University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Black Sophists: A Critique of Demagoguery Garry Bertholf University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, History Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Bertholf, Garry, "Black Sophists: A Critique of Demagoguery" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 736. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/736 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/736 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Black Sophists: A Critique of Demagoguery Abstract This dissertation investigates the narrative strategies and performative devices of African-American politics in the post-civil rights era. My inquiry focuses on demagoguery--a term dating from classical antiquity--in order to implicate it in African-American political discourses, in particular those of Tavis Smiley's former State of the Black Union, 2000-2010. Indeed, I posit that Smiley's former annual event is an important site for thinking about modern black demagoguery and the aestheticization of black politics. Through close readings and original transcriptions of Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933), Cornel West (b. 1953), and Michael Eric Dyson (b. 1958), I show that the inevitable practice of demagoguery--what the dissertation theorizes as the "allegorical," "epideictic," and "polytropic" modes of emplotment--now threatens to undermine the political opportunities afforded by the success of the modern civil rights movement, even though it sustains the illusion, today, of an autochthonous black public sphere. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Africana Studies First Advisor Guthrie P. Ramsey Keywords Cornel West, Demagoguery, Louis Farrakhan, Michael Eric Dyson, State of the Black Union, Tavis Smiley Subject Categories African American Studies | History | Political Science This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/736 BLACK SOPHISTS: A CRITIQUE OF DEMAGOGUERY Garry J. Bertholf A DISSERTATION in Africana Studies Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation: _______________________ Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. Edmund J. and Louise Kahn Term Professor of Music and Africana Studies Graduate Group Chairperson: _______________________ Barbara D. Savage Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History and Africana Studies Dissertation Committee: Barbara D. Savage Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History and Africana Studies John L. Jackson, Jr. Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Africana Studies and Anthropology Adolph L. Reed, Jr. Professor of Political Science BLACK SOPHISTS: A CRITIQUE OF DEMAGOGUERY COPYRIGHT 2013 Garry James Bertholf For Kambili iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT This dissertation was supported in part by fellowships from the William Fontaine Society and the Critical Writing Program of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. I am grateful to all those who have made this possible. To Paul Machlin and Cheryl Townsend Gilkes for believing in me; to Barbara Savage, John Jackson and Adolph Reed, for their inspiration and guidance; to Guthrie Ramsey, mentor and friend, for seven years of patience and encouragement; to Kali Gross, for showing me the ropes; to Quang Pham, Lowell Lamb, Christopher Bleakley, Sam Taylor, Marc D’Amico and Warner Robinson, for their friendship; to my siblings, Troy and Amanda Bertholf, for needing me; to Ruhi Vasa, my life partner, for loving me; and, of course, to my parents, William and Debbie Bertholf, for their sacrifice. iv ABSTRACT BLACK SOPHISTS: A CRITIQUE OF DEMAGOGUERY Garry J. Bertholf Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. This dissertation investigates the narrative strategies and performative devices of African- American politics in the post-civil rights era. My inquiry focuses on demagoguery—a term dating from classical antiquity—in order to implicate it in African-American political discourses, in particular those of Tavis Smiley’s former State of the Black Union, 2000-2010. Indeed, I posit that Smiley’s former annual event is an important site for thinking about modern black demagoguery and the aestheticization of black politics. Through close readings and original transcriptions of Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933), Cornel West (b. 1953), and Michael Eric Dyson (b. 1958), I show that the inevitable practice of demagoguery—what the dissertation theorizes as the “allegorical,” “epideictic,” and “polytropic” modes of emplotment—now threatens to undermine the political opportunities afforded by the success of the modern civil rights movement, even though it sustains the illusion, today, of an autochthonous black public sphere. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENT………………………………………………………………...IV ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………V PROLEGOMENON: THE AESTHETICIZATION OF “CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY”: OR, MODERN BLACK DEMAGOGUERY….………………………..1 CHAPTER 1: SPECTERS OF DEMAGOGUERY: THE LONGUE DURÉE…………...6 CHAPTER 2: THE CULT OF DEMAGOGUERY: LOUIS FARRAKHAN’S “TRAGIC DILEMMA”……………………………………………………………………………...36 CHAPTER 3: THE SOUNDTRACK TO DEMAGOGUERY: MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, EPIDEIXIS, AND THE UTILITY OF THE LYRIC……….…………………84 CHAPTER 4: CORNEL WEST, POLYTROPOS, AND THE POLITICS OF KINGMAKING: THE RISE (AND FALL?) OF TAVIS SMILEY……………………133 CONCLUSION: ON THE BLACK PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL’S PRIVATE USE OF REASON; OR, THE BLACK PETIT BOURGEOIS “PUBLIC SPHERE”…………...173 WHAT IS DEMAGOGUERY?………………………………………………...188 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………....…191 vi ______________________ Prolegomenon THE AESTHETICIZATION OF “CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY”: OR, MODERN BLACK DEMAGOGEURY “Charismatic leadership has emerged in all places and in all historical epochs. Since the time of the constitutional state, and definitely since democracy has been established, the ‘demagogue’ has been the typical political leader in the Occident.” —Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 1919 It is fair to say that some of the most seminal works on affective (commonly called “prophetic”) black politics have been couched in Max Weber’s sociology of “charismatic authority”; but few have taken as their aim the understanding of changing institutional apparatuses and media for the creation and dissemination of demagoguery, and new technologies and machinery by which it is reproduced and transmitted.1 Indeed, technological shifts have opened new outlets and introduced new networks for African- Americans to engage in political activity outside of the so-called “black church,” upending previous notions of traditional or appropriate situations for experiencing black politics. What we call demagoguery today, then, is a new practice, in the sense that it 1 Some works are particularly noteworthy: Stephen H. Marshall, The City on the Hill from Below: The Crisis of Prophetic Black Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), 173-175; Jonathan L. Walton, Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (New York: New York University Press, 2009), xv, 5-6, 10, 51, 61, 76, 86-101, 132; Barbara D. Savage, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 14, 44, 98, 104, 115, 272; and Fredrick C. Harris, Something Within: Religion in African-American Political Activism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14, 33, 147, 163, 183. 1 most probably bears very little resemblance to Weber’s original typology, or perhaps even to what W. E. B. Du Bois once meant by that term.2 In The Philadelphia Negro (1899), for example, Du Bois pursues his early preoccupation with demagoguery in more specifically religious directions: The Baptist minister is the elected chairman of a pure democracy, who, if he can command a large enough following, becomes a virtual dictator; he thus has the chance to be a wise leader or a demagogue, or, as in many cases, a little of both. the ranks of the clergy are overcrowded and they present all degrees, from excellent and well-trained spiritual guides to blatant demagogues.3 But this is not the worst. Indeed, Du Bois’ anxieties about religion seem to have come to a head in Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935): . to most of the four million black folk emancipated by civil war, God was real. They knew Him. They had met Him personally in many wild orgy of religious frenzy, or in the black stillness of the night. His plan for them was clear; they 2 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Demagog” in The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, April 1922, 252. 3 Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899), 112-115. 2 were to suffer and be degraded, and then afterwards by Divine edict, raised to manhood and power; and so on January 1, 1863, He made them free. It was all foolish, bizarre, and tawdry. Gangs of dirty Negroes howling and dancing; poverty-stricken ignorant laborers mistaking war, destruction and revolution for the mystery of the free human soul . .4 Clearly, Du Bois understands religion and the “arts of the demagogue” alike—that is, as distractions from “real” politics.5 In stark contrast to Du Bois (and any number of other committedly pessimistic scholars, cf., Carter