from courtrooms to laboratories, from national parks to toxic neighborhoods" (4). Because of the swift fluidity of race and nature's discursive movements, interdisciplinarity has contributed significantly to analyzing the multiplicity of their...

Global smoothing of Calabi-Yau threefolds

The moduli spaces of Calabi–Yau threefolds are conjectured to be connected by the combination of birational contraction maps and flat deformations. In this context, it is important to calculate dim Def(X) from dim Def(˜X) in terms of certain geometric information of f, when we are given a birational morphism f:˜X→X from a smooth Calabi–Yau threefold ˜X to a singular Calabi–Yau threefold X. A typical case of this problem is a conjecture of Morrison-Seiberg which originally came from physics. In this paper we give a mathematical proof to this conjecture. Moreover, by using output of this conjecture, we prove that certain Calabi–Yau threefolds with nonisolated singularities have flat deformations to smooth Calabi–Yau threefolds. We shall use invariants of singularities closely related to Du Bois's work to calculate dim Def(X) from dim Def(˜X).

W. E. B. Du Bois vs. "the Sons of the Fathers": A Reading of The Souls of Black Folk in the Context of American Nationalism

In his discussion of W. E. B. Du Bois's essay On Alexander twelfth chapter of Souls of Black Folk, Eric Sundquist implicates Du Bois in a patrilineal descent of African American political thought: One of Crummell's early addresses in Monrovia, devoted creation of a generation of leaders of a republican Liberia, had been entitled The Responsibility of First Fathers of a Country for Its Future Life and Character (1863). For Du Bois, Crummell functioned symbolically as such a although one can deduce that his purpose was in fact one of psychological transference in which Crummell became mechanism for Du Bois's own ascendancy position of founding of modern African American thought, thus eliding alternative challengers Douglass and Washington. (Sundquist 517) Du Bois's chapter on Crummell is indeed replete with paternal and filial references, and so is whole collection of essays. Not all of these references, however, fit into Sundquist's pointedly Afrocentric reading of Souls of Black Folk. In ranks of good folk credited with helping out Crummell, for instance, Du Bois includes gently urging John Jay, that father's son (358). daring father in this case is politician John Jay (1745-1829), who, among his other services young American Republic, negotiated, alongside Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, peace treaty between newly independent American Colonies and Britain in 1783 and collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison on Federalist Papers. Du Bois's reference Jay is thus nothing less than an invocation of one of Fathers--the eighteenth-century politicians who still hold their place of repute in mythological pantheon of American nationalism. In defining Du Bois' s project as an attempt ascend the position of founding father, Sundquist places Du Bois within a framework reminiscent of and parallel American nationalist mythos, especially in light of fact that documents created by actual Founding Fathers of American Republic were some of earliest harbingers of discourse of nation-state. This is a curious gesture on Sundquist's part, since his own agenda in tracing musical epigraphs each of chapters in Souls of Black Folk back their African origins is find roots of African American culture outside American context and emphasize Du Bois's Pan-Africanism; that is, break away from circuit of American nationalism. [2] A reading of Souls of Black Folk in terms of its place as a link in chain of American national narrative does not necessarily imply a refutation of Sundquist's Afrocentric reading. In its richness and ambiguity, Du Bois's work obviously spans continents, as did Du Bois himself in his lifetime. Born in Massachusetts, educated at Fisk, Harvard, and University of Berlin in Germany, Du Bois at end of his life became a citizen of Ghana, where he died in 1963. Yet Du Bois did not sympathize with Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement, and at least at time of writing Souls of Black Folk, he advocated acceptance of African Americans by largely inimical American political, legal, and social institutions. His solution problem of double-consciousness was to make it possible for a man be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed or spit upon by his fellows, without having doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face (215). As a citizen of United States working within parameters of American democracy, Du Bois repeatedly took task sons of Founding Fathers for disregarding originary documents of Republic. In doing so, he was involved, as were others before and after him, in paradox of upholding Enlightened universalism of Declaration of Independence and humanist abstraction of United States Constitution--the two documents whose aura of universality was made possible precisely by elision of race, yet which in their claim a democratic universality seem fulfill role of empty signifiers without necessary body, any necessary content that make democracy possible, according Laclau (90). …

Du Bois the Novelist: White Influence, Black Spirit, and The Quest of the Silver Fleece

