Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 384
May 4, 2013
May 4-5, 2013: Crowd-sourced Communism
[As we celebrate another May Day, hopefully with no riots, the week’s series has highlighted some AmericanStudies connections to the legacy of Herr Marx. For this crowd-sourced post, fellow AmericanStudiers have given according to their abilities—but I still need your thoughts, comrades!]
An anonymous commenter responds to the week’s series, and particularly my Monday focus on empathy, by noting the importance of our also keeping in mind historical facts such as that “in the 1932-1933 Soviet Forced Famine in Ukraine, at least 3 million died.” As he or she adds, “just don’t mention communism with any sympathy on the Lower East Side” of New York, especially in the neighborhood of Little Ukraine. Rachel Bright follows up Thursday’s post, highlighting this Franklin Institute exhibit on spies.This review of a recent biography of Marx seems pretty relevant to the week’s series as well.Special series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?
An anonymous commenter responds to the week’s series, and particularly my Monday focus on empathy, by noting the importance of our also keeping in mind historical facts such as that “in the 1932-1933 Soviet Forced Famine in Ukraine, at least 3 million died.” As he or she adds, “just don’t mention communism with any sympathy on the Lower East Side” of New York, especially in the neighborhood of Little Ukraine. Rachel Bright follows up Thursday’s post, highlighting this Franklin Institute exhibit on spies.This review of a recent biography of Marx seems pretty relevant to the week’s series as well.Special series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think?
May 3, 2013
May 3, 2013: Communism in America: Doctorow and Coover
[As we celebrate another May Day, hopefully with no riots, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to the legacy of Herr Marx. Add your takes on these topics or any connections you’d make for a weekend post that shares the wealth!]
On two distinct but complementary postmodern historical novels.As I wrote in this post on American hypocrites, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991-1993) includes one of the most searing and tragic depictions of McCarthyism: Kushner’s portrayal of Roy Cohn, and most especially of his literally and figuratively haunting conversations with the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whose demise a young Cohn helped ensure and who becomes in Kushner’s imagining the last “person” to speak with Cohn before his own death. And Kushner isn’t alone is capitalizing upon Ethel Rosenberg’s literary and symbolic qualities, as she also occupies a complex and central place in two of the most significant late 20th century American historical novels: E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover’s The Public Burning (1977).Scholar Linda Hutcheon developed a new category, “historiographic metafiction,” to describe postmodern historical novels, works that put history and fiction in complex and often playful interrelationship and that do so in self-aware and –reflective ways. Both Doctorow’s and Coover’s novels fit aspects of this category, but in very different ways: Doctorow’s novel is narrated by the son of a fictionalized version of the Rosenbergs (known in his novel as the Isaacsons), and it is the narrator Daniel’s awareness of his own project, audience, and historical significance that makes the book truly postmodern; whereas Coover’s novel’s most prominent characters include not only Ethel Rosenberg but Richard Nixon (who serves as one of the text’s main perspectives) and Uncle Sam (who is a folksy and vulgar chorus of sorts, appearing periodically to comment on the action). Needless to say, despite their shared subject matter, only one of the novels produced a significant controversy upon its publication.Yet if we consider that shared subject matter, and more exactly the question of how fiction can help us engage with difficult and divisive historical subjects more generally, it seems to me that Doctorow’s and Coover’s books complement each other quite nicely. Coover’s is biting and angry, lashing out at the kinds of hysterias and extremes that McCarthyism exemplified (whether the Rosenbergs were guilty or not) and that Uncle Sam’s America has always included. Doctorow’s is intimate and tragic, considering the legacies of such histories on the individuals and families, as well as the communities and nation, that experience them. Coover focuses on the most public moments and figures, Doctorow on the most private effects and lives. Together, they help us remember that every American history and issue, even the Cold War boogeyman of communism, became and remains a part of our communal and human landscapes as well.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Other thoughts on communism in America to share?
On two distinct but complementary postmodern historical novels.As I wrote in this post on American hypocrites, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991-1993) includes one of the most searing and tragic depictions of McCarthyism: Kushner’s portrayal of Roy Cohn, and most especially of his literally and figuratively haunting conversations with the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whose demise a young Cohn helped ensure and who becomes in Kushner’s imagining the last “person” to speak with Cohn before his own death. And Kushner isn’t alone is capitalizing upon Ethel Rosenberg’s literary and symbolic qualities, as she also occupies a complex and central place in two of the most significant late 20th century American historical novels: E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover’s The Public Burning (1977).Scholar Linda Hutcheon developed a new category, “historiographic metafiction,” to describe postmodern historical novels, works that put history and fiction in complex and often playful interrelationship and that do so in self-aware and –reflective ways. Both Doctorow’s and Coover’s novels fit aspects of this category, but in very different ways: Doctorow’s novel is narrated by the son of a fictionalized version of the Rosenbergs (known in his novel as the Isaacsons), and it is the narrator Daniel’s awareness of his own project, audience, and historical significance that makes the book truly postmodern; whereas Coover’s novel’s most prominent characters include not only Ethel Rosenberg but Richard Nixon (who serves as one of the text’s main perspectives) and Uncle Sam (who is a folksy and vulgar chorus of sorts, appearing periodically to comment on the action). Needless to say, despite their shared subject matter, only one of the novels produced a significant controversy upon its publication.Yet if we consider that shared subject matter, and more exactly the question of how fiction can help us engage with difficult and divisive historical subjects more generally, it seems to me that Doctorow’s and Coover’s books complement each other quite nicely. Coover’s is biting and angry, lashing out at the kinds of hysterias and extremes that McCarthyism exemplified (whether the Rosenbergs were guilty or not) and that Uncle Sam’s America has always included. Doctorow’s is intimate and tragic, considering the legacies of such histories on the individuals and families, as well as the communities and nation, that experience them. Coover focuses on the most public moments and figures, Doctorow on the most private effects and lives. Together, they help us remember that every American history and issue, even the Cold War boogeyman of communism, became and remains a part of our communal and human landscapes as well.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to the week’s posts? Other thoughts on communism in America to share?
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013: Communism in America: Spies Like Us
[As we celebrate another May Day, hopefully with no riots, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to the legacy of Herr Marx. Add your takes on these topics or any connections you’d make for a weekend post that shares the wealth!]
