| Title | : | Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0807009776 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780807009772 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 264 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2002 |
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Reviews
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I love this book. period. These are some things I love about it: 1. It furthers the work started in Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism which i also really like. 2. It is a personal, hopeful book that incorporates theory in a non-pretentious and accessible way. 3. The chapter on black feminism is amazing. 4. I learned about a lot of grassroots organizations and activisms that i didn't know about before.
5. He makes the case that surrealism is a mode of liberatory thought originating in the art and resistance of people of color, and that making poetry and art are acts of liberation that are essential to building successful social justice movments.
This book motivated me, inspired me, and in general, made me really, really happy and excited. If you haven't read it, do. -
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to achieve a better society. Robin Kelley is one of the few thinkers who is both brilliant and intellectually humble. He covers a lot of depth and timespan in here and does it cogently and beautifully. I will be reading and rereading this one.
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How would you answer the question: What is a radical aesthetic?
After years of puzzling over the aesthetic autonomy of radical movements, I began at the beginning of 2011 reflecting on the political propositions of radical art movements. The inquiry was propelled by reading two books. Luis Camnitzer's study of Latin American conceptualism had an enormous impact on my thinking about how political movements shape those artistic practices that eschew the autonomy of aesthetics that so much dominates mainstream contemporary art. With that thought in mind I picked up Black Sound White Cube by the European art scholars and curators, Dieter Lesage and Ina Wudtke. I very much appreciated the impulse of Lesage and Wudtke's argument. It proved enormously helpful to think about their interrogation of experimental art categories that systematically exclude black artists. But what I found profoundly absense from their argument was any real politics other than that of inclusion and exclusion. My recent readings in experimental jazz and poetics has provided the much needed political framework for the claims made by Lesage and Wudtke.
When I first began this research project, I asked a number of friends the question mentioned above; What is a radical aesthetic? Across the board, whether artists, scholars, activists, and regardless of class background or ethnicity, friends answered with the classic notion of art that shocks; épater les bourgeoisie. But is that all there is? Is a radical aesthetic reducible to an almost oedipal revolt against the norms of bourgeois ideology?
Reviewing the social and cultural forms invented by radical political movements, one finds over again a different conception of radicality. That conception includes universal access, the protagonism of the oppressed in determining their own destiny, collectivity as the form and content of practice, and the priority of sustainable organization. In other words; revolution.
At the heart of Kelley's accessible and straightforward review of the black radical imagination is an insistence on both; revolt and revolution. This thesis structures the book itself. His essays on black radical politics have an implicit chronology that follow dynamic changes in African American politics, specifically in the United States. These include a review of the impact of Marcus Garvey on African Americans resisting the betrayal of the Federal government and the rise of fascist Jim Crow policies in the south. He looks at the importance of communism and internationalism to black movements and intellectuals during the 1930s and through the early civil rights movement. His chapter on the black New Left of the '60s and '70s charts the complex constellation of organizations and debates that shaped and were shaped by black nationalist ideology and the clarion call of anti-imperialist revolution. More recently, he provides a powerful analysis of the reparations movement and its relationship to internationalism in radical black politics. (Unfortunately this chapter makes no mention of the significant critiques of reparations by American Indian activists.) And, in a short chapter on black feminism, Kelley locates the most radical political claims of all on those feminists who link together the struggles for freedom regarding sexuality and gender as well as anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. In fact, as Kelley argues, it is in the politics of difference that we find a radical politics that insists on liberation of desire as equal to material needs.
From the black feminists like poet June Jordan and the Combahee River Collective, Kelley turns to the black surrealist movement of the international African diaspora. It's in the context of this chapter that Kelley most pointedly articulates his thesis. He writes: "Juxtaposing surrealism and black conceptions of liberation is no mere academic exercise; it is an injunction, a proposition, perhaps even a declaration of war. I am suggesting that the black freedom movement take a long, hard look at our own surreality as well as surrealist thought and practice in order to build new movements, new possibilities, new conceptions of liberation. Surrealism can help us break the constraints of social realism and take us to places where Marxism, anarchism, and other 'isms' in the name of revolution have rarely dared to venture" (192).
Reviewing the relationship between the French surrealists and Aime and Suzanne Cesaire, Kelley argues that the very terms of surrealism change as a result of that encounter. The pursuit of the marvelous and the revolt of language and desire cements together an aesthetic movement with an anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist imagination. Kelley goes on to describe the impact of surrealism on African American poets, writers and artists not one of revelation, but of recognition. Black intellectuals did not discover surrealism. Surrealism discovered them. And in the process it provided a way of practicing a defamiliarization of the status quo that is the very essence of living under the conditions of racism and colonization.
