James Baldwin Review Special Issue CFP: “The Standards Which Have Almost Killed You Are Really Mercantile Standards”: Race, Class, Baldwin
James Baldwin infamously critiqued Richard Wright’s “protest fiction” as a semblance of “the savage paradox” at the heart of racialization in the US: “It is not simply the relationship of oppressed to oppressor ... it is also, literally and morally, a blood relationship.” Against Wright’s depiction of American class struggle, Baldwin posed the image of America as a family in conflict, undercutting the myth of race while, paradoxically, upholding that of the nation. It may be useful, rather than choosing sides between these artists, to understand these conflicting social and literary conceptions and their contradictions as bound up in the movement of history, as expressing a changing relation between aesthetics and politics during the 20th century. Wright of course did not shy away from the experience of race; nor did Baldwin altogether avoid the issue of class. And yet Baldwin’s “triumph” against Wright continues to obscure even Baldwin’s own considerations of the entwinement of race and class in the US.
We are looking for papers that develop sustained argumentative analysis of the entwinement of racialization with other forms of domination specific to capitalism, particularly that of class, in the works of James Baldwin. We are especially interested in papers that place Baldwin’s work within a broader historical argument, or that consider literary form as the basis for a comparison of Baldwin’s work with the work of others. We welcome novel reconsiderations of familiar comparisons, such as that of Baldwin and Wright. Unexplored comparisons, such as putting Baldwin in conversation with writers from the global south, would be particularly welcome.
Possible topics or approaches may include:
We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words. All contributions will be considered for publication in a forthcoming special issue of James Baldwin Review.
James Baldwin infamously critiqued Richard Wright’s “protest fiction” as a semblance of “the savage paradox” at the heart of racialization in the US: “It is not simply the relationship of oppressed to oppressor ... it is also, literally and morally, a blood relationship.” Against Wright’s depiction of American class struggle, Baldwin posed the image of America as a family in conflict, undercutting the myth of race while, paradoxically, upholding that of the nation. It may be useful, rather than choosing sides between these artists, to understand these conflicting social and literary conceptions and their contradictions as bound up in the movement of history, as expressing a changing relation between aesthetics and politics during the 20th century. Wright of course did not shy away from the experience of race; nor did Baldwin altogether avoid the issue of class. And yet Baldwin’s “triumph” against Wright continues to obscure even Baldwin’s own considerations of the entwinement of race and class in the US.
We are looking for papers that develop sustained argumentative analysis of the entwinement of racialization with other forms of domination specific to capitalism, particularly that of class, in the works of James Baldwin. We are especially interested in papers that place Baldwin’s work within a broader historical argument, or that consider literary form as the basis for a comparison of Baldwin’s work with the work of others. We welcome novel reconsiderations of familiar comparisons, such as that of Baldwin and Wright. Unexplored comparisons, such as putting Baldwin in conversation with writers from the global south, would be particularly welcome.
Possible topics or approaches may include:
- Baldwin’s realism
- The Baldwin essay as form
- Marxist critiques of Baldwin
- Historical critique of the 21st Century Baldwin revival
- Baldwin and Black Marxism
- Baldwin’s rhetoric of crisis
- The representation of class in Baldwin’s written works
- The representation of class in Baldwin’s speeches and interviews
- The family as symbolic representation of the nation, and vice versa, in Baldwin’s works
- Baldwin before and after 1963: continuities and ruptures
- Baldwin’s use of pronouns and pronouns as site of conflict today
- The use of Baldwin quotation in the graffiti and tweets of riot and protest
- Comparative analysis of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro and The Young Marx
- “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”: Baldwin and the study of “whiteness”
We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words. All contributions will be considered for publication in a forthcoming special issue of James Baldwin Review.