QUIET DAWN: TIME, AESTHETICS, AND THE AFTERLIVES OF BLACK RADICALISM Nijah Cunningham Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Nijah Cunningham All rights reserved ABSTRACT Quiet Dawn: Time, Aesthetics, and the Afterlives of Black Radicalism Nijah Cunningham Quiet Dawn: Time, Aesthetics, and the Afterlives of Black Radicalism traces the unfulfilled utopian aspirations of the revolutionary past that haunt the present of the African diaspora. Taking its name from the final track on famed black nationalist musician Archie Shepp’s 1972 Attica Blues, this dissertation argues that the defeat of black radical and anticolonial projects witnessed during the turbulent years of the sixties and seventies not only represent past “failures” but also point to a freedom that has yet to arrive. Working at the convergence of literature, performance, and visual culture, Quiet Dawn argues that the unfinished projects of black and anticolonial revolution live on as radical potentialities that linger in the archive like a “haunting refrain.” Quiet Dawn offers a theory the haunting refrain of black sociality that emanates across seemingly disparate geopolitical nodes. The concept of the haunting refrain designates an affective register through which otherwise hidden and obscure regions of the past can be apprehended. The dissertation attends to the traces of black sociality that linger in the archive through an examination of the literary and critical works of black intellectuals such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Rather than lay claim to political heroes, Quiet Dawn turns to the past in an attempt to give an account of the dispersed social forces that gathered around the promise of a black world. Each chapter offers an example of the haunting refrain of black social life that lingers in the past. In this way, the dissertation as a whole gives an account of the radical potentialities that register as hums, echoes, muted chants, and shadow songs of the “long sixties.” Quiet Dawn contributes to scholarship on black internationalism and intervenes in current critical debates around race, gender, and sexual violence in the fields of black studies, feminist studies, and postcolonial studies. Its theorization of black social life as a spectral presence is an attempt at attending to the other others that haunt contemporary critiques of power that seek to find redemption in this irredeemable world. To be sure, this project strikes neither an optimistic nor pessimistic note. Rather, it is rooted in the belief that there is an infinite amount of hope that we have yet to apprehend. ! TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ii Acknowledgments iii Preface: Eclipsed Horizons viii Introduction: Whispers of the “What If?” 1 Chapter 1: Muted Chants: Humanism, Social Living, 28 and the Hum in Sylvia Wynter’s The Hills of Hebron Chapter 2: Shadow Songs: Negritude, Animation, 74 and the Spectacle of Postcolonial Futurity Chapter 3: Echoes: Tragedy, Elegy, 133 and the Specters of Malcolm X Epilogue: The Disappearance of Negroes 179 Bibliography 187 ! i! LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. “Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Standing With One Foot On An Undetonated Bomb,” January 1, 1936. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS Figure 2. George E. Simpson, “R.T. Youth Group Street Meeting (Cut off Bicycle at Bottom),”(1956) Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution. Figure 3. “Untitled,” Liberator, July 1966. Figure 4. Stills from Ousmane Sembène, Borom Sarret (1963) Figure 5. Photograph of Betty Shabazz and daughters, Negro Digest November 197 Figure 6. Frontispiece from For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X Figure 7. Front page of Negro Digest, November 1967 Figure 8. Still from Jeannette Ehlers, “Black Bullets” (2012) ! ii! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It was only at the end of this project that realized I have been thinking about generations. With that said, it is only fitting that I acknowledge the four people who came into the world and showed me my place in it: Diamond Cunningham, Jamel Parris, Dominique Cunningham, and Joshua Parris. You have all taught me so much about growing in the world. This dissertation would not be possible without the unwavering support of my committee: Saidiya Hartman, David Scott, and Brent Hayes Edwards. They taught me how to read, trust my intellectual instincts, and think out load. If there are any shortcomings with this dissertation, it is due to my own limitations and inflexibility. My project has also benefited from the generous feedback of my outside readers Tavia Nyong’o and Tina Campt. In addition to my committee and readers, I have learned from the tremendous faculty at Columbia University who in one way or another have helped me along this journey: Bob O’Meally, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Marcellous Blount, Stathis Gourgouris, Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Marianne