W hen writing about a canonical figure, one hopes for a measure of interest. And when writing about a novel by a canonical figure, one might almost assume a willing audience. Even further still, when the novel at hand engages with subtlety the issue of race, it would be a surprise not to encounter an abundance of critical work about that text. But though the presence of Du Bois in literary journals no longer requires justification, and though valuable scholarship has recently treated the question of Du Bois and other minds, we pay his novels scant attention, despite our current occupation with racial politics, intellectual influence, and popular narrative form. Perhaps Du Bois the novelist must wait his turn behind Du Bois the philosopher, historian, and editor. Perhaps The Souls of Black Folk (1903) demands the spot allotted to DuBois on syllabi. But what if the truth is altogether less decorous: What if his novels are not very good? Or, in this time of uncertain aesthetics, what if his novels do not speak to our concerns? Du Bois's first novelistic effort, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is largely regarded as a failure. The novel, we are told, suffers generic confusion (Rampersad 127). Its contradictory musings are intellectually lax (Kostelanetz 175). Its politics are finally problematic, though Du Bois's progressive intentions are clear (Byerman 128). This article will argue the contrary: that Du Bois's mediation of romance and realism is skillful and strategic; that The Quest of the Silver Fleece engages and challenges major American texts; that, with careful, even subversive, attention to issues of language and form, Du Bois appropriates novelistic discourse for his own artistic and political ends. In short, The Silver Fleece is immensely interesting, not only because it suggests new ways to read Du Bois's work, but also because it reveals

The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader

The Oxford W.E.B. Bois Reader. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 680 pages. $26.95 paper. quality of reader or anthology can be determined largely by how teachable it makes subject that it documents and how accurately it outlines parameters of that subject, The Oxford W.E.B. Bois Reader, edited by Eric Sundquist, is exemplary. Despite his almost unchallenged prominence as intellectual patriarch of African American cultural and history and his self-conscious desire to write history of African American culture, Bois has always been somewhat difficult figure to integrate into literature and cultural studies courses. Much of this difficulty has stemmed from sheer range of his accomplishments and interests. As Sundquist points out, Du Bois wrote alternately and equally well as sociologist, an economist, political scientist, an educator, an artist, and civil rights advocate, and more often than not, several of these intellectual roles were combined in any given speech or essay. The generic singularity of Bois's two major literary works, The Souls of Black Folk, often considered ur-text of African American modernity, and brilliant and under-appreciated Darkwater, text that Sundquist accurately sees as anticipating as well as instigating modern Pan-Africanism and culture of anticolonialism that has come to play such prominent role in Western (or anti-Western) literature of late twentieth century, has also contributed to under-reading of Bois's work. Both of these texts are included in their entirety in this reader and their juxtaposition makes clear value of reading them in relation to each other, If The Souls of Black Folk became century's most important statement of African American resistance to segregation, Darkwater joined battle for black civil rights in United States to broader campaign against European colonial rule abroad, especially in Africa. Placed under five broad headings (Concepts of Race, Representative Men, Literature and Art, Politics, Economics, and Education, and Africa and Colonialism), other essays that Sundquist has collected provide an exhaustive documentation of Bois's intellectual and ideological development. They effectively cover practically entire range of his non-literary writings. In its entirety reader's representation of Bois's constant engagement with current events and arguments, offers political history of diasporically self-conscious Blackness as experienced by man whose narrated life begins during presidency of Andrew and ends just short of presidency of Lyndon Johnson and whose roles were, among others, those of a historian, sociologist, teacher, cofounder of National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), magazine editor, novelist, governmental envoy, Pan-Africanist, spokesman for socialism, and an opponent of anticommunism. The one significant problem with Sundquist's choice of texts is that critical selections on Literature and Art are scanty and finally unsatisfying. Sundquist may have felt that because the great bulk of Bois's writing ... is devoted to politics, economics, and education and his critical writings on literature are ones most readily available elsewhere, this de-emphasizing of Bois was necessary. …