On what we don’t know about two high-profile controversies—and why it doesn’t matter.Few examples better illustrate the stakes of historical interpretation and analysis than the cases of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. At one extreme—but, to be clear, an extreme that could be argued within the bounds of serious historical inquiry—each case could be seen as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism, as evidence that communist spies and sympathizers were indeed operating within the U.S. government and society. At the other, equally arguable extreme, these three Americans embody the worst of that era, and particularly its persecution and destruction of innocent lives in service of paranoia, fear, and the creation at all costs of the “us vs. them” mentality about which I wrote in Monday’s post.Perhaps in time sufficient evidence will be unearthed or released that historians will be able to come to more conclusive perspectives on one or both cases—although so far key details have not only remained secret but also have been legally reinforced in that state. To date, at least as far as this AmericanStudier understands it (and as I analyzed from a different angle in this post), the available evidence seems to implicate Julius Rosenberg, to cast serious doubt on the guilt of his wife Ethel, and to remain entirely inconclusive when it comes to Hiss. Yet while the guilt and innocence of these individuals are no small matters—not least because the Rosenbergs were executed for their alleged crimes, but Hiss lived the remaining forty-five years of his life under the cloud of suspicion as well—it’s also possible, and important, to analyze the cases in other contexts, to consider what they can reveal even if their deepest secrets might never see the light of day.To my mind, one clear and important way to consider all three accused spies is to recognize the range of American identities and experiences to which they connect: Julius for example as the son of Jewish immigrants who settled in New York’s East Side neighborhoods; Ethel for example as a New York New Womanwho initially pursued a career as an actress and singer; Hiss for example as the product of a declining Maryland family, surrounded by tragedies including his father’s and sister’s suicides, who worked his way to Harvard and a prestigious career in law and politics. Which is to say, whether they spied or not, whether they were traitors or victims, these are American stories and histories and identities, lives and worlds no less (and no more) a part of our national narratives than those of Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and their other accusers and adversaries. Whatever the truth, there simple fact is that there’s no us vs. them—it’s all us.Final Communist connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses for the weekend post?
On what we don’t know about two high-profile controversies—and why it doesn’t matter.Few examples better illustrate the stakes of historical interpretation and analysis than the cases of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. At one extreme—but, to be clear, an extreme that could be argued within the bounds of serious historical inquiry—each case could be seen as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism, as evidence that communist spies and sympathizers were indeed operating within the U.S. government and society. At the other, equally arguable extreme, these three Americans embody the worst of that era, and particularly its persecution and destruction of innocent lives in service of paranoia, fear, and the creation at all costs of the “us vs. them” mentality about which I wrote in Monday’s post.Perhaps in time sufficient evidence will be unearthed or released that historians will be able to come to more conclusive perspectives on one or both cases—although so far key details have not only remained secret but also have been legally reinforced in that state. To date, at least as far as this AmericanStudier understands it (and as I analyzed from a different angle in this post), the available evidence seems to implicate Julius Rosenberg, to cast serious doubt on the guilt of his wife Ethel, and to remain entirely inconclusive when it comes to Hiss. Yet while the guilt and innocence of these individuals are no small matters—not least because the Rosenbergs were executed for their alleged crimes, but Hiss lived the remaining forty-five years of his life under the cloud of suspicion as well—it’s also possible, and important, to analyze the cases in other contexts, to consider what they can reveal even if their deepest secrets might never see the light of day.To my mind, one clear and important way to consider all three accused spies is to recognize the range of American identities and experiences to which they connect: Julius for example as the son of Jewish immigrants who settled in New York’s East Side neighborhoods; Ethel for example as a New York New Womanwho initially pursued a career as an actress and singer; Hiss for example as the product of a declining Maryland family, surrounded by tragedies including his father’s and sister’s suicides, who worked his way to Harvard and a prestigious career in law and politics. Which is to say, whether they spied or not, whether they were traitors or victims, these are American stories and histories and identities, lives and worlds no less (and no more) a part of our national narratives than those of Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and their other accusers and adversaries. Whatever the truth, there simple fact is that there’s no us vs. them—it’s all us.Final Communist connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses for the weekend post?
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013: Communism in America: Dos Passos and Wright
[As we celebrate another May Day, hopefully with no riots, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to the legacy of Herr Marx. Add your takes on these topics or any connections you’d make for a weekenmd post that shares the wealth!]
