This study offers a rhetorical analysis of George Jackson’s Soledad Brother, informed by class critical and critical race theory. Recent rhetorical studies scholarship has taken up the problem of prisons, mass incarceration, and resultant issues of race, yet without paying attention to the nexus of black radicalism and criticisms of capital. This study views George Lester Jackson as a rhetorician in his own right and argues that his combination of critical race and class critical perspectives is an important move forward in the analysis of mass incarceration. Jackson is able to combine these ideas in a plain-writing style where he employs intimacy, distance, and the strategy of telling it like it is. He does this in epistolary form, calling forth a long tradition of persuasive public letter writing. At this study’s end, ideas of circulation re engaged to show the lines of influence Jackson has and may continue to have. Through rhetorical analysis of Soledad Brother, this study demonstrates the utility of uniting class critical criticism and critical race theory for rhetorical studies, and suggests further avenues of research consistent with this approach.

Thesis advisor: Devin O. Pendas / This dissertation examines the relationship between Black America and East Germany from 1949 to 1989, exploring the ways in which two unlikely partners used international solidarity to achieve goals of domestic importance. Despite the growing number of works addressing the black experience in and with Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, West Germany, and contemporary Germany, few studies have devoted attention to the black experience in and with East Germany. In this work, the outline of this transatlantic relationship is defined, detailing who was involved in the friendship, why they were involved, and what they hoped to gain from this alliance. This dissertation argues that the GDR's ruling party utilized the relationship as a means of authenticating claims of East German anti-racism, a component of the Party's efforts to acquire legitimacy and diplomatic recognition from the international community in the wake of World War II, the Holocaust, and the division of Germany. African American radical leftists saw in East Germany a means of support and solidarity in the struggle for rights at home, as well as a society that was allegedly racism-free, upon which they could model their own attempts to eradicate racism in the US. Utilizing a transnational framework and analyzing government documents, newspapers, correspondence, photographs, and autobiographies, this work probes the ways in which two groups, pushed to the margins, sought to navigate the geopolitics of an ideologically-charged world. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

<p>This dissertation investigates the relation between the formation of "Blackness" and the Western tradition of sovereignty through the works of late twentieth century Black Radical theorists. I most specifically examine the work of Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka, Frantz Fanon, and Huey P. Newton in order to delineate a shift within Black Radicalism which, due to an intense de-linking of Black nationalism from the concept of territorial sovereignty throughout the 1960s and early 1970s led to the formation of a new subjectivity ("Blackness") oriented against and beyond the Western tradition of political sovereignty as a whole. </p><p> This dissertation begins by outlining the parameters of the concept of sovereignty as well as its relation to conquest, coloniality, and racialization more generally. I then examine the formation of Black Power as an expression of anti-colonial sentiments present within the United States and uncover there the influence of W.E.B. DuBois' concept of double-consciousness. I then further examine the concept of Black Power through the work of Amiri Baraka and his notion of "Blackness" as the proximity to "home." Each of these expositions of Black Power are undertaken in order to better understand the era of Black Power and its relation to both Black nationalism and the Western tradition of sovereignty. </p><p> Next, I turn to the work of Frantz Fanon, whom I claim prepares the way for the idea of "Blackness" as an ontological resistance beyond, not only the territorial imperative, but also the logic of sovereignty more generally. This notion of "Blackness" as an antidote to sovereign logic present within the work of Fanon allows me to turn to the work of Huey P. Newton in order to demonstrate his conceptualization of "Blackness" as an antagonistic subjectivity within a fully globalized society whose onset he had theorized and which he termed "empire." I conclude by drawing on each of the above theorists as well as the work of Angela Davis in order to build a retrospective summary of this alternative lineage of the Black Radical Tradition and its importance for the conceptualization of resistances to and life beyond our contemporary society.</p> / Dissertation

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[pt] Esta dissertação investiga a construção de negros radicais como ameaça à ordem política global/local, focando-se em dois períodos históricos em que um discurso sobre extremismo negro emergiu nos Estados Unidos. O primeiro corresponde ao final dos anos 1960 e início dos anos 1970, quando o Partido Panteras Negras foi construído como a maior ameaça doméstica à segurança estadunidense; e o segundo, ao final dos anos 2000 e ao decorrer dos anos 2010, quando ativistas e movimentos sociais engajados no combate à violência policial reentraram na lista de ameaças domésticas aos Estados Unidos. Em ambos os contextos históricos, tal processo de construção de ameaça foi, também, informado por discursos sobre outras ameaças racializadas e globais aos Estados Unidos. A segunda metade do século XX foi marcada pela construção do radicalismo negro como ameaça intrinsicamente conectada ao anticomunismo voltado, particularmente, para movimentos de libertação nacional em ex-colônias. No século XXI, a ameaça de radicais negros foi rearticulada de modo a conectá-la com o Terrorismo islâmico. Tais pontuações baseiam-se em uma análise discursivogenealógica que explora registros históricos sobre o extremismo negro feitos por agências policiai. A dissertação aponta para a persistência do enquadramento do radicalismo negro como problema de segurança nos Estados Unidos, ainda que os termos que constroem essa ameaça são transformados globalmente. Assim, o discurso de extremismo negro refere-se à uma ameaça racializadas ao ordenamento político global e local na parte da arquitetura de policiamento estadunidense. / [en] This dissertation investigates the making of black radicals as a threat to the global/local political order, focusing on two historical periods in which a discourse on black extremism emerged in the United States. The first corresponds to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Black Panther Party was constructed as the leading domestic threat to the U.S. security; the second, to the late 2000s and 2010s, when activists and social movements engaged in anti-police brutality re-entered the realm of concrete domestic threats to the U.S. In both historical contexts such threat-making processes were also infused with discourses concerning other racialized global threats to the U.S. The second half of the 20th century was marked by the construction of black radicals as a threat intrinsically connected with anticommunism and invested toward national liberation movements in former colonies. In the 21st century, the threat of black radicals is re-articulated into one intimately linked to Islamic terrorism. These claims are based on a discursive genealogical analysis that explores historical records made by policing agencies regarding black extremism. The dissertation points to the persistence of the framing of black radicals as a security problem; within the United States, while the terms for these threat-making processes have been globally re-articulated. Hence, the black extremism discourse simultaneously refers to a racialized threat to the global and local political orders in the perception of the United States policing architecture.