Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:22:38.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Espionage and Paths of Black Radicalism

from II - Culture and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

By
GerShun Avilez
Edited by
Shelly Eversley
Shelly Eversley
Affiliation:
Baruch College, The City University of New York
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides an assessment of the shifting terrain of 1960s-era political radicalism through an analysis of Sam Greenlee’s novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969/1973). It argues that the novel employs and challenges recognizable Civil Rights and Black Power discourses of social change to destabilize institutionalized racism and socio-economic discrimination and to begin to imagine untested paths to resistance. The chapter also considers how Greenlee uses espionage to reconfigure familiar political ideals and modes of leadership and to explore how the imagined integration of the CIA becomes a device for critiquing employment discrimination and the state’s half-hearted deployment of affirmative action. It closes by showing how spy training and spycraft offer Greenlee opportunities to rethink the connections among gender, sexuality, and revolution, while additionally illustrating how heterosexual masculinity dominates the space of the revolutionary. Through the frame of espionage, Greenlee reimagines Black identity and activism.

Keywords

Affirmative actionBlack radicalismBlack Powercivil rightsespionagemartial artsqueerredresssexualitytokenism
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
Black Art, Politics, and Aesthetics
 , pp. 173 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acham, C. 2005. “Subverting the System: The Politics and Production of The Spook Who Sat by the Door.” Screening Noir 1.1: 113–36.Google Scholar
Anderson, T. 2004. The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Avilez, G. 2016. Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bambara, T. C. 2005 [1970]. “On the Issue of Roles.” In The Black Woman: An Anthology, ed. Bambara, T. C., 123–36. New York: Washington Square Press.Google Scholar
Baraka, A. (Jones, L). 2001 [1964]. Dutchman and the Slave. New York: Perennial.Google Scholar
Beam, J., ed. 1986. In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. New York: Alyson Publications.Google Scholar
Bell, D. 2004. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, C. 1991 [1969]. The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger. New York: Ecco Press.Google Scholar
Brown, E. 1994. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Carmichael, S. 2003. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture]. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Cleaver, E. 1991 [1968]. Soul on Ice. New York: Delta.Google Scholar
Collier-Thomas, B., and Franklin, V. P., eds. 2001. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights–Black Power Movement. New York University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, P. H. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Countryman, M. J. 2006. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Davis, A. 1974. An Autobiography. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Deslippe, D. 2012. Protesting Affirmative Action: The Struggle over Equality after the Civil Rights Revolution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. 2007 [1903]. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar, P. L. 1993. “We Wear the Mask.” In The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ed. Braxton, J. M., 71. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, E. 2012. Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ellison, R. 2002 [1952]. Invisible Man. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Executive Order 10925. 1961, March 6. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-10925-establishing-the-presidents-committee-equal-employment-opportunity [accessed September 22, 2021].Google Scholar
Executive Order 11114. 1963, June 22. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-11114-extending-the-authority-the-presidents-committee-equal-employment [accessed September 22, 2021].Google Scholar
Gates, H. L. Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Greenlee, S. 1969a, June. “The D.C. Blues.” Negro Digest 18.8: 86–92.Google Scholar
Greenlee, S. 1969b. The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Chicago, IL: Lushena Press.Google Scholar
Jones, C. E., ed. 1998. The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered]. Baltimore, MD: Black Classics Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, P. E. 2006. Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
King, M. L.. 1964. Why We Can’t Wait. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
King, M. L. Jr 1968. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Lorde, A. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Lorde, A 1992. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Malcolm, X. 1990. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, ed. Breitman, G.. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.Google Scholar
Malcolm, X. 1992 [1965]. Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine.Google Scholar
Murapa, R. 1969. “The Real Revolution: Race Pride and Black Political Thought.” Negro Digest 18.7: 6–10.Google Scholar
Ogbar, J. 2005. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Peavy, C. D. 1970. “Four Black Revolutionary Novels, 1899–1970.” Journal of Black Studies 1.2: 219–23.Google Scholar
Peavy, C. D. 1971. “The Black Revolutionary Novel: 1899–1969.” Studies in the Novel 3.2: 180–89.Google Scholar
Pedro, J. 2001. Judo: Techniques and Tactics. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers.Google Scholar
Ransby, B. 2003. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Reay, T. 1985. Judo: Skills and Techniques. Marlborough: Crowood Press.Google Scholar
Reich, E. 2012. “A New Kind of Black Soldier: Performing Revolution in the Spook Who Sat by the Door.” African American Review 45.3: 325–39.Google Scholar
Robinson, C. J. 2016 [1990]. The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Schudel, M. 2014, May 14. “Obituary: Sam Greenlee.” Washington Post.Google Scholar
Seale, B. 1970. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Sheppard, S. N. 2013. “Persistently Displaced: Situated Knowledges and Interrelated Histories in The Spook Who Sat by the Door.” Cinema Journal 52.2: 71–92.Google Scholar
Smethurst, J. 2005. The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Smith, B., ed. 1983. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table Press.Google Scholar
Smith, B. 1998. The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Ture, K., and Hamilton, C.. 1992 [1967]. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Van Deburg, W. 1992. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Yoffie, D., and Kwak, M.. 2001. Judo Strategy. Boston, MA: HBS Press.Google Scholar
Zafar, R. 1997. We Wear the Mask: African Americans Write American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×