Daggers and Javelins by Amiri Baraka
"Daggers and Javelins" is a collection of essays and lectures by Amiri Baraka, spanning the years 1974 to 1979, which delves into the intersections of African American literature, politics, and revolutionary thought. In these works, Baraka seeks to identify an African American revolutionary tradition that aligns with global anticolonial movements in Africa, Asia, and South America. He employs a Marxist lens to critically analyze African American literature, particularly in response to his disillusionment with the Black Power movement and its focus on electoral politics.
Throughout the collection, Baraka emphasizes the importance of authentic folk expressions of the African American community, contrasting them with the works of middle-class writers that he views as disconnected from the broader revolutionary struggle. He discusses the historical foundations of African American literature, highlighting slave narratives as a pivotal starting point. In addition to examining African American authors, Baraka extends his analysis to African and Caribbean writers, suggesting that their works can inspire African American artists to create socially conscious art that challenges the status quo. Overall, "Daggers and Javelins" serves as a powerful call for art and literature to play a crucial role in the quest for social change and empowerment within the African American experience.
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Daggers and Javelins by Amiri Baraka
First published: 1984
The Work
The essays and lectures collected in Daggers and Javelins: Essays, 1974-1979 represent Amiri Baraka’s vigorous attempt to identify an African American revolutionary tradition that could parallel anticolonial struggles in Third World countries of Africa, Asia, and South America. Baraka applies a Marxist analysis to African American literature in these essays.
Having become disappointed with the progress of the Black Power movement and its emphasis on grassroots electoral politics, Baraka came to Marxism with the zeal of a new convert. “The essays of the earliest part of this period,” he writes, “are overwhelmingly political in the most overt sense.” While some of the essays in Daggers and Javelins address jazz, film, and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, all of them do so with the purpose of assessing what Baraka calls their potential to contribute to a revolutionary struggle.
In “The Revolutionary Tradition in Afro-American Literature,” Baraka distinguishes between the authentic folk and vernacular expression of African American masses and the poetry and prose produced by middle-class writers in imitation of prevailing literary standards. Considering the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and others as the beginnings of a genuine African American literature, he criticizes works that promote individualism or are merely “a distraction, an ornament.” Similarly, “Afro-American Literature and Class Struggle” and other essays consider how the economic structure of society affects the production and the appreciation of art. “Notes on the History of African/Afro-American Culture” interprets the theoretical writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and draws parallels between colonized African societies and the suppression of African American artistic expression by the American cultural mainstream.
Broadening his scope in essays on African and Caribbean authors, Baraka suggests that figures such as the Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the poet Aimé Césaire from Martinique can provide models for how African American artists can escape being co-opted into an elite that supports the status quo and, instead, produce art that offers a “cathartic revelation of reality” useful in promoting social change.
Bibliography
Reilly, Charlie, ed. Conversations with Amiri Baraka. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
Tate, Greg. “Growing Up in Public: Amiri Baraka Changes His Mind.” Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.