McWilliams Susan J. - A Political Companion to James Baldwin

A Political Companion to James Baldwin

A POLITICAL COMPANION TO

James Baldwin

EDITED BY Susan J. McWilliams

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

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Copyright 2017 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McWilliams, Susan Jane, 1977 editor.

Title: A political companion to James Baldwin / edited by Susan J. McWilliams.

Description: Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, [2017] | Series: Political companions to great American authors | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017038157| ISBN 9780813169910 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813169927 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813169934 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Baldwin, James, 19241987Political and social views. | Politics and literatureUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Politics in literature.

Classification: LCC PS3552.A45 Z849 2017 | DDC 818/.5409dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038157

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Contents

Patrick J. Deneen

Susan J. McWilliams

Lawrie Balfour

P. J. Brendese

Susan J. McWilliams

Nicholas Buccola

George Shulman

Vincent Lloyd

Wilson Carey McWilliams

Joel Alden Schlosser

Brian Norman

Ulf Schulenberg

Jack Turner

Lisa Beard

Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Rachel Brahinsky

Series Foreword

Those who undertake a study of American political thought must attend to the great theorists, philosophers, and essayists. Such a study is incomplete, however, if it neglects American literature, one of the greatest repositories of the nations political thought and teachings.

Americas literature is distinctive because it is, above all, intended for a democratic citizenry. In contrast to eras when an author would aim to inform or influence a select aristocratic audience, in democratic times, public influence and education must resonate with a more expansive, less leisured, and diverse audience to be effective. The great works of Americas literary tradition are the natural locus of democratic political teaching. Invoking the interest and attention of citizens through the pleasures afforded by the literary form, many of Americas great thinkers sought to forge a democratic public philosophy with subtle and often challenging teachings that unfolded in narrative, plot, and character development. Perhaps more than any other nations literary tradition, American literature is ineluctably politicalshaped by democracy as much as it has in turn shaped democracy.

The Political Companions to Great American Authors series highlights the teachings of the great authors in Americas literary and belletristic tradition. An astute political interpretation of Americas literary tradition requires careful, patient, and attentive readers who approach the text with a view to understanding its underlying messages about citizenship and democracy. Essayists in this series approach the classic texts not with a hermeneutics of suspicion but with the curiosity of fellow citizens who believe that the great authors have something of value to teach their readers. The series brings together essays from varied approaches and viewpoints for the common purpose of elucidating the political teachings of the nations greatest authors for those seeking a better understanding of American democracy.

Patrick J. Deneen

Series Editor

Introduction

Susan J. McWilliams

It is a Baldwinian moment, a colleague says to me in the spring of 2016. He says this at the end of an academic year in which college students across the United States havewith a speed that seems to surprise even themselvesorganized protests and occupied buildings and issued demands for greater racial diversity, equity, and sensitivity on their campuses. Those students are reading Baldwin, quoting Baldwin, rediscovering Baldwin. The measure of a certain kind of public conversation, my Facebook feed flashes regularly with snippets of The Fire Next Time, a book that seems so newly relevant to so many (including to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who took the form for his 2015 best seller Between the World and Me from Baldwins tome).1 So to my colleague, I nod. It is a Baldwinian moment.

But it is hardly the first Baldwinian moment, hardly the first moment in which Baldwins prophetic words about the pain and peril of Americas race problem have washed to the forefront of our public life, even in recent years. Consider the year 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin, and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter first appeared on the Internet, then grew into an activist movement that drew new and unflinching attention to the regularity of violence, particularly state violence, against African Americans. As Lisa Beard and Eddie Glaude argue later in this volume, Baldwins imprint on and resonance in the Black Lives Matter movement is unmistakable.

And before Black Lives Matter, the ascendancy and presidency of Barack Obama had seemed to manysee P. J. Brendeses essay in this volumelike Baldwinian moments. After all, Obamas early encounters with Baldwins writings helped shape the future presidents earliest thoughts about American political life and identityhelping, as one writer put it, to turn Barry into Barack.2 One is struck by the connection between them, Colm Tibn observes, two men remaking the world against all the odds in their own likeness, not afraid to ask, when faced with the future of America as represented by its children, using James Baldwins wonderful phrase, questions that are alien to most politicians: What will happen to all that beauty?3 And yet others noted that Baldwin understood, well before a black president seemed an immediate potentiality, that the symbolic placement of a black body in the White House might easily be used to downplay or discredit systematic racial inequalities.4 Against those who longed for Obamas election to mean a finally postracial America, Baldwins writings cautioned, appropriately and presciently, otherwise.