On two strikingly parallel yet also importantly distinct 1930s to ‘50s American arcs.As I mentioned in Monday’s post, despite our longstanding collective national antagonism toward communism there have been both moments and communities in which the political philosophy has had substantially broader and deeper appeal. In the 1930s, two such factors came together to help produce a sizeable and vocal cohort of writers and intellectuals who embraced communism: the Depression’s heightening of wealth inequalities and social stratification seemed to highlight the limitations and even destructive capabilities of unchecked capitalism; and those economic woes, coupled with the continued destructive forces of segregation, lynching, and other communal ills and threats, led many African Americans similarly to seek an alternative to the dominant American systems.Those responses happened within multiple communities, but they can be succinctly illustrated by two individuals, writers whose most significant novels bookend the 1930s in American literature and culture. John Dos Passos had been publishing fiction since the mid-1920s, but it was the trilogy that came to be collected as U.S.A. (1938)—The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936)—that exemplified both his stylistic experimentation and his socialistic philosophies. Richard Wright launched his career with the short story collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) but truly entered the literary stratosphere two years later with Native Son (1940), a novel that features both one of American literature’s most eloquent defenders of communism (in the lawyer Max) and a character (protagonist Bigger Thomas) whose tragic and brutal arc makes numerous, ineloquent but compelling arguments for the philosophy.In the 1940s to 50s, both writers famously broke with those philosophies and with the Communist Party: Wright in one pivotal moment, the essay “I Tried to Be a Communist” (1944); and Dos Passos more gradually, in a series of public statements and positions that culminated in his qualified support for Joseph McCarthy (among other turning points). Yet I would also argue that their shifts represent two quite distinct personal and national narratives: Dos Passos genuinely seemed, in response to World War II, the Cold War, and other factors, to change in his political and social perspectives; whereas to my mind Wright’s perspectives remained largely unchanged, and he came instead to see, as does for example Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the Communist Party as an imperfect and indeed failed vehicle through which to seek such political and social change. Such a distinction would of course become even more important in the 1960s, when a newgeneration of African American activists found anew a compelling alternative in American socialism.Next Communist connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On two strikingly parallel yet also importantly distinct 1930s to ‘50s American arcs.As I mentioned in Monday’s post, despite our longstanding collective national antagonism toward communism there have been both moments and communities in which the political philosophy has had substantially broader and deeper appeal. In the 1930s, two such factors came together to help produce a sizeable and vocal cohort of writers and intellectuals who embraced communism: the Depression’s heightening of wealth inequalities and social stratification seemed to highlight the limitations and even destructive capabilities of unchecked capitalism; and those economic woes, coupled with the continued destructive forces of segregation, lynching, and other communal ills and threats, led many African Americans similarly to seek an alternative to the dominant American systems.Those responses happened within multiple communities, but they can be succinctly illustrated by two individuals, writers whose most significant novels bookend the 1930s in American literature and culture. John Dos Passos had been publishing fiction since the mid-1920s, but it was the trilogy that came to be collected as U.S.A. (1938)—The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936)—that exemplified both his stylistic experimentation and his socialistic philosophies. Richard Wright launched his career with the short story collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) but truly entered the literary stratosphere two years later with Native Son (1940), a novel that features both one of American literature’s most eloquent defenders of communism (in the lawyer Max) and a character (protagonist Bigger Thomas) whose tragic and brutal arc makes numerous, ineloquent but compelling arguments for the philosophy.In the 1940s to 50s, both writers famously broke with those philosophies and with the Communist Party: Wright in one pivotal moment, the essay “I Tried to Be a Communist” (1944); and Dos Passos more gradually, in a series of public statements and positions that culminated in his qualified support for Joseph McCarthy (among other turning points). Yet I would also argue that their shifts represent two quite distinct personal and national narratives: Dos Passos genuinely seemed, in response to World War II, the Cold War, and other factors, to change in his political and social perspectives; whereas to my mind Wright’s perspectives remained largely unchanged, and he came instead to see, as does for example Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the Communist Party as an imperfect and indeed failed vehicle through which to seek such political and social change. Such a distinction would of course become even more important in the 1960s, when a newgeneration of African American activists found anew a compelling alternative in American socialism.Next Communist connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 30, 2013
April 30, 2013: April 2013 Recap
[Communism series resumes tomorrow; today, recapping the month that was in AmericanStudying.]
April 1: Baseball in America: Symbolism: An Opening Day series starts with the symbolic cultural uses to which we have put the national pastime. April 2: Baseball in America: The Black Sox: The series continues with three different ways to AmericanStudy baseball’s most famous scandal.April 3: Baseball in America: Ruth and Gehrig: Two iconic baseball stars and the distinct national ideals to which they connect, as the series rolls on.April 4: Baseball in America: International Arrivals: Two recent communities of international major leaguers, and the immigration histories they can help us remember.April 5: Baseball in America: Nine Inspiring Innings: The series concludes with the baseball book that serves as a model of public scholarly writing and analysis.April 6-7: The Crowd-sourced World Series: Fellow AmericanStudiers chime in on the baseball series.April 8: Taxes in America: The Stamp Act: A Tax Day-inspired series starts with the Revolutionary controversy that originated many of our national narratives about taxes.April 9: Taxes in America: The Whiskey Rebellion: The series continues with the complex Early Republic conflict that reflected some of our deepest debates and divisions.April 10: Taxes in America: Lincoln and Taxes: On the largely unknown and significant Civil War origins of the income tax, as the series rolls on.April 11: Taxes in America: The Populists and Taxes: What we can take away from the Populist Party’s influential support for a progressive income tax.April 12: Taxes in America: The Big Question: The week’s series concludes with three different AmericanStudies answers to the big question about taxes in 21stcentury America.April 13-14: Taxes in America: The Cost: But wait—a special weekend post to round out the tax series, this one on what The Wire reveals about the cost of our current attitudes toward taxation.April 15: Comic Book Heroes: Dick Tracy: A series on AmericanStudying comic book heroes starts with a couple key contexts for one of the first such heroes.April 16: Comic Book Heroes: Superman and Batman: The series continues with two contrasts between our two most iconic superheroes.April 17: Comic Book Heroes: Wonder Woman: The many American layers to the creation and development of our first female superhero, as the series rolls on.April 18: Comic Book Heroes: Black Panther: Black Power, race in popular and American culture, and the first prominent black superhero.April 19: Comic Book Heroes: The Punisher: The series concludes with the myths and limits of vigilante justice in American culture and history.April 20-21: Crowd-sourced Comic Books: Lots of great thoughts, responses, and links on the week’s topics and themes, as shared by fellow AmericanStudies heroes!April 22: Reading Du Bois, Part One: A series on my favorite American, and the subject of a special class I’m teaching this fall, starts with the one Du Bois book all Americans should read.April 23: Reading Du Bois, Part Two: The series continues with Du Bois’s flawed but significant first novel.April 24: Reading Du Bois, Part Three: The work that redefined an entire profession, and then went even further, as the series rolls on.April 25: Reading Du Bois, Part Four: Three distinct and impressive sides to Du Bois’s lifelong journalistic work.April 26: Reading Du Bois, Part Five: My part of the series concludes with three inspiring Du Bois letters.April 27-28: Roopika Risam’s Guest Post: Rounding out the series with a guest post from one of our most talented Du Bois scholars.April 29: Communism in America: “The Palace-Burner”: A May Day inspired series starts with a post on empathy, us vs. them narratives, and one of my favorite American poems.Next post on Communism in America tomorrow,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered on the blog? Guest Posts you’d like to write?
