Baldwin’s Individualism and Critique of Property

This chapter cements the notion that Baldwin’s primary tool in combating white supremacy is recognizing the power of the individual to self-create and reshape systems and institutions. Jack Turner’s work is consistent with Baldwin’s challenging of the myths of American liberalism and brings Baldwin into conversation with some of the American Founders. Turner argues that Baldwin is in favor of individuals divesting from white supremacist institutions and ideology because participating in a racist economy implicates one in an unjust society. Voluntary dispossession is a political move par excellence according to Turner, signifying a refusal to participate in the impoverishment of African Americans. Turner’s work ties together Baldwin’s views on political action, religious thought, and individualism.

The Negative Political Theology of James Baldwin

This chapter explores components of Christianity and their various transformations. Vincent Lloyd charts out the “transformed theology” present in Baldwin’s work, a theology that is Christian in nature but tailored by Baldwin to support those political concepts he values most—namely, community and love. Lloyd’s work effectively demonstrates how Baldwin’s manipulation of Christianity, often viewed as symbiotic with American politics, uniquely translates into a political ideology of liberation and identity formation.

“Where the People Can Sing, the Poet Can Live”

This chapter places Baldwin within a larger intellectual tradition of both Western political philosophy and the African American intersections with(in) it. Ulf Schulenberg’s work then narrows its focus to develop and trace Baldwin’s humanism, a humanism that argues for individual responsibility in a democratic society. Schulenberg’s essay challenges public-private dichotomies, drawing off of Baldwin’s collapsing of the interior and exterior lives, and ultimately brings to discussion Baldwin’s view of the potential of democracy should individuals all recognize their collective and individual responsibilities.

“Tell Him I’m Gone”

This chapter illustrates how Baldwin unmasked reality in one important case, using James Baldwin’s commentary on 1960s San Francisco to consider racial capitalism’s urban consequences years later. Arguing that urban space plays a key role in shaping the bounds of racial justice, both in Baldwin’s time and beyond, Rachel Brahinsky uses Baldwin to foreground a politics of place that seeks to move toward urban justice. Brahinsky’s essay further reflects on how urban policy has intersected with the everyday black geographies that Baldwin investigated, with a call for a revisioning of those same geographies. Through reseeing place, she argues, we may also reimagine racial marginalization in American cities.

James Baldwin and Black Lives Matter

This chapter notes the Black Lives Matter movement reflects a particular strain of perfectionism that takes shape under conditions of domination, a tradition of which Baldwin is an exemplar. In that tradition, which Eddie S. Glaude Jr. describes as black democratic perfectionism, contemporary activists follow Baldwin in a radical cultivation of democratic individuality in the service of racial justice. That radical cultivation requires an unflinching encounter with the ugliness of who we are and a rejection of all the comforting illusions that mask the reality of American life.

Socrates in a Different Key

This chapter takes Baldwin up on his assertion and argues that Baldwin’s belief is a transformation of Socratic thought, namely that the unexamined life is not one worth living. Joel Alden Schlosser’s work examines Baldwin’s fiction and essays as a method of understanding Baldwin’s argument that self-examination is perhaps the championing tenet of American individualism. In order to confront historical atrocities and violence in and of communities, examination of oneself and one’s role in the Great American Drama is irreplaceable. This essay sets up an examination of Baldwin’s take on individualism and the citizen’s responsibility, duty, and obligation to examine oneself by means of addressing societal ills.

James Baldwin and the Politics of Disconnection

This chapter examines those works of Baldwin’s, both fiction and nonfiction, which are concerned with American citizenship and its complicity with a growing sense of a fractured nationality, reaching beyond explicit white and black racial tension. This work also incorporates Baldwin’s internationalism, exploring his frequent choice to reside in other countries. As the essay suggests, Baldwin’s own disconnection from America allowed him to see its internal disconnection more clearly.

The Race of a More Perfect Union

This chapter uses the 2008 election of President Barack Obama to examine racial tensions and divisions present in memory, both between and within black and white Americans. P. J. Brendese’s study of Baldwin addresses the political implications of segregated memory in order to dismantle those unconscious barriers preventing the desegregation of history, narrative, and myth. The chapter goes on to expand Baldwin’s views of history; namely, that the past and present are inextricably and forever bound to one another. Utmost emphasis is placed on understanding both individual and societal histories. In order to move forward, a greater collective memory must be rectified, or else the stark divisions present in America’s remembering speak ill of the potential for future progress.

Baldwin, Prophecy, and Politics

This chapter deftly moves from placing Baldwin in the prophetic tradition to discussion of how Baldwin’s position as prophet works toward a better understanding of American liberalism and modernity. George Shulman explores the ontological categories of whiteness and blackness as discussed by Baldwin, as well as their greater implications for both innocence and domination. Shulman’s piece is important for understanding Baldwin in its ability to marry Baldwin’s religiosity with his personal political practice.

What William F. Buckley Jr. Did Not Understand about James Baldwin

This chapter examines similar tenets of individualism, history, and myth while adding critical exposition of Baldwin’s views on freedom and liberty. Nicholas Buccola uses dialectic between Baldwin and Buckley in order to trace Baldwin’s views on freedom and the limits of politics, supported by Baldwin’s own essays. Buccola’s analysis of Buckley’s misunderstanding of Baldwin serves in its own way as a mirror in reflecting what can thus be gleaned from Baldwin’s work.