A political biography that presents W.E.B. Du Bois as a life-long global revolutionary, not simply an African American reformer
Acknowledgments 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
Bill V. Mullen is Professor of American Studies and English at Purdue University. He is the author of Afro-Orientalism and Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935–1946. He is the editor (with Fred Ho) of Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections Between African Americans and Asian Americans and (with Cathryn Watson) of W.E.B. Du Bois on Asia: Crossing the World Color Line.
“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
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