Marxism, Anarchism, and the Black Radical Tradition

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course serves as an introduction to Black Radical Tradition as an insurgent political formation and intellectual practice. While many genealogies of Black Studies depart from the formal institutionalization of Black Studies departments and programs in the latter half of the 20th Century, this course is differently attuned to the dialectic of Black thought and Black insurgency in which the latter-what C.L.R. James describes as a history of Pan-African revolt against the plantation and its afterlives-is always a precondition of the former. As a critical survey of said histories and the ideas derived from them, this course will examine the relationship between knowledge production (theory) and material struggle (praxis) in the Black Radical Tradition alongside adjacent but distinct political traditions such as Marxism and anarchism. Born out of a protracted "state of emergency," the Black Radical Tradition permits us to appraise, critique, and confront the alarms raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and global climate collapse alongside settler colonialism and plantation slavery in the longue duree. To this end, students will consult non-fiction, literature, art, and film from authors and creators such as James, Audre Lorde, Lizzie Borden, W.E.B. Du Bois, Josina Machel, Kimathi Mohammed, and Lorenzo Ervin.