April 1: Baseball in America: Symbolism: An Opening Day series starts with the symbolic cultural uses to which we have put the national pastime. April 2: Baseball in America: The Black Sox: The series continues with three different ways to AmericanStudy baseball’s most famous scandal.April 3: Baseball in America: Ruth and Gehrig: Two iconic baseball stars and the distinct national ideals to which they connect, as the series rolls on.April 4: Baseball in America: International Arrivals: Two recent communities of international major leaguers, and the immigration histories they can help us remember.April 5: Baseball in America: Nine Inspiring Innings: The series concludes with the baseball book that serves as a model of public scholarly writing and analysis.April 6-7: The Crowd-sourced World Series: Fellow AmericanStudiers chime in on the baseball series.April 8: Taxes in America: The Stamp Act: A Tax Day-inspired series starts with the Revolutionary controversy that originated many of our national narratives about taxes.April 9: Taxes in America: The Whiskey Rebellion: The series continues with the complex Early Republic conflict that reflected some of our deepest debates and divisions.April 10: Taxes in America: Lincoln and Taxes: On the largely unknown and significant Civil War origins of the income tax, as the series rolls on.April 11: Taxes in America: The Populists and Taxes: What we can take away from the Populist Party’s influential support for a progressive income tax.April 12: Taxes in America: The Big Question: The week’s series concludes with three different AmericanStudies answers to the big question about taxes in 21stcentury America.April 13-14: Taxes in America: The Cost: But wait—a special weekend post to round out the tax series, this one on what The Wire reveals about the cost of our current attitudes toward taxation.April 15: Comic Book Heroes: Dick Tracy: A series on AmericanStudying comic book heroes starts with a couple key contexts for one of the first such heroes.April 16: Comic Book Heroes: Superman and Batman: The series continues with two contrasts between our two most iconic superheroes.April 17: Comic Book Heroes: Wonder Woman: The many American layers to the creation and development of our first female superhero, as the series rolls on.April 18: Comic Book Heroes: Black Panther: Black Power, race in popular and American culture, and the first prominent black superhero.April 19: Comic Book Heroes: The Punisher: The series concludes with the myths and limits of vigilante justice in American culture and history.April 20-21: Crowd-sourced Comic Books: Lots of great thoughts, responses, and links on the week’s topics and themes, as shared by fellow AmericanStudies heroes!April 22: Reading Du Bois, Part One: A series on my favorite American, and the subject of a special class I’m teaching this fall, starts with the one Du Bois book all Americans should read.April 23: Reading Du Bois, Part Two: The series continues with Du Bois’s flawed but significant first novel.April 24: Reading Du Bois, Part Three: The work that redefined an entire profession, and then went even further, as the series rolls on.April 25: Reading Du Bois, Part Four: Three distinct and impressive sides to Du Bois’s lifelong journalistic work.April 26: Reading Du Bois, Part Five: My part of the series concludes with three inspiring Du Bois letters.April 27-28: Roopika Risam’s Guest Post: Rounding out the series with a guest post from one of our most talented Du Bois scholars.April 29: Communism in America: “The Palace-Burner”: A May Day inspired series starts with a post on empathy, us vs. them narratives, and one of my favorite American poems.Next post on Communism in America tomorrow,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered on the blog? Guest Posts you’d like to write?
April 29, 2013
April 29, 2013: Communism in America: “The Palace-Burner”
[As we celebrate another May Day, hopefully with no bombings, a series on some AmericanStudies connections to the legacy of Herr Marx. Add your takes on these topics or any connections you’d make for a weekend post that shares the wealth!]
On the masterpiece of a poem that destroys easy “us vs. them” narratives.I made the case for my favorite American poet, Sarah Piatt, in one of my first posts, and did so in large part through her best poem, “The Palace-Burner.” There are a lot of factors that make “Palace-Burner” one of the great American poems, but at the top of the list for me would be Piatt’s incredibly sophisticated representation—through the lens of a mother and young son discussing a newspaper picture of a female rebel from the 1871 Paris Commune—of what I called in this post three crucial and interconnected levels to empathy: “connecting to seemingly distant others, working to understand those to whom we’re close, and examining our own identities through those lenses.”This wasn’t necessarily the case in the 1870s (although given the immense popularity of Horatio Alger novels in the period, maybe it was), but over the century and a half since I would say that there have been few world communities with which Americans have had, collectively, a more difficult time empathizing than communists. Of course there are significant exceptions, both in terms of time periods during which that philosophy has seemed more appealing (such as the Depression, about which more in Wednesday’s post) and in terms of American communities who have been sufficiently disenfranchised from our dominant national narratives to see the wisdom of such alternatives (such as African Americans in the mid-20thcentury, on whom likewise more on Wednesday). But when it comes to those dominant narratives, communism has been one of the most consistent “them’s” to our constructed “us” for a long while.There would be various possible ways to complicate and revise that kind of “us vs. them” narrative, including highlighting the many originatingand influential forms and momentsof American socialism and communism. But Piatt takes another, and to my mind particularly compelling, tack: creating in her poetic speaker a woman who seems thoroughly removed from not only communism but political conversations in general (especially in the “separate spheres” mentality that continued to reign for most middle-class American families in the period); and then giving that speaker the opportunity to consider whether and how she and a foreign communist woman might have anything in common. She doesn’t come to any easy or comfortable answers—empathy is neither of those things in any case—but she asks the questions, and that seems to me to an impressive model for all of us.April Recap tomorrow, and this series resumes on Wednesday,BenPS. What do you think? Texts about communism you’d highlight?
On the masterpiece of a poem that destroys easy “us vs. them” narratives.I made the case for my favorite American poet, Sarah Piatt, in one of my first posts, and did so in large part through her best poem, “The Palace-Burner.” There are a lot of factors that make “Palace-Burner” one of the great American poems, but at the top of the list for me would be Piatt’s incredibly sophisticated representation—through the lens of a mother and young son discussing a newspaper picture of a female rebel from the 1871 Paris Commune—of what I called in this post three crucial and interconnected levels to empathy: “connecting to seemingly distant others, working to understand those to whom we’re close, and examining our own identities through those lenses.”This wasn’t necessarily the case in the 1870s (although given the immense popularity of Horatio Alger novels in the period, maybe it was), but over the century and a half since I would say that there have been few world communities with which Americans have had, collectively, a more difficult time empathizing than communists. Of course there are significant exceptions, both in terms of time periods during which that philosophy has seemed more appealing (such as the Depression, about which more in Wednesday’s post) and in terms of American communities who have been sufficiently disenfranchised from our dominant national narratives to see the wisdom of such alternatives (such as African Americans in the mid-20thcentury, on whom likewise more on Wednesday). But when it comes to those dominant narratives, communism has been one of the most consistent “them’s” to our constructed “us” for a long while.There would be various possible ways to complicate and revise that kind of “us vs. them” narrative, including highlighting the many originatingand influential forms and momentsof American socialism and communism. But Piatt takes another, and to my mind particularly compelling, tack: creating in her poetic speaker a woman who seems thoroughly removed from not only communism but political conversations in general (especially in the “separate spheres” mentality that continued to reign for most middle-class American families in the period); and then giving that speaker the opportunity to consider whether and how she and a foreign communist woman might have anything in common. She doesn’t come to any easy or comfortable answers—empathy is neither of those things in any case—but she asks the questions, and that seems to me to an impressive model for all of us.April Recap tomorrow, and this series resumes on Wednesday,BenPS. What do you think? Texts about communism you’d highlight?
