All This Sociology and Economics Jazz: Blackness, Writing, and Totality After Civil Rights
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English Language and Literature
First Advisor
Goldsby, Jacqueline
Abstract
Prompted by the outbreak of black rebellion and the stasis and supersession of the US struggle for civil rights, a few writers in the mid-1960s attempted to rethink the very concept of totality. Many of them were lapsed Marxists; others saw themselves as supplying Marxism with a vital update or correction. “All This Sociology and Economics Jazz” examines these bold attempts to produce a total social picture. Formulated against the backdrop of an ascendant Black Power, such idiosyncratic theories bear the mark of their specific historical moment. Irving Howe’s writings on black literature and democratic socialism are juxtaposed with Harold Cruse’s black nationalist program for cultural revolution; June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller’s joint plan for the total demolition and reconstruction of Harlem after the riot of 1964 is read alongside two manifestos composed after the Watts Rebellion of 1965—one by the French writer Guy Debord, the other by the Detroit militants James and Grace Lee Boggs. The themes and fixations of the 1960s texts are also viewed through the prism of John Edgar Wideman’s novels and works of memoir, and revisited in an analysis of the George Floyd Rebellion.
Recommended Citation
Haslett, Tobi, "All This Sociology and Economics Jazz: Blackness, Writing, and Totality After Civil Rights" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1486.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1486
