The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Faculty of Letters and Human
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THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMANITIES A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTORAT IN ENGLISH OPTION: CIVILISATION HEGELIAN THEMES IN BLACK AMERICAN THOUGHT: FROM FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MALCOLM X Submitted by: SABRINA ZERAR Supervised by: Professor Yamina Déramchia PANEL OF EXAMINERS Barkaoui Miloud Prof. University of Annaba, Chairman Déramchia Yamina, Prof. University of Algiers, Supervisor Bensemmane M’hamed Prof. University of Algiers, Examiner Bendjedou Med Yazid, M. C. University of Annaba, Examiner Mansouri Brahim, M. C. University of Algiers, Examiner Maoui Hocine, M. C. University of Annaba, Examiner SEPTEMBER 2009 Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………….I Abstracts…………………………………………………………………………………III General introduction………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One: Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic and Douglass’s Slave Narrative: An Essay in Relation. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………23 A. Douglass’s Life, Times, Affinities and Influence……………………………………………… 24 B. The Representation of Freedom in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass……….34 C. Douglass’s Version of the Hegelian Dialectic of the Slave and Master ……………………..53 D. The Hegelian Journey to Self-Consciousness in Douglass’s Life and Times……………….68 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..74 Chapter Two: Up From Douglass’s Slave Narrative: Booker T. Washington, Georg W.F. Hegel and the American School of Slavery Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….79 A.. Booker T. Washington: Life, Times and the Quest for Legitimacy as Leader………………….80 B. Property and Freedom in Up From Slavery ………………………………………………………100 C. Providential History and the American School of Slavery……………………………………….111 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………123 Chapter Three: The Slave Narrative Revisited: W.E.B. DuBois as Historicist and Cultural Critic Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….128 A.DuBois’s Life, Times and Influence………………………………………………………………….129 B. DuBois and the Hegelian View of History ………………………………………………………….138 C. DuBois and Hegel: Cultural Critics Both …………………………………………………………..150 D. DuBois’s Displacement of Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic to Family Romance………………168 E. DuBois’s Ethical State and the Myth of the Negro’s Cultural Deficiency………………………..177 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….186 I Chapter Four: Marcus Garvey’s Maroonage in Roaring Twenties America and the Quest for National Self-Determination Introduction...………………………………………………………………………….194 A. Garvey’s Life, Times and Influence ……………………………………………………………..196 B. Garvey, Hegel and the Purification of Desires………………………………………………….205 C. Garvey, Hegel and the Negro as a Homo Economicus………………………………………..209 D. Hegel, Garvey and the Moral Imperative ………………………………………..………………217 E. Garvey, Hegel and the Ethical State as a Locus of Objective Freedom …………………….219 F. Patriotism and the Ethical State…………………………………………………………………..223 Conclusion: ……………………………………………………………………………… Chapter Five: King’s Moral Upgrading of the Master-Slave Dialectic and Aesthetic Staging of Providential History Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….… 242 A. King’s Times and Rise to Black Leadership……………………………………………………….243 B. King’s Life as a Hegelian Dialectic of Growth……………………………………………………...250 C. The Moral Upgrading of Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic …………………………………………264 D. Providential History and the Aesthetic Staging of Non-Violent Protest………………………….276 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..287 Chapter Six: Malcolm X’s Autobiography: Social Bondage and the Struggle for Recognition in the Internal Colony Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………292 A. Malcolm X’s Life and Times From a Comparative Perspective……………………………………297 B. The Internal Colony and the Hegelian Dialectic……………………………………………………..309 C. Hegelian and Puritan Providential History……………………………………………………………319 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...334 General Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...339 Selected Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..358 II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My special thanks are due to my supervisor Professor Yamina DERAMCHIA for her insightful guidance, invaluable assistance and positive attitude. I must say that I was really privileged to have worked under her supervision for these last five years. While I commend her sense of professionalism I shoulder the responsibility for any remaining blemishes in this research. My special thanks are also due to the panel of examiners, who have kindly accepted to examine it. No matter what their final appreciation of the work is, I will always remain grateful to each and every one of them for taking time to read it with a critical eye at this very hectic period of the academic year. I address similar thanks to the staffs of the English Department Library, University of Tizi-ouzou; of the Library of the Anglophone World, University of New Sorbonne Paris III; and of the Library François Mitterrand, for their constant cooperation and patience. The list of former teachers, family and friends, colleagues and students who have directly or indirectly encouraged me in completing this research is too long to allow me to name each of them personally. So, to all of them, in the same breath, I extend my heartfelt thanks, sure that each will recognise herself or himself in these acknowledgements. To colleagues of mine at the Department of English who have not yet completed their research, I take this opportunity to wish them full success. Finally, I reserve my very special thanks for the one man and friend in my life, my husband, who has never ceased offering loving support, moral encouragements and unobtrusive assistance throughout the preparation of this research; and to my children who, though still at a tender age, patiently accepted the sacrifice of a mother’s full presence. III Abstract This thesis discusses the Hegelian themes in the works of six representative figures in Black American political thought: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, William B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. It seeks to investigate the articulation of these themes with reference to the major works by George W. Frederick Hegel, namely the Phenomenology of Spirit, The Philosophy of Right and The Philosophy of History. The working hypothesis at the basis of the research is that the quest for social recognition and freedom at the heart of a minority thought like that of the Black American thinkers can be fully grasped within a Hegelian theoretical framework. Taking its bearings from new historicism, cultural materialism and post-colonial theory, this research tries to show that the six Black thinkers under study have, each in his own manner, seized on the methodological tools and themes that Hegel supplied in his works to articulate their concerns for social recognition and freedom. This study attempts to illustrate that each and every writer in the selected corpus has given emphasis to particular Hegelian themes depending on the historical and socio-cultural conditions in which he produced his work. For example, writing in the Abolitionist period of the first half of the nineteenth century, Douglass foregrounded the dialectic of the slave and master. The spirit of resistance remains the dominant feature of his autobiography. The case of Washington was different. Coming onto the post-Reconstruction stage of American history known as the Gilded Age, an age that witnessed the compromise over the ideals of racial freedom, Washington played down the spirit of overt resistance and played up that of accommodation. Washington took his cue from Douglass as regards the importance of industrial education and skilled labour for racial liberation and proceeded to elaborate a philosophy of rights similar to that of Hegel in its seeming abandonment of militancy for political rights. The age of the progressives at the beginning of the twentieth century was the age during which DuBois’s political thought as regards the racial issue reached its full development. Just like the white progressives, DuBois was steeped in the German/Hegelian social thought of the period. Like them he sought to remedy the ills in the social fabric of the Ethical State by resorting to liberal education and cultural refinement. One of the arguments is that DuBois supplemented Hegel’s the Philosophy of World History by including the Negro as one of its prime movers towards the Absolute. In the process of setting the Negro on the stage of World History alongside the likes of Shakespeare, DuBois made no elbow room for the Hegelian slave about whom his contemporary fellow Black man Washington had made such a big case. Marcus Garvey took over the idea of racial separation from Booker T. Washington in the 1920s to elaborate the idea of a nostos or a return of the Black race to Africa. In this emphasis on the idea of a nation as a sine qua non condition for racial self-definition and the achievement of freedom, Garvey came close to Hegel’s ethical state as an organic unity. Racial nationalism is related to the nativist thought of the “roaring twenties”. With Garvey’s deportation in 1925, the racial issue temporarily lulled up because of the Great Depression before surging up again with the reversal of the “separate but equal” doctrine by the Supreme Court decision of 1954. The international context marked by the start of the Cold War and the “blowing winds” of decolonisation as well as the assumption of world leadership by the United States