Social Change & Poetic Tradition Author(s): Amiri Baraka Reviewed work(s): Source: Chicago Review, Vol.

43, No. 4, Contemporary Poets & Poetics (Fall, 1997), pp. 109-113 Published by: Chicago Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25304217 . Accessed: 19/05/2012 09:28
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AMIRI BARAKA

Social Change & Poetic Tradition

Define

social

community cal-institutional Society define it?as

from

as relationship its economic

that forms material

society, as that community, base to its cultural philosophi

of all its relationships which to what kind of society. E.g., how people get their food, to be and shelter?i.e., what they have to do, absolutely, clothing here. These are the fundamental shapers of what we call society. There is no such thing as society without the relationships of those in it to it is these relations exist as. create, change even destroy whatever Social Change can be progressive i.e. toward a more organically and consciously related entity as Human Earth. Toward the prolif eration and enhancement, in all ways, of Life.

superstructure. is a sum and dimension

we

Or that change can be backward, reactionary, deathly, as the one live in here. The gains from the democratic struggles of the six as the U.S. ties rolling back down Sisyphus mountain, loses its na tional sovereignty and is ruled now more directly by an imperialist

an international network of capital. an expression is of Human Society, an aspect of its living Poetry description. And like society itself, the huge living culture is related and ordered (by whatever) lives. Art is "an ideological of expression ruling class, society," says Mao at Yenan. "Where Do Ideas Come From?" asks Mao. From "Social Life." Our real objective lives as well as the psy or a clear reflection, chological "through glass darkly," of those lives. So in the arts, the culture, experiences, values, the society, ways assumptions, there are classes, of rationalization, histories, of class

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"All ideas are stamped with class," says Marx. "For whom perception. do you write?" Mao says at Yenan. What do you celebrate, what do What attack? do you you think beautiful, what ugly? Art expresses groups formed by the socio-economic our of and development society place in it. Groups of people formed to life goes the their by production process, how material relationship on. Do we own these factories, stations &c or work for television What the purchasers of labor or the labor which is purchased? is our place in the social organization of labor? Do we give or take them? What orders is the size of the social product (salary) and how do we get it? For instance, most of us here are petty bourgeois by education can vast of and socialization, the majority people only sell the muscles in their arms. in which certain recur social process institutions forms, philosophies, present a con ring themes, motifs, and impact. There is in any na tinuous tale of their social presence A tradition in the U.S. there is the cul tion, two cultures, Lenin says, likewise ture of the oppressed and the culture of the oppressors. So there is, as a a and tradition of the In tradition of the oppressed well, oppressors. are often utilized a minority to shape the of the oppressed and psycho-social bi the themes, and message look, the approach, ases and presumptions on the majority of the oppressed, by adopting the forms of the oppressed. To look poor, for instance the jeans with the U.S., torn into them, which cost more money. Or Gangsta Rap. takes the popular, as in This is bourgeois culture. Which commercial of themes the resistance, rap, perverts democracy, struggle, recurring and transforms them into a glorification of lumpen crimi oppression the holes nal Thuggishness. Extolling In the arts and cultural the U.S. gangsterism not revolution. there is a sector enriched expressions by and objective rulers, while the most democratic expressive reflections of society are quickly covered, attacked, dismissed, while and confirms and legitimates the rule of capi the art which expresses social re anti-democratic tal, oppression, imperialism, exploitation, in evidence and celebrated, and ubiquitously lations, will be well-paid prizes, declaring the supremacy of them as person, artifact, is a historical them? Are we this, all art, even our own! In society there are classes,

given

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tradition culture

If we

people and this culture, in its tions of the people are those of the oppressed Its forms and themes and focus, art and statement and act, Resists. measure is irritability) resist. of consciousness the (as fundamentally the For one thing, it resists being swallowed tradition, forms, val by sum to ues, of the oppressor. Which up the tradition of slavery, today, the anti-democratic national oppression, colonization, capitalism, essence the of homo revealed as women's oppression oppression, can be electoral all these the sexuals, system, non-representative, the international rule by the network and up as imperialism, institutions of the owners of money. We live in the sick Rome of the last part of the 20th century, is still, as Du Bois said, the "Color Line," as the where the problem summed division of the world and the majority we are witnessing of the world into a small group of imperialist oppressors as oppressed we are, nations. Where of us as

in whatever pose. (and white supremacy) the are consciously of the tradition of the oppressed, part of the people, we know, as Cabrai said, "...the culture of the is the repository of resistance." And the culture and the tradi