April 27, 2013
April 27-28, 2013: Roopika Risam's Guest Post
[Roopika Risam is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Emory University. In the fall, she will begin working as an assistant professor of world literature and English education at Salem State University. Her current project, “Oceans of Black, Brown, and Yellow: Literatures of Global Solidarity,” examines W.E.B. Du Bois in the context of postcolonial and African American studies. She also runs the Postcolonial Digital Humanities website with Adeline Koh.]
As a crowd of 250,000 gathered on the National Mall for the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, announced that W.E.B. Du Bois had died in Ghana the night before. Briefly eulogizing Du Bois for the crowd, Wilkins said, "Regardless of the fact that in his later years, Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the 20th century, his was the voice calling you to gather here today in this cause."
Wilkins’s remarks anticipate a trend in Du Bois scholarship that charts two different paths of Du Bois's life. In this narrative, the Du Bois of the early years appears the consummate race man. His work on African Americans (The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America) and his activism (the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, The Crisis) firmly credential him as a scholar-activist dedicated to the problem of the color line in the US. The other Du Bois was a version at once embarrassing and dangerous to the African American political establishment. He began embracing black separatism, resigned from the NAACP and The Crisis by 1934, and returned to the NAACP in 1944 only to be dismissed four years later for ideological disagreements - namely his leftists stance on global politics and emphatic support for decolonization movements worldwide. Facing increased scrutiny and surveillance by the US government, Du Bois eventually expatriated to Ghana, where he died in effective exile on the night before the March on Washington. Thus, the general trend in Du Bois scholarship, particularly in the work of David Levering Lewis and Henry Louis Gates, perpetuates the false dichotomy between a younger Du Bois committed to African American freedom struggles and an older Du Bois whose global commitments signify a rejection of his domestic ones.
The tendency to identify this particular trajectory for Du Bois’s work is a troubling one. In fact, Du Bois's international vision originates at the beginning of his scholarship, with The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in 1896. It continues in The Souls of Black Folk, when Du Bois articulates his now famous statement, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line" and defines the color line as "the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in American and the islands of the sea." It emerges again in The Gift of Black Folk (1924), when Du Bois theorizes the relationship between enslaved African labor and the rise of modernity. These are but a few examples of many that complicate the tendency to position Du Bois's early writings as national while neatly confining Du Bois's international outlook to his waning years.
Two of Du Bois’s novels take up the relationship between struggles of African Americans and those of oppressed people of color around the world: Dark Princess (1928) and Worlds of Color (1961). Discussing Du Bois's literary writing is always a fraught proposition because the general consensus - from Du Bois's contemporaries, current scholars, and even my own students - is that fiction-writing is not one of Du Bois's strengths. Leaving questions of aesthetics for another time, however, these two novels offer insight on the intricacies of Du Bois's global visions.
Dark Princess tells the story of Matthew Towns, an African American medical student who exiles himself to Berlin, where he meets the mysterious and beautiful Princess Kautilya of the fictional Indian state of Bwodpur. As a member of the Council of Darker Races, an Afro-Asian solidarity movement committed to the end of colonialism and promotion of communism, Princess Kautilya recruits the lovestruck Matthew for her cause. Matthew returns to the US, where he works as Pullman Porter, serves prison time for a botched bombing plot against the Ku Klux Klan, becomes a Chicago politician, and engages in manual labor. Matthew and Princess Kautilya unite permanently at the end of the novel to celebrate the birth of their son Madhu, the Maharajah of Bwodpur, who, Du Bois writes, is the “Messenger and Messiah to all the Darker Worlds.”
Worlds of Color, the third novel in the Black Flame trilogy, narrates the travels of Manuel Mansart, protagonist of the trilogy's first two novels: The Ordeal of Mansart (1957) and Mansart Builds a School (1959). Mansart travels to Europe and Asia to learn more about the world, thinking he will discover that skin color is a trivial matter everywhere but the United States. Instead, he learns about the global reach of imperialism and the significant percentage of the human population that is subject to racialized labor. Mansart returns from his trip understanding that a great mass of people of color around the globe are a force waiting to be united and radicalized against the political, economic, and social forces that have oppressed them.
The two novels offer strikingly different iterations of solidarities between African Americans and oppressed people of color. Writing Dark Princess during the 1920s, Du Bois seems immersed in the rhetoric of high imperialism and can only imagine how it might end. As a result, his vision – the Council of Darker Races, the union of Matthew and Princess Kautilya, and the birth of their half-black and half-Indian child – is highly romanticized, hinging on international intrigue, forbidden love, and the act of reproduction. By the time Du Bois writes Worlds of Color, however, he has witnessed decolonization in action and imagines a different solution: a global mass in revolt. Yet, in the competing visions articulated in Dark Princess and Worlds of Color, we find Du Bois deeply invested in the intersections of African American and global struggles for emancipation. As such, Du Bois’s literary writings challenge narratives of Du Bois’s work that speciously suggest he traded his dedication to African Americans for the rest of the world over the course of his life. [Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?]
As a crowd of 250,000 gathered on the National Mall for the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, announced that W.E.B. Du Bois had died in Ghana the night before. Briefly eulogizing Du Bois for the crowd, Wilkins said, "Regardless of the fact that in his later years, Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the 20th century, his was the voice calling you to gather here today in this cause."
