Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

53

Date

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Concentration

African American Literature

Committee Chair

Kathy Lou Schultz

Committee Member

Reginald Martin

Committee Member

Carey James Mickalites

Abstract

Abstract Campbell, Emahunn Raheem Ali. MA. The University of Memphis. August 2010. “The Specter of Marxism: The Marxian Influence on Amiri Baraka’s Black Nationalist Poetry.” Kathy Lou Schultz. Baraka’s move from cultural nationalism to Marxism came through an understanding “that it was the [capitalism] that oppressed [Blacks] and that it could not only utilize whites, who seem to be in control of it, but that it could also utilize Blacks.” His reasoning is not solely based on one’s relation to the means of production; it is also based on what he was observing in his native city of Newark, New Jersey during the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly as it related to the political and social ascendency of the Black petit bourgeoisie. It is my argument that these Marxian antecedents manifest themselves in his cultural nationalist poetry. Furthermore, these ideological influences and aesthetic manifestations, which have internal and external contradictions, function dialectically in a way that anticipates his shift from cultural nationalism to Marxism.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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