It's also important to note that while Kelley insists on this link between revolt and revolution in understanding the black radical imagination, he subscribes to a definition of the latter that privileges collectivity and the communal struggle for self-determination within an anti-capitalist, internationalist horizon. Thus, it is not to say that revolt becomes the place where radicality retreats to petite bourgeois individualism or entrepreneurialism. Nor is it a place where ideas exist severed from experience and struggle. In other words, for Kelley, the radical imagination proposes an aesthetics of everyday life that is also profoundly different from the very terms which continue to dominate mainstream analyses of contemporary and experimental art. (See the recent Anthology of Conceptual Writing, for a perfect example of this.)
I would strongly recommend Kelley's book to any artist, activist or student of history, politics and culture. The book is relatively short and intended for a popular audience. It provides the necessary context for understanding the stakes in radical cultural and political practices. At the same time, Kelley is an honest critic of those histories while never abandoning his own commitments to a radical politics that embraces both poetic revolt and revolution. His book helps us to defamiliarize our reading of mainstream accounts of culture, art and politics. A necessary intervention if we're going to have an honest and robust discussion about tactics and strategies for making a new world of justice and freedom. -
"Sometimes I think the conditions of daily life, of everyday oppressions, of survival, not to mention the temporary pleasures accessible to most of us, render much of our imagination inert. We are constantly putting out fires, responding to emergencies, finding temporary refuge, all of which make it difficult to see anything other than the present. As the great poet Keorapetse Kgositsile put it, “When the clouds clear / We shall know the colour of the sky.” When movements have been unable to clear the clouds, it has been the poets—no matter the medium—who have succeeded in imagining the color of the sky, in rendering the kinds of dreams and futures social movements are capable of producing. Knowing the color of the sky is far more important than counting clouds. Or to put it another way, the most radical art is not protest art but works that take us to another place, envision a different way of seeing, perhaps a different way of feeling."
that shit is smart and beautiful. -
Robin D.G. Kelley’s “Freedom Dreams” is a call for the expansion of revolutionary thinking, dreaming, and envisioning. It’s rooted in Kelley’s belief that exercising radical imagination is a necessary condition for Black liberation specifically, and humanist liberation generally.
Kelley organizes this book around the analyses of various Black radical social movements and their ability to produce, capture, and spread revolutionary dreams / imagination. The basic question this book poses and frames as the preview of Black radical imagination is, “what type of society do you want to live in?” In evaluating and answering this question, Kelley traces the various Black social movements throughout the African diaspora—along with their accompanying ideologies and objectives—and pulls out their specific “radical imaginations.” He discusses the “Exodus” movements of the 19th Century, Garveyism, socialist / communist organizing, Pan Africanism, and the various combinations therein. This book excels as both an account of the history of various radical Black movements, as well as an analysis and descriptor of underlying radical ideologies and objectives (such as nationalism, internationalism, socialism, Pan Africanism, and Surrealism).
In evaluating the above movements, ideologies, and objectives, Kelley touches on many fascinating points of history and discussion, including the following: What does the world look like post-Revolution? What is the role of reparations and how should it be framed? Should revolutionary Black Nationalists seek to build an exclusively Black state, or a predominantly Black nation with non-Black minority populations? Where should members of the African diaspora focus their revolutionary nation-building efforts, the land that they currently occupy (i.e. Republic of New Afrika), or on the African continent via repatriation? These are all major questions that require imaginative thinking and in-depth analysis.
Finally, Kelley passionately discusses the philosophy and theory of “Surrealism,” which he believes is a movement that has more revolutionary potential than other formulations (including Marxism) due to its imaginative impulses. Surrealism is a strategy of revolution of the mind, while Marxism is mere revolution of productive forces. Kelley, in analyzing the Black Surrealist tradition of in the works of Aimé Césaire and Richard Wright (among others), notes that Surrealism is less a revolution in itself and more so a recognition of what already exists in Black culture and traditions. Ultimately “Freedom Dreams” is Kelley’s own contribution to the Black Surrealist tradition, as it compels its readers and pushes its intended audience (Africans worldwide) to dream of a new world, free from all systems of domination, pulsating with the traditions of liberatory Black culture. -
Uhm, in a really nerdy way, I believe this to be one of the best introductions to a nonfiction book ever. Ever.
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This was a beautiful book that served as something of a literature review of Black radicalism for me. It is definitely a jumping-off point for me to further explore topics such as surrealism, Negritude, Black nationalism, and Black feminism. I will continue to digest this book for a while. One quote that stood out to me was "Fantasy imagination, dreaming–these are the characteristics that distinguish surrealism from the kinds of social critiques at the core of leftist politics. In fact, it is quite possible that black dissatisfaction with socialist realism had to do precisely with the suppression of key elements of black culture that surrealism embraces: the unconscious, the spirit, desire, humor, magic, and love."