Wilkins’s remarks anticipate a trend in Du Bois scholarship that charts two different paths of Du Bois's life. In this narrative, the Du Bois of the early years appears the consummate race man. His work on African Americans (The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America) and his activism (the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, The Crisis) firmly credential him as a scholar-activist dedicated to the problem of the color line in the US. The other Du Bois was a version at once embarrassing and dangerous to the African American political establishment. He began embracing black separatism, resigned from the NAACP and The Crisis by 1934, and returned to the NAACP in 1944 only to be dismissed four years later for ideological disagreements - namely his leftists stance on global politics and emphatic support for decolonization movements worldwide. Facing increased scrutiny and surveillance by the US government, Du Bois eventually expatriated to Ghana, where he died in effective exile on the night before the March on Washington. Thus, the general trend in Du Bois scholarship, particularly in the work of David Levering Lewis and Henry Louis Gates, perpetuates the false dichotomy between a younger Du Bois committed to African American freedom struggles and an older Du Bois whose global commitments signify a rejection of his domestic ones.
The tendency to identify this particular trajectory for Du Bois’s work is a troubling one. In fact, Du Bois's international vision originates at the beginning of his scholarship, with The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in 1896. It continues in The Souls of Black Folk, when Du Bois articulates his now famous statement, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line" and defines the color line as "the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in American and the islands of the sea." It emerges again in The Gift of Black Folk (1924), when Du Bois theorizes the relationship between enslaved African labor and the rise of modernity. These are but a few examples of many that complicate the tendency to position Du Bois's early writings as national while neatly confining Du Bois's international outlook to his waning years.
Two of Du Bois’s novels take up the relationship between struggles of African Americans and those of oppressed people of color around the world: Dark Princess (1928) and Worlds of Color (1961). Discussing Du Bois's literary writing is always a fraught proposition because the general consensus - from Du Bois's contemporaries, current scholars, and even my own students - is that fiction-writing is not one of Du Bois's strengths. Leaving questions of aesthetics for another time, however, these two novels offer insight on the intricacies of Du Bois's global visions.
Dark Princess tells the story of Matthew Towns, an African American medical student who exiles himself to Berlin, where he meets the mysterious and beautiful Princess Kautilya of the fictional Indian state of Bwodpur. As a member of the Council of Darker Races, an Afro-Asian solidarity movement committed to the end of colonialism and promotion of communism, Princess Kautilya recruits the lovestruck Matthew for her cause. Matthew returns to the US, where he works as Pullman Porter, serves prison time for a botched bombing plot against the Ku Klux Klan, becomes a Chicago politician, and engages in manual labor. Matthew and Princess Kautilya unite permanently at the end of the novel to celebrate the birth of their son Madhu, the Maharajah of Bwodpur, who, Du Bois writes, is the “Messenger and Messiah to all the Darker Worlds.”
Worlds of Color, the third novel in the Black Flame trilogy, narrates the travels of Manuel Mansart, protagonist of the trilogy's first two novels: The Ordeal of Mansart (1957) and Mansart Builds a School (1959). Mansart travels to Europe and Asia to learn more about the world, thinking he will discover that skin color is a trivial matter everywhere but the United States. Instead, he learns about the global reach of imperialism and the significant percentage of the human population that is subject to racialized labor. Mansart returns from his trip understanding that a great mass of people of color around the globe are a force waiting to be united and radicalized against the political, economic, and social forces that have oppressed them.
The two novels offer strikingly different iterations of solidarities between African Americans and oppressed people of color. Writing Dark Princess during the 1920s, Du Bois seems immersed in the rhetoric of high imperialism and can only imagine how it might end. As a result, his vision – the Council of Darker Races, the union of Matthew and Princess Kautilya, and the birth of their half-black and half-Indian child – is highly romanticized, hinging on international intrigue, forbidden love, and the act of reproduction. By the time Du Bois writes Worlds of Color, however, he has witnessed decolonization in action and imagines a different solution: a global mass in revolt. Yet, in the competing visions articulated in Dark Princess and Worlds of Color, we find Du Bois deeply invested in the intersections of African American and global struggles for emancipation. As such, Du Bois’s literary writings challenge narratives of Du Bois’s work that speciously suggest he traded his dedication to African Americans for the rest of the world over the course of his life. [Next series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?]
April 26, 2013
April 26, 2013: Reading Du Bois, Part Five
[I’ve written a good deal in this space on W.E.B. Du Bois, but I’ve got yet another reason to keep doing so—this fall I’ll be teaching a Major Author course on Du Bois! So this week I’ll be sharing a handful of the many amazing works that make Du Bois such an impressive American author and voice, leading up to a special guest post this weekend.]
