summer 1998 number 9 $5 TREASON TO WHITENESS IS LOYALTY TO HUMANITY Race Traitor Treason to whiteness is loyaltyto humanity NUMBER 9 f SUMMER 1998 editors: John Garvey, Beth Henson, Noel lgnatiev, Adam Sabra contributing editors: Abdul Alkalimat. John Bracey, Kingsley Clarke, Sewlyn Cudjoe, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin.James W. Fraser, Carolyn Karcher, Robin D. G. Kelley, Louis Kushnick , Kathryne V. Lindberg, Kimathi Mohammed, Theresa Perry. Eugene F. Rivers Ill, Phil Rubio, Vron Ware Race Traitor is published by The New Abolitionists, Inc. post office box 603, Cambridge MA 02140-0005. Single copies are $5 ($6 postpaid), subscriptions (four issues) are $20 individual, $40 institutions. Bulk rates available. Website: http://www. postfun. com/racetraitor. Midwest readers can contact RT at (312) 794-2954. For 1nformat1on about the contents and ava1lab1l1ty of back issues & to learn about the New Abol1t1onist Society v1s1t our web page: www.postfun.com/racetraitor PostF un is a full service web design studio offering complete web development and internet marketing. Contact us today for more information or visit our web site: www.postfun.com/services. Post Office Box 1666, Hollywood CA 90078-1666 Email: [email protected] RACE TRAITOR I SURREALIST ISSUE Guest Editor: Franklin Rosemont FEATURES The Chicago Surrealist Group: Introduction ....................................... 3 Surrealists on Whiteness, from 1925 to the Present .............................. 5 Franklin Rosemont: Surrealism-Revolution Against Whiteness ............ 19 J. Allen Fees: Burning the Days ......................................................3 0 Dave Roediger: Plotting Against Eurocentrism ....................................32 Pierre Mabille: The Marvelous-Basis of a Free Society ...................... .40 Philip Lamantia: The Days Fall Asleep with Riddles ........................... .41 The Surrealist Group of Madrid: Beyond Anti-Racism ....................... .42 Penelope Rosemont: Nancy Cunard-"Thinking Sympathetically Black" . .46 Nancy Cunard: "Does Anyone Know Any Negroes?" (1931) .................51 Myrna Bell Rochester: Rene Crevel: Critic of White Patriarchy .............55 Rene Crevel: The Black Woman in the Brothel (1931) ..........................61 Surrealist Group of France: Murderous Humanitarianism (1932) ...........67 Ronnie Burk: Racist Cliches in the U.S.A. ........................................70 Irene Plazewska: Dream Constellations .............................................72 Paul Garon: Psychiatry 's White Problem-Racism as Therapy ...............73 Eric Bragg: Miserabilism and the New Eugenics .................................87 Larry Romano: Oh Sisters of Haiti ..................... .............................91 Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas: My Escape to Africa .................................93 Franklin Rosemont: Jacques Vache, One-Man War Against Whiteness ....95 Joseph Jablonski: Lord Buckley .................................. ....................97 Ron Sakolsky: Harry Smith's American Dreamscape ......................... 100 Charles Radcliffe: Whitewashing the Blues ...................................... 106 Daniel C. Boyer: Are You Crazy? Mental Illness & Whiteness ............. 117 The Surrealist Movement in the U.S.: For Tyree Guyton ................... 120 Hilary Booth: We 're Sorry He's Not Sorry ...................................... 122 REVIEWS Ronnie Burk: The Fo recast Is Hot! Tracts of the Surrealist Movement in the U.S., 1966-1976, by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont and Paul Garon ...12 6 Ill Dennis Brutus: Black on White: Black Writers on Whatit Means to Be White, edited by Dave Roediger. .128 /// Tom Moon: Blues and the Poetic Sp irit by Paul Garon ...12 9 Ill F. R.: Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere by Jayne Cortez ...131 ///Dave Roediger: Yo' Mama's Dis­ funktional by Robin D. G. Kelley ...132 /// Rachel Blackwell: The Story of Mary MacLane & Other Writings, edited by Penelope Rosemont. 134 /// Warren Leming: From Bughouse Square to the Beat Generation: Selected Ravings of Slim Brundage, edited/introduced by Franklin Rosemont. 