W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line [Paperback]

Adolph L. Reed Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 11, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0195130987 | ISBN-13: 978-0195130980

In this explosive book, Adolph Reed covers for the first time the full sweep and totality of W. E. B. Du Bois's political thought. Departing from existing scholarship, Reed locates the sources of Du Bois's thought in the cauldron of reform-minded intellectual life at the turn of the century, demonstrating that a commitment to liberal collectivism, an essentially Fabian socialism, remained pivotal in Du Bois's thought even as he embraced a range of political programs over time, including radical Marxism. He remaps the history of twentieth-century progressive thought and sharply criticizing recent trends in Afro-American, literary, and cultural studies.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his own time, W.E.B. Du Bois was a controversial figure, and now, more than 30 years after his death, he continues to be so. Born in 1868, Du Bois was a central figure in African American intellectual life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet many of his positions are difficult to reconcile with current African American thought. Du Bois, for example, was an elitist who believed that black society was divided between "the talented tenth" and everybody else. Yet in his later years, he joined the communist party and moved to Africa, where he lived out the remainder of his life. Since his death in 1963, a generation of African American intellectuals have tried to interpret, explain, or revise him according to their own beliefs; now Adolph Reed Jr. weighs in with W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought.

Reed's approach to Du Bois is simple: he believes that what you read is what you get. When, for example, Du Bois wrote movingly in The Souls of Black Folk of a feeling of "twoness," a sense of warring natures, Reed suggests that, far from embracing a notion of double consciousness, Du Bois was actually following precepts of early 20th-century social theory which described the split between primitive and civilized societies. In addition to his discussion about Du Bois, Reed comments on many other African American critics at work today, from Houston Baker to Henry Louis Gates, making the author of W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought as controversial as his subject. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Adolph Reed's book is quite simply brilliant. It liberates Du Bois scholarship from a host of disfiguring anachronisms. By persuasively establishing the specific intellectual context within which Du Bois worked, Reed systematically reinterprets the meaning and significance of Du Bois's most influential writings. The logic is searing, the scholarship is impeccable, and, as always with Reed, there's a bristling polemical punchline as well. Anyone who takes Du Bois seriously must come to terms with this book."--James Oakes, CUNY Graduate Center

"[Reed's] stubborn belief in class politics, his fury at the self-satisfaction of intellectuals, and his repudiation of postmodern fashion...make him a rare tonic."--The Nation

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195130987
• ISBN-13: 978-0195130980
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,558,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reconceptualizes African American Political Thought, February 16, 2002

By 

Lester K. Spence (Baltimore, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (Hardcover)

When most think about Dubois, one of the first theoretical formulations that come to mind is the oft-quoted "double-consciousness." In this work, Reed's central task is to situate African American political thought squarely within the material context in which it occurs using W.E.B. Dubois as the focus for this project. Along the way Reed slices and dices Henry Louis Gates and the new black intellectuals, as well as the troublesome concept of "double consciousness" that Reed shows to be overstudied at best. Clearly among the best works of its kind to come to light in some years.