I do feel that these elements are sometimes missing from the politics of some mainstream leftists. I myself would like to find a way to further embrace the power of dreaming in my politics. I want to let love, art, music, humor into my politics. This will not stop me from pursuing incremental change or data-driven analysis. But it will allow me to do so with a different spirit of change and possibility, and an eye to what else is needed to truly be free. -
An exhilarating intellectual history of the Black radical imagination. I wish I could have read a multimedia annotated version, or at least a hyper-linked one. FREEDOM DREAMS is a treasure trove of other texts and imaginations to visit with next, and I'm glad Kelley gave me a glimpse into his own.
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One of my favorite ethnic studies/political science books. Dreamings for the collective
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Foundational. Top ten books of all time. Can't believe it took me so long to read. If this book were a core and repeated read for the Left, we'd have a vibrant movement today.
As Lenin put it, "Of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And the people most responsible for this are those who boast of their sober views, their “closeness” to the “concrete”, the representatives of legal criticism and of illegal “tail-ism”." -
real wise, some of the ideas had radiated out of this book thru people and reached me before i read it ! provides some good history on Black radical visions & movements, some of the more interesting bits of movement history imo were in the sections on nationalist movements and communist / labor ones. the real prizes in here are the sections on internationalism and surrealism. in "third world dreaming," he talks about the huge influence that chinese, cuban, and other revolutions had on radical Black spaces in the 60s and 70s, and its discussion of maoism is verrryyyy cool. then the surrealism section was really just magical, and generally makes the case for revolution led by creativity and imagination — not as a gushy stand-in for direct action or violence, but as a necessary grounding and guide. makes me want to get more in harmony with my OWN creativity more lol .... and also learn a little more about surrealism
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Kelley argued that the failures of African American social movements does not invalidate their dreams, and that African-Americans have joined social movements out of hope as much as they have to fight oppression. He points out that it is important to point out what sort of world people struggle for, and that tradition is rich within black radical movements. He thus insists on both the revolt and the revolution. Mostly taking place in the post Civil War years, he begins in chapter one by looking at the exodus traditions of black dreams for a better place, both in Liberian colonization schemes to Marcus Garvey’s back to Africa movements, though it was limited because of highly patriarchal notions to the Harlem Renaissance and Great Migration. Though each time, these movements eventually hit realities and needed to reformulate what was happening, they provided a dream to persue. Chapter two looks to the interplay of American Communism with black movements, where Black American Communists like Dubois, Robeson, and McCay pushed race to the forefront and made it priorities as opposed to previous glossing over by the white left under the umbrella of class. Internationalism and Third World struggles were at the core of Black Communism.
Chapter three looks to the Amiri Baraka, the famed jazz musician and black intellectual, and the Revolutionary Action Group of the 1960s, which embraced Maoism and international struggles, particularly in Cuba, Angola, Ghana, Kenya, and China, and rejected reactionary black regimes. While Kelley says that Black nationalists are often painted as the simple buy black campaigns and riots, they were a lot more into looking to anti-colonial movements for inspiration. Chapter four moves to the attempt to build the Republic of New Afrika in the Black Belt of the South, with the idea that Black America was a colony within the United States and should fight for landed freedom. It also deposited that the notion of black evolution from Civil Rights to nationalism obscures that it was already happening in Northern cities in the 1950s. Chapter five looks to Black Feminism, which sought to build what we call today intersectional analysis, where race and gender and sexuality are all taken into account when discussing power, looking to groups like the Combahee River Collective. Chapter six then argued that surrealism helped shape black radical imagination, as art and poetry are key for articulating a better world and what freedom actually looked like and continues to.
Key Themes and Concept
-Freedom dreams what motivates people.
-Political and artistic visions of freedom and how they interplace.
-How race interplays with gender and class.
-Every social movement failed because power structures remained intact, yet their dreams inspired the next generation. -
In Freedom Dreams, Robin D.G. Kelley explores the history of the black radical tradition; every organization from the Black Panther Party to the Combahee River Collective and every philosophy from Maoism to surrealism, all under 200 pages. Kelley analyzes and synthesizes so much history into a concise and fluid text that captures the essence of the black radical imagination without acting as a substitute for the whole of it. This book has doubled my curiosity and reading list on the topic.
As readers, we witness Kelley in conversation with all the various movements and the people who lead them. He connects them, criticizes them, and offers insights on how they can be instructive in everyday life. His writing style captures the kinetic energy of the radical movements themselves but sometimes I would get confused by all of the names and organizational acronyms that I would have to reread sections.
