Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s A Postcolonial Reading
Abstract
This thesis will examine the work of Amiri Baraka within the context of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, marking a period of literary nationalism that arguably redefined the course of African American literature. Focusing on the select works of Amiri Baraka, this thesis will examine his increasingly radical perspectives on matters of art, race, and black nationhood in light of race politics of the era. Influenced by the anticolonial politics of the period and the legacy of such militant voices as Malcolm X, Baraka, along with his peers at the Black Arts, sought to set a new literary paradigm that challenged both the trend of integration in black letters and the hierarchy of the Western literary conventions. This thesis, by highlighting the postcolonial aspects of Baraka’s poetics of anti-integration and showing that it is premised on a postcolonial ethos, contends that the black aesthetic concept pioneered by the movement represents a new phase in the course of African American literature. Drawing on the works of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, and other postcolonial theorists, this study approaches Baraka’s work from the aspects of revolution against, and resistance to, colonial domination in light of the anticolonial spirit of the era. In addition, this thesis will examine the literary critics’ differing perspectives on the concept of the black aesthetic so as to provide a more nuanced discussion on the topic.