Amiri Baraka : : The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual / / Jerry Watts.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Watts, Jerry,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2001]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2001
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, became known as one of the most militant, anti-white black nationalists of the 1960s Black Power movement. An advocate of Black Cultural Nationalism, Baraka supported the rejection of all things white and western. He helped found and direct the influential Black Arts movement which sought to move black writers away from western aesthetic sensibilities and toward a more complete embrace of the black world. Except perhaps for James Baldwin, no single figure has had more of an impact on black intellectual and artistic life during the last forty years. In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, the first to interweave Baraka's art and political activities, Jerry Watts takes us from his early immersion in the New York scene through the most dynamic period in the life and work of this controversial figure. Watts situates Baraka within the various worlds through which he travelled including Beat Bohemia, Marxist-Leninism, and Black Nationalism. In the process, he convincingly demonstrates how the 25 years between Baraka's emergence in 1960 and his continued influence in the mid-1980s can also be read as a general commentary on the condition of black intellectuals during the same time. Continually using Baraka as the focal point for a broader analysis, Watts illustrates the link between Baraka's life and the lives of other black writers trying to realize their artistic ambitions, and contrasts him with other key political intellectuals of the time. In a chapter sure to prove controversial, Watts links Baraka's famous misogyny to an attempt to bury his own homosexual past. A work of extraordinary breadth, Amira Baraka is a powerful portrait of one man's lifework and the pivotal time it represents in African-American history. Informed by a wealth of original research, it fills a crucial gap in the lively literature on black thought and history and will continue to be a touchstone work for some time to come.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Birth of an Intellectual Journey -- 2 Bohemian Immersions -- 3 An Alien among Outsiders -- 4 Rejecting Bohemia: The Politicization of Ethnic Guilt -- 5 The Quest for a Blacker Art -- 6 Toward a Black Arts Infrastructure -- 7 Black Arts Poet and Essayist -- 8 Black Revolutionary Playwright -- 9 Kawaida: Totalizing the Commitment -- 10 The Slave as Master: Black Nationalism, Kawaida, and the Repression of Women -- 11 New-Ark and the Emergence of Pragmatic Nationalism -- 12 Pan-Africanism -- 13 National Black Political Convention -- 14 Ever Faithful: Toward a Religious Marxism -- 15 The Artist as Marxist / The Marxist as Artist -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author