A Black Anarchist Take on James Baldwin

1. SHOW INTRO

   1. Episode Welcome

   2. WHO WAS JAMES BALDWIN?

      1. BIO: ​​James Baldwin (1924-1987) was an influential American writer, essayist, playwright, and social critic born in Harlem, New York City. Growing up in a challenging environment marked by poverty and religious strictness, Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948 to escape the oppressive racial climate in the U.S. This relocation allowed him to write freely about race, sexuality, and identity, producing notable works such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "Giovanni's Room," and "The Fire Next Time." A prominent voice in the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin's eloquent explorations of social issues, including race, sexuality, and class, continue to resonate today, cementing his legacy as a fearless advocate for equality and justice.

   3. WHAT THIS EPISODE WILL BE…

      1. “Meeting the Man”

      2. “My Dungeon Shook”

      3. Themes of imprisonment and anti-Blackness in his work

      4. Can James Baldwin be read as an Afro-pessimist? Why or why not?

      5. How, if at all, is his work relevant today? 

2. “Meeting the Man” (documentary)

   1. What was the source of Baldwin’s frustration?

   2. Q: How did the 1960s lead to this angry, rageful Baldwin?

   3. Why does Bastille seem to be so important?

      1. Symbol of the struggle for  liberation flaunted as complete project of when the desires of french or european liberty demands a prisoner of another

   4. Balwin seems to be contextualizing himself within a revolutionary impulse as whole being, not as a revo;uionary writer, or just another black american in paris, and the filmmakers are oblivious to this impulse because they need to sustain themselves of the system and prison that's killing him

   5. NOTABLE QUOTES FROM FILM

      1. “People came out of those streets not very long ago to tear down this prison and my point is that the prison is really here… We built it all the time. I’m speaking more about my own country, than I am speaking about France… I represent one of the many political prisoners of America.”

         1. BASTILLE BACKGROUND: “The Storming of the Bastille (French: Prise de la Bastille [pʁiz də la bastij]) occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armoury, fortress and political prison known as the Bastille. After four hours of fighting and 94 deaths the insurgents were able to enter the Bastille. The governor de Launay and several members of the garrison were killed after surrender. The Bastille then represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of its storming and was already scheduled for demolition, but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power. Its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution.” (WIKI)

      2. “I am not so much a writer as I am a citizen and I got to bear witness to something which I know…”

      3. “I could be Bobby Seale. I could be Angela Davis… INTERVIEWER: But you couldn’t because you’re a writer.”

      4. “JB: I am not at all what you think I am…. I think you think I am an exotic survivor.”

      5. “JB: WHEN A WHITE MAN TEARS DOWN A PRISON, HE IS TRYING TO LIBERATE HIMSELF. WHEN A BLACK MAN DOES IT, HE IS A SAVAGE. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU, FOR ME, ARE MY PRISON.”

      6. “You cant turn you back long enough in america to write a book or find yourself

   6. Q: Why does Baldwin seem so angry in this documentary?

3. “My Dungeon Shook” (essay)

4. Baldwin and patriotism

   1. Compare fire next time and notes on a native son

5. Baldwin and anti-authoritarianism

   1. https://jacobin.com/2021/01/james-baldwin-socialism-blank-panthers

      1. While commenting on the Panthers in No Name in the Street, Baldwin focuses on the party’s armed cop-watch patrols and the state’s ruthless response. But he also describes — and identifies with — the party’s socialist aims: Huey believes, and I do, too, in the necessity of establishing a form of socialism in this country — what Bobby Seale would probably call a “Yankee Doodle type” socialism. This means an indigenous socialism, formed by, and responding to, the real needs of the American people. This is not a doctrinaire position, no matter how the Panthers may seem to glorify Mao or Che or Fanon. . . . The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the observation that the world’s present economic arrangements doom most of the world to misery; that the way of life dictated by these arrangements is both sterile and immoral; and, finally, that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these arrangements obtain.

      2. Fire these times quotes

      3. https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teachers

         1. “Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev, but from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible — and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people — must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.”

         2. “It would seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted. Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society. “

         3. “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.”

         4. “What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors. It’s astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn’t stay there any longer and had to go someplace else to make it”

         5. “America is not the world and if America is going to become a nation, she must find a way — and this child must help her to find a way to use the tremendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy.”

      4. No name in the street

         1. “I was not an African prince, but a domestic nigger and that no foreign government would be offended if my corpse were to be found clogging up the sewers. I had never had occasion to reflect before on the brilliance of the white strategy: blacks didn’t know each other, could barely speak to each other, and, therefore, could scarcely trust each other—and therefore, wherever we turned, we found ourselves in the white man’s territory, and at the white man’s mercy. Four hundred years in the West had certainly turned me into a Westerner—there was no way around that. But four hundred years in the West had also failed to bleach me—there was no way around that, either—and my history in the West had, for its daily effect, placed me in such mortal danger that I had fled, all the way around the corner, to France. And if I had fled, to Israel, a state created for the purpose of protecting Western interests, I would have been in yet a tighter bind: on which side of Jerusalem would I have decided to live? In 1948, no African nation, as such, existed, and could certainly neither have needed, nor welcomed, a penniless black American, with the possible exception of Liberia. But, even with black overseers, I would not have lasted long on the Firestone rubber plantation.”

         2.  In film they ask about escape, where does a fleeing black man go if he wanted to escape, when asked question baldwin responded, what have i escaped