On three texts that reveal how much Du Bois valued the mostly lost art of letter-writing.In 1905, Du Bois wrote a letter to Vernealia Fareira, a Pennsylvania high schooler who had, Du Bios had apparently learned, been neglecting her education. In this missive, which Du Bois pointedly drafted on the back of a questionnaire on “School Children and the Law,” he pulled no punches, noting sternly that for a young woman living in her era, and an African American young woman at that, “her bitterness amounts to a crime.” But he also expressed his characteristic optimism about the opportunities and life that lay before her, and did so, despite his by-this-time significant professional successes and prestige, in an intimate and humble voice: “I wonder if you will let a stranger say a word to you about yourself?” The letter is a truly unique and amazing American primary source.In March 1913, Du Bois took to the pages of The Crisis to write an open letter to the newly inaugurated president, Woodrow Wilson. While this text could be read as an editorial, which of course an open letter from a magazine’s editor undoubtedly is, I would nonetheless argue that Du Bois hoped and intended that the letter would reach Wilson, and directly influence his administration as a result. Certainly his tone is in many ways just as direct and intimate as in the letter to Ms. Fareira, as in his closing appeal: “In the name then of that common country for which your fathers and ours have bled and toiled, be not untrue, President Wilson, to the highest ideals of American Democracy.” The letter thus reflects not only the uncertain but hopeful questions of how this new president would address the crises in American racial and social life, but also and even more tellingly how much Du Bois embodied a generation of African Americans unafraid to add their voices to such political and national conversations.In October 1914, Du Bois wrote a letter to his 14 year-old daughter Yolande, who was then studying across the pond in England. As an AmericanStudier, as a father, and as a person, there’s not much I can say about the specifics of this letter, other than to beg you to read it. It’s one of the most beautiful and perfect American texts I know, and illustrates just how much Du Bois was struggling and engaging with, and represents in his voice and writing, the most shared and universal and human questions and themes, as well as all the more specific historical and social and political and cultural and philosophical and pedagogical ones. It’s quite literally the case that on everyissue that matters to me (outside of ones about which he couldn’t be expected to write, such as the influence of Springsteen or The Wire), Du Bois had something meaningful, complex, and beautiful to say. I look forward to introducing him and his voice to my students this fall.Special guest post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
On three texts that reveal how much Du Bois valued the mostly lost art of letter-writing.In 1905, Du Bois wrote a letter to Vernealia Fareira, a Pennsylvania high schooler who had, Du Bios had apparently learned, been neglecting her education. In this missive, which Du Bois pointedly drafted on the back of a questionnaire on “School Children and the Law,” he pulled no punches, noting sternly that for a young woman living in her era, and an African American young woman at that, “her bitterness amounts to a crime.” But he also expressed his characteristic optimism about the opportunities and life that lay before her, and did so, despite his by-this-time significant professional successes and prestige, in an intimate and humble voice: “I wonder if you will let a stranger say a word to you about yourself?” The letter is a truly unique and amazing American primary source.In March 1913, Du Bois took to the pages of The Crisis to write an open letter to the newly inaugurated president, Woodrow Wilson. While this text could be read as an editorial, which of course an open letter from a magazine’s editor undoubtedly is, I would nonetheless argue that Du Bois hoped and intended that the letter would reach Wilson, and directly influence his administration as a result. Certainly his tone is in many ways just as direct and intimate as in the letter to Ms. Fareira, as in his closing appeal: “In the name then of that common country for which your fathers and ours have bled and toiled, be not untrue, President Wilson, to the highest ideals of American Democracy.” The letter thus reflects not only the uncertain but hopeful questions of how this new president would address the crises in American racial and social life, but also and even more tellingly how much Du Bois embodied a generation of African Americans unafraid to add their voices to such political and national conversations.In October 1914, Du Bois wrote a letter to his 14 year-old daughter Yolande, who was then studying across the pond in England. As an AmericanStudier, as a father, and as a person, there’s not much I can say about the specifics of this letter, other than to beg you to read it. It’s one of the most beautiful and perfect American texts I know, and illustrates just how much Du Bois was struggling and engaging with, and represents in his voice and writing, the most shared and universal and human questions and themes, as well as all the more specific historical and social and political and cultural and philosophical and pedagogical ones. It’s quite literally the case that on everyissue that matters to me (outside of ones about which he couldn’t be expected to write, such as the influence of Springsteen or The Wire), Du Bois had something meaningful, complex, and beautiful to say. I look forward to introducing him and his voice to my students this fall.Special guest post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?
April 25, 2013
April 25, 2013: Reading Du Bois, Part Four
[I’ve written a good deal in this space on W.E.B. Du Bois, but I’ve got yet another reason to keep doing so—this fall I’ll be teaching a Major Author course on Du Bois! So this week I’ll be sharing a handful of the many amazing works that make Du Bois such an impressive American author and voice, leading up to a special guest post this weekend.]
On three distinct and equally impressive sides to Du Bois’s journalistic work.From 1910 to 1934, while he was writing the books featured in the prior two posts, researching and teaching at multiple institutions, helping found and run the NAACP, and doing roughly three thousand other things, Du Bois created and edited The Crisis , a magazine that engaged more fully with African American issues, communities, and voices than any other American text or conversation in the era (and perhaps since). The Crisis was particularly strong at covering and editorializing about national news stories that would otherwise have received far less attention, including the lynching epidemic, the negligence and mistreatment directed at African American World War I veterans, and the protests surrounding Birth of a Nation, among numerous other stories during Du Bois’s editorial tenure. As a news periodical alone, Du Bois’s magazine is an indispensable American source.Like its creator, however, The Crisis wasn’t the slightest bit content being or doing just one thing. In an era that has been called the nadir of African American life and culture, Du Bois also used his magazine both to highlight existing literary and artistic voices and to encourage further cultural work in the African American community. When novelist Jessie Redmon Fauset came on board in 1919 as the magazine’s literary editor, she helped deepen and extend that artistic engagement, allowing The Crisis—despite its continuing dedication to news coverage—to rival the era’s other modernist little magazinesin both the breadth and quality of its cultural work. Given that this side to Du Bois’s journalistic endeavor has been described as a vital foundation for and influence on the rise of the Harlem Renaissance, it’s hard to overstate just how significant his literary and artistic support would be in American culture and life.Those historical and cultural components make The Crisisexemplary and seminal in early 20th century America, but it’s Du Bois’s own writing in the magazine that make me excited to include it in a course on him as an author. Just about any editorial from his quarter-century of work would suffice to illustrate that writing, but so too does the brief November 1910 column with which Du Bois launched the magazine. I give you, for example, this sentence, on why Du Bois sees his moment as the titular crisis: “Catholicity and tolerance, reason and forbearance can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness and force can repeat the awful history of the contact of nations and groups in the past.” Check out the parallelism and alliteration within those parallel structures alone; Du Bois could just plain write, and The Crisis reflects his own talents just as much as it does its historical and cultural contexts. Next Du Bois readings tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On three distinct and equally impressive sides to Du Bois’s journalistic work.From 1910 to 1934, while he was writing the books featured in the prior two posts, researching and teaching at multiple