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Black Critique
Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Shaping of Global Black Consciousness
In 1968, as protests shook France and war raged in Vietnam, the giants of black radical politics descended on Montreal to discuss the unique challenges and struggles facing their black comrades all over the world. Against a backdrop of widespread racism in the West and ongoing colonialism and imperialism in the Global South, this group of activists, writers, and political figures gathered to discuss the history and struggles of people of African descent and the meaning of black power.
For the first time since 1968, David Austin brings alive the speeches and debates of the most important international gathering of black radicals of the era. With never-before-seen texts from Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, and C. L. R. James, these documents will prove invaluable to anyone interested in black radical thought and political activism of the 1960s.
For the first time since 1968, David Austin brings alive the speeches and debates of the most important international gathering of black radicals of the era. With never-before-seen texts from Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, and C. L. R. James, these documents will prove invaluable to anyone interested in black radical thought and political activism of the 1960s.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published November 15, 2018
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David Austin
4 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2022
i started this via a netgalley copy of the audiobook, then had to bail because instead of reading transcripts, most of the chapters were the 1968 recordings which were grainy & impossible fr my brain to follow without having the words in front of it ! completely think making archived recordings accessible to everyone is Good, but also v inaccessible if the only audio format provided.
anyway, picked it up as an ebook to read the rest & found it v useful. the introduction is a v dense primer on the event, the speakers, their various perspectives and points of conflict, which, as someone w only basic knowledge of a lot of the history and political thought being addressed, i Needed to help me contextualise. the speeches & debates themselves have brought a lot of Further Reading to the top of my brain, & i'll try to chase it up this year. am also probably going to press the chapter on race & britain into a lot of people's hands, because i think it's a v concise & forceful introduction to the specific forms of exploitation and racism foundational to british imperialism, & also a solid, accessible answer to the belief that britain is somehow morally superior to the us in regards to race and, specifically, the slave trade.
anyway, picked it up as an ebook to read the rest & found it v useful. the introduction is a v dense primer on the event, the speakers, their various perspectives and points of conflict, which, as someone w only basic knowledge of a lot of the history and political thought being addressed, i Needed to help me contextualise. the speeches & debates themselves have brought a lot of Further Reading to the top of my brain, & i'll try to chase it up this year. am also probably going to press the chapter on race & britain into a lot of people's hands, because i think it's a v concise & forceful introduction to the specific forms of exploitation and racism foundational to british imperialism, & also a solid, accessible answer to the belief that britain is somehow morally superior to the us in regards to race and, specifically, the slave trade.
June 13, 2021
“Then that becomes the main task and the main responsibility of the black writer, because too many black writers are involved in contradicting and proving white society incorrect. The fact that you pay attention to them means that you give their arguments validity. Assume your major presumption is that they are invalid. Let us create our own and move on.” — Stokely Carmichael, p. 226
October 24, 2023
Before reading this, I knew nothing of the black power movement in Canada, and the connections between that movement and the black power movement in the States and throughout the diaspora. I’m glad to have read this, as it really reinforces the international connections between movements that history books tend to keep separate.
May 28, 2024
An invaluable work for anyone looking at the Black Power movement in its connected yet distinct formations (Britain, Caribbean, US and Canada) and/or for those studying the broader history of Black radicalism.
David Austin expertly introduces these set of speeches, some of which have never been seen before!
David Austin expertly introduces these set of speeches, some of which have never been seen before!
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December 23, 2018Good selection, good foreword, timely topic: what else do you need?
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January 17, 2019Review by Phillip Dwight Morgan
Between October 11 and October 14 1968, several of the leading contributors to the Black liberation movement gathered at McGill University for the Congress of Black Writers. This gathering took place on the heels of another important conference in Montreal, held a week earlier at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), that focused on "Problems of Involvement in the Canadian Society with Reference to the Black Peoples." While the earlier conference was, as David Austin observes, "primarily pragmatic and local," the congress was "ideologically driven by the spirit and force of radical Black Power politics, black nationalism, and black internationalism."
State security documents indicate that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police feared that this gathering of Black intellectuals and activists from Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa would galvanize a broader Black population. Their fear, much like images of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Franz Fanon that adorned the congress’s main lecture hall, reveal that the congress was more than a meeting of minds -- it was the making of a global consciousness.
Keep reading: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2019/0...
Between October 11 and October 14 1968, several of the leading contributors to the Black liberation movement gathered at McGill University for the Congress of Black Writers. This gathering took place on the heels of another important conference in Montreal, held a week earlier at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), that focused on "Problems of Involvement in the Canadian Society with Reference to the Black Peoples." While the earlier conference was, as David Austin observes, "primarily pragmatic and local," the congress was "ideologically driven by the spirit and force of radical Black Power politics, black nationalism, and black internationalism."
State security documents indicate that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police feared that this gathering of Black intellectuals and activists from Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa would galvanize a broader Black population. Their fear, much like images of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Franz Fanon that adorned the congress’s main lecture hall, reveal that the congress was more than a meeting of minds -- it was the making of a global consciousness.
Keep reading: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2019/0...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews