Description
Book SynopsisUn-American is Bill Mullen's revisionist account of renowned author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois's political thought toward the end of his life, a period largely dismissed and neglected by scholars. He describes Du Bois's support for what the Communist International called world revolution as the primary objective of this aged radical's activism. Du Bois was a champion of the world's laboring millions and critic of the Cold War, a man dedicated to animating global political revolution. Mullen argues that Du Bois believed that the Cold War stalemate could create the conditions in which the world powers could achieve not only peace but workers' democracy. Un-American shows Du Bois to be deeply engaged in international networks and personal relationships with revolutionaries in India, China, and Africa. Mullen explores how thinkers like Karl Marx, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Gandhi, and C.L.R. James helped him develop a theory of world revolution at a stage in his life when most commentat
Trade Review“Bill Mullen’s
Un-American is a fascinating account of Du Bois’s revolutionary thinking and a remarkable contribution to Du Bois studies. Mullen explores in impressive detail the long developing influence of Marx, Marxist theoreticians, and a broader spectrum of radical thinkers and activists from across the globe on Du Bois’s political thought and vision for human liberation. In doing so Mullen illuminates seldom-explored writings and activities from the final decades of Du Bois’s career while successfully reinterpreting familiar texts and events from earlier periods. Mullen also develops his own keen theoretical observations from both the insights and contradictions of Du Bois’s thought and that of those with whom he was in dialogue.”—Eric Porter, Professor of History and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz
“Un-American is a bold and long overdue inquiry into ‘the late Du Bois,’ full of keen originality and brilliantly associative thinking. With his signature level of professional competence, Mullen defies easy categorizations to track the black radical scholar’s diasporic identity through the optic of ‘world revolution.’ This investigation, vexed by the political horrors of imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, yields unexpected and revealing parallels with the ideas of revolutionary thinkers such as Leon Trotsky and C.L.R. James. The result is a landmark study in the contours of affiliation, expanding the archive and breaking down polarized thought. This is a book to engage, chew over, and debate.”—Alan Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments The Forethought 1. From Comintern to the "Colonial International": Making the Diasporic International, Making World Revolution 2. "Experiments of Marxism": W.E.B. Du Bois and the Specter of 1917 3. India, the "Indian Ideology," and the World Revolution 4. World Revolution at the Crossroads: Japan, China, and the Long Shadow of Stalinism 5. Making Peace: Gendering the World Revolution/Reckoning the Third World The Afterthought Notes Index