135 Ill Peter Lamborn Wilson: Paschal Beverly Randolph: A 19th-Century Black American Sp iritualist, Rosicrucian and Sex Magician by John P. Deveney ...13 7 /// F. R.: Bed ofSp hinxes by Philip Lamantia ...138 ILLUSTRATIONS: Victor Brauner, Ronnie Burk, Laura Corsigilia, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas, Robert Green, Ted Joans, Ribitch, Marko Ristic, Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont, Joel Williams, Haifa Zangana "Louis Wins! It's Joe by a Knockout!" Collage by MARKO RISTIC, Belgrade, 1939 INTRODUCTION This special issue of Race Traitor focuses on a particular group of race traitors-the world's first Surrealist Group in 1920s Paris, and its direct offshoot, the international (and multiracial) surrealist move­ ment. With an unbroken continuity from 1924 down to the present day, the surrealist movement has helped develop not only a revolu­ tionary critique of whiteness but also new forms of revolutionary action against it. As a historically constructed social formation, the notion of a "white race" appears as ideology, mirage, hoax, hallucination, con­ game, racket, swindle: an altogether malevolent piece of duplicity and horror. But for those who buy it and sell it, whiteness is what Richard Wright once called a powerful "psychological reality," a commodity fetishized into a pattern of belief, custom, law'n'order. Millions of those who are deceived into thinking they are white are unhappy about it, but don't quite know how to divest themselves of this debilitating delusion. How to quit being white-how to release the latent but repressed yearning to abandon the absurdity of whiteness and to become truly human at last-is one of the burning questions of the age. For many Europeans and Americans of European descent, being surrealist has been one way of not being white-indeed, a way of actively undermining the white mystique and of sabotaging the repres­ sive machinery that props it up. From the surrealist point of view, traditional anti-racist strategies-education against prejudice; support for civil rights; boycotts; picketlines; etc.-however important, clearly are not enough. The fact that white privilege is an inherently irrational phenomenon is proof that it cannot be overcome by rational means alone. Nothing less than surrealist revolution can abolish whiteness once and foral l. Surrealist intervention in this domain has always emphasized the active imagination, in keeping with surrealism's fundamental aim: the realization of poetry in everyday life. Of course it also involves revolutionary criticism, integral subversion, aggressive humor, and direct action. In poetry as in life, surrealism embodies the utmost fra­ ternization and solidarity across the color-line as well as relentless struggle against the very existence of the color-line, and against all those who enforce it or tolerate it. As we emphasized in our declaration on the Los Angeles Rebel­ lion of April-May 1992, * whiteness corrupts and derails every impulse toward freedom, so that no solution can be found to any social problem without solving the problem of whiteness. Everyone knows that white supremacy is the single biggest obstacle to working- 4 class emancipation. It is also the major stumbling-block in the way of women's equality, forwhite supremacy is inherently androcentric. There are of course female white supremacists-a large partof today's "women's movement" is afflicted with this malady-but such women truly are no more than cheerleaders of the white male power structure. Can anyone doubt that overcoming whiteness is indispensable to women's liberation? Similarly, it is no accident that the people most responsible for devastating the Earth's wild places, poisoning the air and water, dri­ ving uncountable species of animals and plants to extinction and otherwise wrecking the planet, are those who think of themselves as white. Only when humankind is free of the stifling burden of white­ ness will we be able to develop a non-exploitative, ecologically sound relationship to the Earth and all its inhabitants. With rare exceptions, however, the organizations that currently pass themselves offas the "environmental movement" in this country are as devoted to white supremacy (and to capitalism) as the giant corporations whose depredations they pretend to oppose. As surrealists, we are especially interested in how the "white problem" turns up in language, images, myth, symbols, popular cul­ ture, science, everyday life, the whole field of human expression. However, our goal at all times is to attack and abolish whiteness and its institutions-to attack and abolish the whole miserabilist social/political/economic/cultural system that has made whiteness the hideous emblem of the worst oppression the world has ever had to endure. With this presentation of the concrete experience of surrealists past and present in the worldwide struggle against white supremacy, we hope above all to provoke and inspire readers to develop their own abolitionist imaginations in new directions, and more generally to stimulate discussion and debate with all who uphold the motto "Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity." THE CHICAGO SURREALIST GROUP * The Chicago Surrealist Group, "Three Days That Shook the New World Order: The Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992," RaceTraitor No. 2 (Winter 1993), 1-17. To contact the Chicago Surrealist Group and/or the Surrealist Move­ ment in the United States, write c/o Black Swan Press, P. 0. Box 6424, EvanstonIL