Then, over the summer, I read Kimberly Springer's _Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980_ which meant I read quite a bit on the Black Power and NOI and Black Nationalism in general, though mostly from the perspective of feminist critiques.
Returning books last night, I decided to check out what my branch had on hand:
_Up Against the Wall:Violence in the making and unmaking of the Black Panther Party_, Curtis J. Austin (I was not too sure about this one. The cover makes it clear that its controversial)
_Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party_, Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (editors)
I would like some recommendations. Anyone have thoughts about the above books or suggestions for others?
On a related note I went to the lib to pick up books on interlibrary loan:
Kimberly Springer's _Still Lifting, Still Clibming: Contemporary African American Women's Activism_
And, be still my heart, the awesome Linda Alcoff (Larry was with SEIU) and a book that explores identity politics, _Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self_
I'm about 40 pages into it and this is a really helpful book. She's starting out by exploring the _political_ critique of identity, in everything from Arthur Schlesinger to Todd Gitlin to Nancy Fraser. She gives them what I describe as a sympathetic reading, arguing with their strongest points and putting them in the best light possible.
She argues that there are three claims about id politics and why such a politics is indefensible:
1. the reification problem (policing of identity) 2. the separatism problem (people will focus on identity at the expense of shared issues -- the objection raised here) 3. the reasoning problem (that in order to have rational debate, people must be able to objectify their identities)
Each of these is faulty, Alcoff argues, because they have no basis in what actual goes on in identity political practices or what can be discerned from survey and ethnographic research. They rely on assumptions that are undermined by the evidence.
She will go on to delineate and epistemology and ontology of identity, if I under her correctly.
I suppose I will review this book very carefully and, when the bullshit about identity politics starts up again, it's a copy-cut-paste job. LOL.
and yes, I know, y'all probably think I have some sort of disorder with the scattered about reading. whatev!
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)