I really could not put this book down though and read it in a couple of sittings. This book acts as a portal into black radical movements and shows the necessity of continuing to explore them. I recommend it to everyone. -
This is one of my favorite books. RDGK is able to sift through history and think about the visions of alternative futures in a deeply hopeful way... his work is beautiful and inspiring.
Surreal and real both at once. -
Captivated from the first paragraph on ... a true visionary. This book made me very happy.
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a beautiful introduction to a broad range of movers and shakers in the radical world.
through black feminism, surrealism, third world retaliation, and the ongoing revolts and reinventions of black americans , robin d.g. kelley maps out a brief bio of resilience. of that deep birthright we all have to be free of chains, in all forms. and not just in the black experience. freedom is universal. our humanity is universal, and when put in this light, even the deepest of pains can not necessarily be healed, but at soothed with aloe (but not covered up, because the wounds are not only still there, but need to be acknowledged. the fight still needs its intentions heard, and its plans executed.
the drawback of freedom dreams i say, would be its briefness, how much it really is just an introduction to many topics, writers, activists, movements etc. but if you are anything like me, this is also a reason for excitement, because my reading list just grows.. -
I think this has to be one of the weightiest activism books I've read so far. I suggest getting the 20th anniversary edition simply because of all the additions that provide even greater context.
It took me longer to get through it because the history provided is so rich and dense. I had to go back and re-read/listen to several parts simply because I found myself getting lost in the history. There is a lot of inspiration to be found in these pages, but I'm actually at a loss of how to even begin to describe this book. I'm still reeling from it.
I will have to reread it several more times to take in all of the lessons on "the power of imagination to transform society" and all the inspirational freedom dreams discussed in its pages.
Because if you can't imagine the kind of future you want, you can't even begin to build on it. Like Alice Walker said, "Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming". -
Robin D.G Kelley is such a brilliant thinker and I love listening to him speak! Freedom Dreams urges us lean in towards radical imagination and contextualizes it with Black liberation movements throughout the diaspora, not so much to emphasize their successes but to highlight how much we’ve learned and continue to learn from the ones that aren’t considered as successful. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my version of radical imagination looks like and this book was a perfect companion to validate these thoughts. Surrealism, as he beautifully puts it, is crucial to “enlarge humanity in all of us,” with collectively creating a future for people not being merely for survival but to “evolve into more human human beings.” It reinforces the need for the act of imagination, solidarity and hope - all of which are very easy not to do!
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Great book! Robin Kelley gives an enlightened perspective on the requirements of liberation. Liberation requires adherents to escape the confines of their reality and create visions for a new society. To cultivate an emancipatory environment, people must first free their minds. Freedom Dreams grants readers a comprehensive analysis of some Black Radical Movements. Movements which dared not only to challenge the system, but to transform the system. Some of the movements/organizations included are Garveyism, RAM, RNA, Combahee Collective, and Surrealism. My personal favorites were the sections on Black Feminism and Surrealism. Kelley explored the ideological challenges the groups faced as well as the inspiration they’ve engendered.
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“Surrealism can help us [the black freedom movement] break the constraints of social realism and take us to places where Marxism, anarchism, and other ‘isms’ in the name of revolution have rarely dared to venture…
After all, surrealists have consistently opposed capitalism and white supremacy [and] have promoted internationalism…
In many ways surrealism has real affinities with aspects of Afrodiasporic vernacular culture, including an embrace of magic, spirituality, and the ecstatic — elements Marxism has never been able to deal with effectively.” p192 -
Like a great party where you are surprised to run into people from a completely different circle of friends than the ones who invited you, Freedom Dreams briefly introduces organizations and activists, explaining why you would want to get to know them better, and then dishes enough dirt to keep the chatter bubbling. There were a lot of names and acronyms I've come across before but this is the first time I've seen some of these groups really examined, like RAM for instance, or Flo Kennedy. Of course the wildest stuff in here is the chapter on Surrealism. I am very thankful for this book.
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Innovative choices in topic matter and method of approach make this a truly unique book, and stylistically groundbreaking in intellectual history. In some places, particularly those dealing with artistic analysis, the style becomes somewhat disjointed (although this may be because it is expecting a level of familiarity with formal analysis which I lack), but is generally strong and clear throughout
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Contains a lot of interesting info - learning about the 19th Cent. black church roots of the black back-to-Africa movement, and about Surrealism in Martinique, was gratifying. Coverage of the areas I was already familiar with however was dumbed-down in seriously distorting ways, and Kelley’s liberal, Maoist-inflected misunderstanding of marxism badly damages what could otherwise be a much analytically stronger book.
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Loving that all these authors are in dialogue with one another's works, even across generations. This was a cogent and urgent request for more imagination, creativity, and dreaming to build the world we want to see, through chapters and lenses of Kelley's own journey. Super fluid, engrossing. Highly recommend.
