2024-2025 FROM CONFLUENCE TO CONFLUENCE ~ Ghalya Saadawi's seminar: Counter, Revolution, Film - Part II
SEMINAR 2: January 10,11 &12 2025
HUAC, FBI, COINTELPRO. The counterrevolution against communism and the perfecting of its skills for the counter-revolution against Black liberation struggles in the US from the 1950s through the 1970s – the spectre of communism hung over Amerika as did that of Black liberation. The U.S. government first undertook an incessant set of methods to repress and criminalize communism. From the 1920s onwards, the implementation of anti-communist State laws, the imprisonment of fledgling communist members and cadres, harsh policing as communists allied themselves to justice movements, racial rights, and trade unions, hearings and imprisonment of communist leaders. Unamerican activities also meant, in addition to chasing “reds under beds,” that the surveillance (and more) of radical black leaders who were connected to the black workers’ struggle and the strains of Marxism Leninism in the U.S. became part of a continuous renovating set of counterrevolutionary tactics. We connect the struggles via the repressive techniques against them, connecting finally revolutionary socialism to the black worker struggle (in Detroit and beyond).
Readings:
C.L.R James and Grace C. Lee (1974). Facing Reality. Detroit: Be/Wicked
Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott (2018). “Race, Class, and Revolution in the Twenty-First Century: Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.” The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. Edited by Matt Vidal, Tony Smith, Tomas Rotta and Paul Prew. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aaron J. Leonard and Connor A. Gallagher (2015). Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists. London: Zero Books.
Additional/Ref:
James Boggs (2009). The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009.
Angela Davis (2016). If They Come in the Morning…: Voices of Resistance. London: Verso.
Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin (1998). Detroit: I Do Mind Dying. South End Press, 1998.
C.L.R. James (1948). “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the United States,” https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1948/07/meyer.htm
Elaine Mokhtefi. Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, and Black Panthers. London: Verso 2019.
Screen/Listen:
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1954) dir. Don Siegel
“Riotsville USA” (2022) dir. Sierra Petengill
“Finally Got The News: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers” (1970) dir. Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) dir. John Frankenheimer
“Red Hollywood” (1996), dir. Thom Anderson and Noel Burch
What’s Left of Philosophy podcast, “James Boggs and the problem of rights under capitalism”, https://podcasts.apple.com/lb/podcast/whats-left-of-philosophy/id1544487624?i=1000567821331
SEMINAR 1: DECEMBER 7 & 8 2024
The Commune/Communards/Form
Carolyn J. Eichner (2022). The Paris Commune: A Brief History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Karl Marx (1871). The Civil War in France. (Intro and first two addresses and other sections TBC).
Kristen Ross (2024). The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life. London: Verso.
Kristin Ross (2016). Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune. London and New York: Verso.
Watkins, Peter. (2004). “Notes on the Media Crisis,” http://www.ocec.eu/cinemacomparativecinema/index.php/en/11-materiales-web/387-notes-on-the-media-crisis
Screen: Peter Watkins, “La Commune”, 2000