Hirsch, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Eleanor Johnson, Jennifer Wenzel, Josef Sorett, Alondra Nelson, Laura Ciolkowski, Samuel Roberts, Michael Taussig, and Richard Iton. Sharon Harris, Virginia Kay, and Valencia Ortiz have nurtured my growth and guided me through various administrative obstacles. These are just a few of the people who made it possible for me to see Columbia as my home institution. The West African Research Association and the West African Research Center provided me with the financial and institutional support that I needed to conduct research in Dakar, Senegal in 2012. Jennifer Yanco, Ousmane Sene, and Stephanie Guirand helped me discover crucial archival resources. Matthew Swagler, Rosalind Fredericks, and Eileen Julien introduced me to Dakar and helped me see my own work in a new light. ! iii! I began to apprehend many of the ideas that are developed in this dissertation while I was an undergraduate at Boston College where I was lucky to work with wonderfully supportive faculty: Roberto Avant-Mier, Davarian Baldwin, Jamel Bell, M. Shawn Copeland, Rhonda Frederick, Deborah Levenson, Zine Magubane, Stephen Pfohl, and Cynthia Young. The very idea of graduate school would have been unimaginable without their guidance and encouragement. The Small Axe Project has reoriented my thinking in tremendous ways. As founder and editor of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, David Scott introduced me to the importance of “journal work” and taught me the vital lesson of how paths are made by walking. Kelly Josephs and Vanessa Agard-Jones have been incredible mentors who I have done my best to fashion myself after. I am grateful for the support of the entire Small Axe team: Juliet Ali, Gabrielle DaCosta, Alex Gil Fuentes, Kaiama Glover, Erica Moiah James, and Vanessa Perez- Rosario—just to name a few. I am also grateful for Kaiama Glover for inviting me to serve as a Graduate Fellow for the Digital Black Atlantic Project through the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University. I thank all of the members of the African American Colloquium for reading messy pages, offering detailed feedback on drafts, and chasing me down when deadlines approached: Emily Hainze, Kaveh Landsverk, Alex Altson, Joshua Bennett, Erica Richardson, Jang Wook, Paula Hopkins, Jarvis McGinnis, Mariel Rodney, and Tiana Reid. This dissertation would not have seen the light of day without the supportive space we created together. I also thank all of the members of the Black Writers group who inspired me at every turn. My writing partner, Amaka Okechukwu, has seen me through this entire process and I would not have been able to write this ! iv! dissertation without our weekly meetings. She is a model intellectual, activist, and organizer working against the tyranny of student life. Of course, I have to thank my incredibly supportive classmates and friends who helped me get through graduate school and complete this dissertation: Emily Lordi, Imani Owens, Amanda Alexander, Autumn Womack, Alvan Ikoku, Irvin Hunt, Lytton Smith, Abdi Latif Ega, Timothy Donahue, Jamie Parra, Lindsay Van Tine, Adam Spry, Alexandra Perisic, Lucy Sheehan, Courtney Bryan, Brittney Taylor, Elik Elhanan, Matthew Morrison, Nikolas Sparks, James Roane, Natacha Nsabimana, Yasmine Espert, and Muna Gurung. My friends and colleagues both before and beyond Columbia have nurtured my intellectual curiosity and forced me to embrace the delight of coming together: Jasmine Johnson, Julia Mendoza, Joshua Begley, Sampada Aranke, Jeremy Glick, Rizvana Bradley, Ben Fuller-Googins, Nick Fuller-Googins, April Elisabeth Pierce, John Wang, Jette Gindner, Sarah Kearney, Katrina Quisumbing King, Yejin Lee, John Steven Hellman, Rose Love Chou, Cynthia Frezzo, Noelle Greene, Jonathan Barry, James Walsh, Crystal Chin, Gabriela Fullon, Jodi-Ann Burey, Anne-Sophie Reichert, and Ezra Peirce. This dissertation carries a trace of each one of these brilliant individuals. Tiana Reid. I would call her the midwife of this project if the metaphor weren’t so loaded and distracting. I can simply say that I am grateful for her tenaciousness, organization skills, creativity, passion, and grace. I thank her for animating my thought and teaching me how to have trust in writing. It is difficult to explain how important my family has been throughout this entire process. It is overwhelming to try and articulate how my aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousin’s cousins have impacted my growth as a scholar and the support they have given me along the way. ! v! I thank my parents Dionne Marriott-Parris and Winston Cunningham for teaching me how to think, calming my fear of dreaming and pushed me to dream without fear. I thank my stepfather, Leslie Parris, for always being there when I needed a helping hand. Aunt Dell (Mama), Auntie Winsome, Auntie Charmaine, and Shelli were the women who raised me. Bobby and Dee lit the fuse. I thank my cousins for never letting me stop striving. My grandmother Floris Cunningham has been a constant source of patience and joy.