Parody and Double Consciousness in the Language of Early Black Musical Theatre

The early decades twentieth century were, in many respects, beginning period black aesthetic and intellectual reconstruction. Alain Locke identifies era as sudden flood-tide new life and vitality in African American music, dance, and musical comedy (57). Henry Louis Gates, Jr., maintains during time there emerged the era myth a a in search a Renaissance suitable contain culturally willed myth.(1) The notions new life, vitality, and New Negro in African American are central essay, not least because they underscore efforts by African Americans during first decades century deconstruct minstrel caricature and reconstruct image cultural representation. To counter nineteenth century's negative representation African Americans, notion a in art, literature, and theatre surfaced, suggesting bold and audacious act language, signifying will power, dare recreate a race by renaming it, despite dubiousness venture (Gates, Trope 132). The central and driving force underlying will reconstruct race lay in writings W. E. B. Du Bois. was Du Bois, according August Meier, who was most aware of complexity and sophistication African culture (264).(2) Drama critic Lester Walton recognized significance The Souls Black Folk in his weekly column Music and Stage. Du Bois makes powerful plea, Walton wrote in 1908, that art in nation will not be written until has made his contribution (6).(3) The Souls Black Folk can be shown be especially important, as Paul Gilroy points out, because it sensitized blacks significance vernacular cultures arose mediate enduring effects terror (119-20). Du Bois, Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., observes, located essence a distinctive black spirituality in roots black American culture (207). Du Bois's description double consciousness not only defined an important analysis black American culture, but it characterized African American representation in performing arts. Du Bois wrote: It is a peculiar sensation, double-consciousness, sense always looking at one's through eyes others, measuring one's soul by tape a world looks on in amused contempt and pity (215).(4) This dualism and frustration, Du Bois adds, is history American Negro, and this longing attain self-conscious manhood, merge double into a better and truer self culminates in a desire to make it possible for a man be both a and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having doors Opportunity closed roughly in his face (215). Du Bois's comments specifically apply many black performers at turn century. The black actor or actress had effect a public through what Du Bois called a tertium quid, often performing as a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straitly foreordained walk within (271). The power Veil as a distorting mask is underscored by fact many African American performers, notably Bert Williams, had wear blackface make-up because their real faces failed conform caricature popularized by nineteenth-century white minstrel performers. Will Marion Cook said in 1903 the terrible difficulty composers my race have deal with is refusal American people accept serious things from us. That prejudice will be educated away one day I hope (300). The fact Cook made comment in same year Du Bois published The Souls Black Folk is by no means a coincidence. James Weldon Johnson, an active song writer during early years black musicals, was deeply influenced by Du Bois's work. …

"Race" and Hermeneutics: Paradigm Shift--From Scientific to Hermeneutic Understanding of Race

As concept, is plurisemous. Its referents are not limited to visible morphological markers of difference. Social behavior, psychological profiles, economic activities, aesthetic forms - these are some of many indicators by which racial identities are assigned or withheld, claimed or rejected, celebrated or deprecated. In racialized nation states (the United States, Canada),(1) can be quite hazardous. Participation in or exclusion from various sectors of national life - economy, politics, education, recreation, arts - may depend on racial identity assumed by or even assigned to individuals or groups of individuals. To speak, therefore, of in contexts such as these is not merely to address oneself to an abstract concept. Rather, it is to intervene actively in discursive field that is highly charged by sense not only of past and ongoing grievances but also of present investments. In following pages, I shall examine those investments as they pertain to theories of interpretation. Beginning with premise that is one of communities of existing |out there' in world, and that its effectivity in production and interpretation of culture belongs in the province . . . of hermeneutic I will argue that, as systems of understanding, hermeneutic theories also stand in need of interrogation from point of view of ideology of and practices of racial discrimination (Appiah, 21-37). I will also argue that, contrary to Henry Louis Gates's position, African peoples have several systems of interpretation; that, though each may have certain similarities to others, they are not same; and, finally, that any comparison between these systems and European model must point not only features of similarity or equivalence but also those of contrast, contradiction, and difference. Studies which restrict themselves to pointing similarities between strategies of deconstruction, say, and Yorubaderived New World Signifying overlook ideology of race. Even after we have disposed of melanin, we cannot dispose of ideology. ideology of may or may not, in its operations, rely on biology. But, as experience of our daily lives shows, and as examples from interpretation theories (Mailloux; Gates, Signifying; Gadamer), essays on curricular change in post-independence Kenya (Ngugi) and literary criticism reveal, it does its presence felt. I have derived premise outlined above - i.e., that it is in ideology rather than in biology that we may find meaning of - from Kwame Anthony Appiah's essay The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and Illusion of Race. essay's objective, Appiah writes, is to discuss the way in which . . . Du Bois . . . came gradually, though never completely, to assimilate unbiological nature of races. (22) phrase gradually, though never completely, to assimilate is signpost to conclusion Appiah intends to draw, by end of his essay, from Du Bois's work: that races are unbiological. To arrive at this conclusion, Appiah undertakes systematic and critical explication of Du Bois's thoughts on as recorded in The Conservation of (1897), Races (1911) and Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of Race Concept (1940). evidence, he contends, points to reluctance on Du Bois's part to dispose entirely of belief that is an essence of (34). Du Bois's work was a pretext for adumbrating argument he never quite managed to make (35): truth is that are no races . . . . Talk of race is particularly distressing for those of us who take culture seriously. For, where works . . . it works as an attempt at metonym for culture; and it does so only at price of biologizing what is culture, or ideology. . . . What exists out there in world - communities of meaning, shading variously into each other in rich structure of social world - is province not of biology but of hermeneutic understanding. …