C.L.R. James

by Nielsen, Aldon Lynn

• ISBN13: 9780878059737
• ISBN10: 0878059733
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-06-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi

Summary

C. L .R. James, the Trinidad-born novelist, critic, historian, philosopher, and revolutionary political activist, has proved to be as controversial in death as he was in life. Throughout his career, James was committed to a belief in the transformative powers of language, and he worked tirelessly as a writer and a speaker for the causes of black liberation and proletarian revolution. Even James's opponents within the radical movements thought of him, in the words of James P. Canon, as the "lyrical historian of our movement." Though orthodox Trotskyites were wrong when they declared that James's political organization "started and finished as a purely literary tendency," there can be no doubt that James and the colleagues he drew into the movement understood and valued the revolutionary potential of the written word. InC. L. R. James: A Critical Introductiona literary critic undertakes for the first time a sustained analysis of James's major published works, placing them in the context of James's less well-known writings as an activist and journalist. Nielsen, who was once a student in James's courses in American universities, offers an encompassing critique of one of the African diaspora's most significant thinkers and writers. Here the author ofBlack Jacobins, World Revolution, A History of Pan-African Revolt, Notes on Dialectics, Beyond a Boundary,and the lyric novelMinty Alleyis seen not only as among the great political philosophers but also as the literary artist that he remained, from his first writings in Trinidad through his underground years in America, to his final essays and speeches in London. The writings of James have inspired revolutionaries on three continents, have altered the course of historiography, have shown the way toward independent black political struggles, and have established the basis for much of today's cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Black Critic as Prisoner and Artist
Spheres of Existence: What Maisie Knew	p. 3
Discovering Literature in Trinidad	p. 3
Minty Alley	p. 17
Preface to Criticism	p. 35
At the Rendezvous of Victory	p. 51
The Philosophy of History and Necessity	p. 51
Histories of Pan-African Revolt	p. 61
World Revolution	p. 87
The Future in the Present	p. 101
Notes on Dialectics	p. 101
Dialectics and the Fate of Humanity	p. 123
The Struggle for Happiness	p. 143
Popular Arts and Modern Society	p. 143
The Art and Practic Part	p. 169
Works Cited	p. 189
Index	p. 195
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