The C.L.R. James Institute: Carrying on the Legacy: Conference Program in Preparation

Carrying on the Legacy: Conference Program

In the twelve years of our collaboration, Jim Murray and I came to share a perspective on the nature of our work shared with no one else. We articulated it from different vantage points, but we knew what we understood in common as well as how we differed in other respects. If I do not go public with what I know, then Jim's perspective will die with him, and eventually with me, as there is no one else alive who either understood or respected it. As one of my first steps in this direction, I am working on a contribution that no one else can make. I will release details only after my project is consolidated. The abstract of my planned talk follows.

Update: This event has been finalized and is scheduled to take place in the autumn of 2004. Details will be released as the date approaches. (9 August 2004)

C.L.R. James, Intellectual Independence, and the Division of Labor
(Abstract)

by Ralph Dumain

C.L.R. James, renowned writer and radical activist, was essentially an autodidact and independent scholar who developed a highly original body of work on a number of subjects, both alone and in collaboration with political comrades. There are profound issues underlying the structure of his ideas, the conditions under which they were developed, and the conditions under which they have been disseminated and studied, which have never been examined nor will ever be understood by the specialized mind of either the political activist or the academic. While James’s work has been analyzed in a number of areas, certain fundamental concepts developed in the 1940s and ‘50s have not been addressed, especially his views on intellectuals and the division of labor. The culminating work of that period, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1953), continues to elude comprehension, because it implicitly condemns its readers in academia and the left.

I propose to examine at the deepest level the interconnections among methodological issues, intellectual independence, personal integrity, social institutions, interpersonal relations, and the development of personality. I intend to shove middle class radicalism and professionalism aside to get personal, analyzing James’s world and James studies, so that the misfits who have inhabited both to date will have no place to hide. How can we account for the majesty of James’s intellectual work in contrast to his material existence? Why was there a lack of transparency in the relations and understandings between James and the stunted personalities who surrounded him? How is it that the members of his political tendency, while pioneering new ways of thinking, could never fully grasp the implications of their own ideas?

The transition in James studies from networks of personal and political association to the academicization of the 1990s has not solved its problems. While fundamental categories of analysis ought to emerge from intensive immersion in primary sources, James’s work basically serves as raw material for processing by the artificially imposed paradigms of postcolonialism, cultural studies, and other fashionable academic trends. Writing for specialized audiences has not in the least promoted greater theoretical sophistication. I argue in a Jamesian spirit that exclusion of the independent scholar and the popular audience condemns the work of the academic to mediocrity. The social conditions that would foster inner strength and intellectual independence have yet to be properly formulated and created. As with James’s work itself, a fundamental advance in James studies can only be effected outside of the existing structures of society including its moribund countercultures.

This web page was originally uploaded 6 April 2004 with the title "Carrying on the Legacy: Conference Program in Preparation" and updated on 9 August 2004.