Intellectuals Of The Black Atlantic World: Literature, Culture And The Nation

Module description

This course considers a range of different kinds of literature produced by black Atlantic intellectuals alongside the cultural and aesthetic theories they developed to support and contextualize their efforts. Starting from the late nineteenth-century involvement of black would-be philosophes and savants in the building of an independent Liberia - and in particular, their involvement with its educational institutions - we will look in detail at the autobiographical, poetic and fictional writings of several different generations of artists and theorists. We will not only consider their own works of literature but also their aesthetic and philosophical views as to how and where literary enterprise and cultural criticism might contribute to the life of national communities as well as to the formation of trans-national cultural and political initiatives. We will carefully examine their various manifestos and prescriptions for literary production, particularly with regard to the formation and reproduction of the cultural forms that were imagined to correspond to their distinctive national spirit. Moving into the twentieth-century, we will address the impact of the world wars and wars of decolonisation upon their understanding of themselves and the broader issues arising from their chosen roles as writers and leaders. The course will conclude with a consideration of where the legacies of black Atlantic intellectuals have impacted upon anti- and postcolonial literary production and reception.

Assessment details

Coursework

1 x 1,000 word commentary (15%); 1 x 3,000 word essay (85%)

Teaching pattern

Weekly two-hour seminar

Suggested reading list

General background reading on intellectuals:

• Edward Said Representations of the Intellectual Vintage, 1996
• Antonio Gramsci “On Intellectuals” (an extract from his Prison Notebooks).
• Michel Foucault “The Political Function of The Intellectual” Radical Philosophy 17, 1977.
• bell hooks & Cornel West Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (selections) South End Press.
• Cornel West “The Dilemma of The Black Intellectual” Cultural Critique, Autumn 1985.
• Harold Cruse The Crisis of The Negro Intellectual (selections) Quill, 1984 [1967].
• Lawrence P. Jackson The Indignant Generation Princeton.

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