human

of the people, social transformation is basic to a as this exists, material, social, economic society, and psycho-so entity and its tradition and explanations, philosophy cial delusion, must be destroyed. The traditions of those consciously life. What

it goes, many For the majority

this system go crazy and die, killing many as it is. of us irrational and self-deluded

for the overthrow of the oppressor working society and its traditions are democratic, We work for this socialist. collective, cooperative, current society's destruction and the creation of a Peoples' Demo of working in alliance society ruled by the majority people the farmers, oppressed nationalities and the democratic bour and This is the for de geois petty-bourgeois. struggle revolutionary which leads to the self-determination of the majority of mocracy, with i.e. from each according to their abil working people and socialism, to to each their work. Because it is here that we ity, according only an to face the frontier of classless begin ultimately society. The cultural, nate U.S. bloody traditions that domi literary, philosophical are as confirmed evil by the lies and imperialist society violence for their maintenance. Such a tradition is necessary artistic, cratic

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as a socio-economic whether it's expressed system or oppressive, the democratic of the Since the 1960s, poem. upsurge revolutionary a counterattack rulers have mounted for the advance of the neo-fas as a "New cist corporate is mouthing state, worldwide imperialism World Order." From the pitiful cultural Mein Kampfa of the Blooms, to the constant stream of revisionist Helms, Crouches, Schlesingers, distortions of history and society. The popular culture of the people includes cally of all nationalities, the poetry of the revolutionaries histori and contemporarily, in the traditions of resistance, unity, and

is in the main, bour celebrated by the universities, anti-democratic. The Eurocentric feudalist, geois, slave-owning, canon of white supremacy, the racial beatification of minority rule. and pain. Its highest emotional expres Metaphysics. Exploitation sion is tragedy. The commercial culture of the rulers is violent, ex It is based on money and anti-democracy. ploitative, metaphysical, no coincidence that of the most academically celebrated U.S. poets and writers, Pound was a fascist, Eliot, an Anti-Semitic, neo-royalist Poe James, Hawthorne, Anglican. Henry Europhilic; pro-slavery; fascinated That with freakishness and death; the petty-bourgeois alien ation of Lowell. by the rulers, whether graphic abstraction or is loudly Dissociative verse, trumpeted. if deconstruction and unre recondite (not reconstruction, you dig it) own lated to life itself. My The poetic tradition is Fred Douglass, art celebrated irrelevant obscure The Shouts and The Hollers, Work Songs, David Walker, Prison House moans, Tubman and Nat Turner. Arwhoolies, Songs, and Prosser John Brown and Melville and and Harper and Du Vesey Bois, Twain, Truth and Linda Brent and Box Brown. Whitman (ex Sorrow cept for his American Ousman, Guillen, Larry Sembene Brecht, Mayakovsky, Destiny), Lu Shun, Baldwin, Hansberry, Margaret Walker, Mao, Ho, Lorca, Roque Dalton, Otto Rene Castillo, Henry Dumas, Neruda, Louis

struggle. The culture

Babs Gonzalez, Dizzy Armstrong, and Billie, The Ginsberg who pros Sassy Gillespie, Monk, Ellington, for American elytized speech, the breath phrase and Bop Prosody and the exposure of theMoloch of U.S. imperialism, Sterling Brown, Aime Cesaire, Olson, The Black Church, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Neal,

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Robinson. alive life of the Blues, the music of resisting spirit. Niggers and laughing. The victory of the people. Revolutionary democracy, forces. in alliance with the farmers and democratic the rule of workers, The It is the John Coltrane of Human expressions of Self-Consciousness ment. An Art Do Ba?a Coba Beneme Both Form Beneme Douglass

Du Bois Sassy Billie Return to the Source tradition of the burning

Desire. and Content areWeapons and Revolution. Mass-Oriented and method

With what we declared by the time of the 60s Black Arts Move
that isAfro-American tradition This and Revolutionary. we revolutionaries which by by the approach power of our form and content, their unity and the intensity of struggle. from those traditions. One But we must create a new superstructure Social Transformation controlled An of institutions and organizations by which our entire revolutionary tradition can wage righteous war on the crimi this rule. For it is this wailing, nal rulers and their corrupt oppressive by the workers international network and farmers and democratic middle classes. (i.e. democratic) is the inspiration

of evil by good, this resistance, this joy in the overwhelming defiance, that is at the base of our poetic traditions, our history, our continuing lives. THIS TALK WAS GIVEN AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY IN 1997

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