institutions, helping found and run the NAACP, and doing roughly three thousand other things, Du Bois created and edited The Crisis , a magazine that engaged more fully with African American issues, communities, and voices than any other American text or conversation in the era (and perhaps since). The Crisis was particularly strong at covering and editorializing about national news stories that would otherwise have received far less attention, including the lynching epidemic, the negligence and mistreatment directed at African American World War I veterans, and the protests surrounding Birth of a Nation, among numerous other stories during Du Bois’s editorial tenure. As a news periodical alone, Du Bois’s magazine is an indispensable American source.Like its creator, however, The Crisis wasn’t the slightest bit content being or doing just one thing. In an era that has been called the nadir of African American life and culture, Du Bois also used his magazine both to highlight existing literary and artistic voices and to encourage further cultural work in the African American community. When novelist Jessie Redmon Fauset came on board in 1919 as the magazine’s literary editor, she helped deepen and extend that artistic engagement, allowing The Crisis—despite its continuing dedication to news coverage—to rival the era’s other modernist little magazinesin both the breadth and quality of its cultural work. Given that this side to Du Bois’s journalistic endeavor has been described as a vital foundation for and influence on the rise of the Harlem Renaissance, it’s hard to overstate just how significant his literary and artistic support would be in American culture and life.Those historical and cultural components make The Crisisexemplary and seminal in early 20th century America, but it’s Du Bois’s own writing in the magazine that make me excited to include it in a course on him as an author. Just about any editorial from his quarter-century of work would suffice to illustrate that writing, but so too does the brief November 1910 column with which Du Bois launched the magazine. I give you, for example, this sentence, on why Du Bois sees his moment as the titular crisis: “Catholicity and tolerance, reason and forbearance can today make the world-old dream of human brotherhood approach realization; while bigotry and prejudice, emphasized race consciousness and force can repeat the awful history of the contact of nations and groups in the past.” Check out the parallelism and alliteration within those parallel structures alone; Du Bois could just plain write, and The Crisis reflects his own talents just as much as it does its historical and cultural contexts. Next Du Bois readings tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 24, 2013
April 24, 2013: Reading Du Bois, Part Three
[I’ve written a good deal in this space on W.E.B. Du Bois, but I’ve got yet another reason to keep doing so—this fall I’ll be teaching a Major Author course on Du Bois! So this week I’ll be sharing a handful of the many amazing works that make Du Bois such an impressive American author and voice, leading up to a special guest post this weekend.]
On the book that redefined an entire profession—and then went even further.The development of American historiography is a complex and multi-part story, and would certainly have to include mid-19th century pioneers such as Francis Parkman, the 1884 founding of the American Historical Association, and the turn-of-the-century popularization of scholarly history by figures such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles and Mary Beard, among many other moments and figures. So it’d be crazy of me to suggest that one historiographical book stands out as both the single most significant turning point in the profession and the best reflection upon its prior inadequacies, right? Well, then you’re going to have to call me crazy, because I would describe Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America (1935) as both of those things.Even if we knew nothing of the half-century of American historical writing that preceded Du Bois’s book, its strengths and achievements would be clear and impressive. In an era when extended archival research was almost impossible for most scholars, especially those not supported by wealthy institutions (which Du Bois had not been for decades by the time he published Black Reconstruction, having worked primarily at Atlanta University), Du Bois produced a work of history that relied entirely on archival and primary documents, materials he used to develop original, thorough, and hugely sophisticated and convincing analyses of Reconstruction’s efforts, effects, successes, and shortcomings in every relevant state and community. Moreover, since that prior half-century of historical writing, at least on Reconstruction and related themes, had been almost entirely driven by established narratives and myths, Du Bois could not do what virtually every other historian since has done—build on the work done by his or her peers, add his or her voice to existing conversations. He had to invent that work and those conversations, and did so with unequivocal brilliance.That’d be more than enough to make Black Reconstructiona must-read, but in its final chapter, “The Propaganda of History,” Du Bois added two striking additional layers to the book. First and foremost, he called out that half-century of historiographical mythmaking, creating a devastatingly thorough and convincing critique of the historians and works that had combined to produce such a false and destructive narrative of Reconstruction (one echoed and extended by pop cultural works such as Thomas Dixon’s novels, The Birth of a Nation, and, a year after Du Bois’s book, Gone with the Wind). Yet at the same time, decades before Hayden White, Du Bois uses this particular case to analyze the subjective and political contexts that inform even the best history writing, recognizing the limitations of the concept of “scientific” scholarship well before the profession was able or willing to do so. On every level, a book ahead of its time—and still vital to ours.Next Du Bois readings tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the book that redefined an entire profession—and then went even further.The development of American historiography is a complex and multi-part story, and would certainly have to include mid-19th century pioneers such as Francis Parkman, the 1884 founding of the American Historical Association, and the turn-of-the-century popularization of scholarly history by figures such as Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles and Mary Beard, among many other moments and figures. So it’d be crazy of me to suggest that one historiographical book stands out as both the single most significant turning point in the profession and the best reflection upon its prior inadequacies, right? Well, then you’re going to have to call me crazy, because I would describe Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America (1935) as both of those things.Even if we knew nothing of the half-century of American historical writing that preceded Du Bois’s book, its strengths and achievements would be clear and impressive. In an era when extended archival research was almost impossible for most scholars, especially those not supported by wealthy institutions (which Du Bois had not been for decades by the time he published Black Reconstruction, having worked primarily at Atlanta University), Du Bois produced a work of history that relied entirely on archival and primary documents, materials he used to develop original, thorough, and hugely sophisticated and convincing analyses of Reconstruction’s efforts, effects, successes, and shortcomings in every relevant state and community. Moreover, since that prior half-century of historical writing, at least on Reconstruction and related themes, had been almost entirely driven by established narratives and myths, Du Bois could not do what virtually every other historian since has done—build on the work done by his or her peers, add his or her voice to existing conversations. He had to invent that work and those conversations, and did so with unequivocal brilliance.That’d be more than enough to make Black Reconstructiona must-read, but in its final chapter, “The Propaganda of History,” Du Bois added two striking additional layers to the book. First and foremost, he called out that half-century of historiographical mythmaking, creating a devastatingly thorough and convincing critique of the historians and works that had combined to produce such a false and destructive narrative of Reconstruction (one echoed and extended by pop cultural works such as Thomas Dixon’s novels, The Birth of a Nation, and, a year after Du Bois’s book, Gone with the Wind). Yet at the same time, decades before Hayden White, Du Bois uses this particular case to analyze the subjective and political contexts that inform even the best history writing, recognizing the limitations of the concept of “scientific” scholarship well before the profession was able or willing to do so. On every level, a book ahead of its time—and still vital to ours.Next Du Bois readings tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
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