Table of Contents

Acknowledgements IV

Abstract V

Chapter One: Introduction 1

1.1 General Background 1

1.2 Statement of the Problem 7

1.3 Objectives and Significance of the Study 13

1.3.1 Significance of the Study 13

1.3.2 Hypothesis 15

1.3.3 Purpose of the Study 16

1.3.4 Research Questions 17

1.4 Literature Review 19

1.5 Methodology and Approach 27

1.5.1 Definition of Key Terms 30

1.5.2 Limitation and Delimitation 35

1.6 Organization of the Study 36

Chapter Two: Political Criticism and Cultural Materialism 40

2.1 Marxism and Political Criticism 42

2.2 Hegemony 51

2.3 Ideology 55

2.4 Cultural Materialism 59

2.4.1 Raymond Williams and the Birth of Cultural Materialism 62

2.4.2 Michel Foucault and the Influence on Cultural Materialism 64

2.4.2.1 The Definition of Power: Traditional and Modern 65

2.4.2.2 Panopticism 70

2.4.2.3 Power and Resistance 75

2.4.3 The Dissident Reading of Literature 78

Chapter Three: A Bohemian Poet and Novelist 89

3.1 Ideological Issues in Beat Poetry of Young Amiri Baraka 91

3.2The System of Dante’s Hell:An Outsider among Outsiders 103

3.2.1 Challenging the Discourse of Fiction Writing:

Creating a Dissident Voice 118

3.2.2 Radical Unconventional Characterization:

Involvement in a Subculture 123

3.2.3 A Confused Alien in Search of Meaning:

Political and Cultural Context 126

Chapter Four: Cursing the White Race 132

4.1 Baraka’s Harlem Poetry 133

4.2 Trying to Find a New Black Identity 145

4.3 African-American Drama and Baraka’s Profound Role 152

4.3.1Dutchman: The Circular Story of the White and Blackness 158

4.3.2The Slave: The Play of Racial Vandalism 172

Chapter Five: Constructing a Dissident Subculture 187

5.1 African American Poetry and the Role of Amiri Baraka 188

5.1.1 Black Nationalist Poetry: Redefinition and Enrichment

of Black Identity 193

5.1.2 Shaping a Black Dissident Subculture 221

5.1.3 Imamu Amiri Baraka: A Spiritual Leader among Black Americans 228

5.2 Revolutionary Playwright: Fighting with the White World 230

5.2.1Experimental Death Unit #1: Planning a Revolution 232

5.2.2A Black Mass: The Intense Hatred of White as the Secondary Race 240

5.2.3Great Goodness of Life: The White Race as a Panoptic Force 251

Chapter Six: Universal Dissidence 262

6.1 Baraka’s LatePolitical Poetry and the Global Resistance 264

6.2Tales of the Out and the Gone: Social and Cultural Short Stories 286

6.2.1 “War Stories”: Sociopolitical Matters in America

during the 1970s and 1980s 289

6.2.1.1 “New & Old”, “Neo-American” and “Mondongo”: Marxist Stories 290

6.2.1.2 “From War Stories”: What is True Democracy? 303

6.2.2 “Tales of the Out and the Gone”: Revolutionary Disorder 306

6.2.2.1 “The Rejected Buppie”: Racial Assimilation and Absurdity 309

6.2.2.2 Universal Rottenness and the Appreciation of

Black Music and Culture 311

6.2.2.3 “Conrad Loomis and the Clothes Ray”: Playing with Language 316

6.2.2.4 “Dream Comics”: Etymological Dissection 319

6.2.2.5 “Post- and Pre-Mortem Dialogue”: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 321

Chapter Seven: Conclusion 327

7.1 Summing up 327

7.2 Findings and Implications 339

7.3 Suggestions for Further Research 348

Bibliography 352

Appendix 363

Figure 1 363

Figure 2 364

Figure 3 365

Figure 4 366

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 General Background

In order to get a clear picture of Baraka’s ideology in his literary texts, the researcher intends to begin by Baraka’s biography. Imamu Amiri Baraka (October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), also known as Amiri Baraka and Everett LeRoi Jones, the writer of over fourteen volumes of poetry, dramatist (over twenty plays, three jazz operas), essayist (producer of seven volumes of nonfiction), fiction writer (two novels and several volumes of collected short stories), actor, movie director, and political activist, is a unique force in American literature[1]. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential and preeminent African-American literary figures of our time; for instance, Paul Vangelisti asserts “along with Ezra Pound, may be one of the most significant and least understood American poets

of our century” (Vangelisti xi). In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante registered Imamu Amiri Baraka on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.