Abstract:
This thesis aims to situate four of Amiri Baraka's poetry collections--Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, The Dead Lecturer, Black Magic, and Hard Facts--alongside Frantz Fanon's model of development of the colonised intellectual. This development study of Baraka' s life and work adopts a broader geographical and political framework than much of the previous commentaries to see what insights Baraka's poetry may offer to other communities forced to deal with racist and other forms of oppression. This thesis will argue Fanon' s paradigm offers a useful means to understand Baraka as outsider, who in times of social upheaval struggles to 'decolonise' himself, then return to, and decolonise, his people. This can be seen as a type of quest for personal, cultural and national identity. The concept of identity formed around W. E. B. Dubois's 'veil' of split consciousness will be central to the work, as it provides a dynamic for understanding the poet's continuous battles to find a meaningful place for himself and his people-- analogous issues for all colonised peoples. Assuming Fanon' s polemical and dialectical stance, the thesis proposes to chart Baraka' s career as a poet as it moves through assimilation, transition, nationalism, and Marxism, in relation to the 'mother culture' in which he develops as a person and a poet. Larger political conflicts form a counterpoint to the development of what Fanon calls 'the native intellectual', who is inspired by, and inspires in return, his people.
