Itibari M. Zulu to work with Marvin X on the Hare Papers

Greetings Marvin:  I read that you are organizing the Hare Papers, excellent, should you need any assistance (at no cost), let me know.  Itibari M. Zulu, M.L.S., Th.D., Ph.Dc. Senior Editor, The Journal of Pan African Studies; Vice President, The African Diaspora Foundation; Founding Member & Vice Chair, The Bennu Institute of Arizona Bio:Itibari M. Zulu is vice president of the African Diaspora Foundation, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies Library & Media Center at UCLA, and provost of instruction and curriculum at Amen-Ra Theological Seminary. He is currently developing the King-Luthuli Transformation Centre peace library and distance (new technology) learning center in Johannesburg.

UCB Bancroft Library: The Marvin X Papers 1965-2006

Finding Aid to the Marvin X Papers: 1965-2006

Collection Guide

∞w

Collection Title:

Collection Number:

Get Items:

Finding Aid to the Marvin X Papers, 1965-2006, bulk 1993-2006

BANC MSS 2006/217  

 No online items

 Contact UC Berkeley::Bancroft LibraryTable of contents 

Description

The Marvin X Papers document the life and work of playwright, poet, essayist, and activist Marvin X during the nineties and the first decade of the 21st Century. The papers include correspondence; Marvin X's writings; materials related to the Recovery Theatre; works by his children and colleagues; and resource files. Correspondence includes letters, cards, and e-mails; correspondents include Amiri Baraka and other prominent African-American intellectuals. Marvin X's writings include notebooks, drafts, and manuscripts of poetry, novels, plays, essays, and planned anthologies. Documents from the Recovery Theatre include organizational and financial records and promotional material. Writings by others include essays, scripts, and academic papers by his three daughters. Resource files include academic articles, e-mails, flyers, news clippings and programs that contextualize and document Marvin X's involvement as an activist, intellectual, and literary figure in the African American community in the Bay Area in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Photographs include snapshots of family, friends, colleagues, and productions at the Recovery Theatre.

Background

Poet, playwright and essayist Marvin X was born Marvin E. Jackmon on May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California. He grew up in Fresno and Oakland, in an activist household. X attended Oakland City College (Merritt College), where he was introduced to Black Nationalism and became friends with future Black Panther founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. X earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from San Francisco State University and emerged as an important voice in the Black Arts Movement (BAM), the artistic arm of the Black Power movement, in the mid-to-late Sixties. X wrote for many of the BAM's key journals. He also co-founded, with playwright Ed Bullins and others, two of BAM's premier West Coast headquarters and venues - Oakland's Black House and San Francisco's Black Arts/West Theatre. In 1967, X joined the Nation of Islam and became known as El Muhajir. In the eighties, he organized the Melvin Black Forum on Human Rights and the first Annual All Black Men's Conference. He also served as an aide to former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and attempted to create the Marvin X Center for the Study of World Religions. In 1999, X founded San Francisco's Recovery Theatre. His production of "One Day in the Life," the play he wrote about his drug addiction and recovery, became the longest-running African-American drama in Northern California. In 2004, in celebration of Black History Month, X produced the San Francisco Tenderloin Book Fair (also known as the San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair) and University of Poetry. X has taught Black Studies, drama, creative writing, journalism, English and Arabic at a variety of California universities and colleges. He continues to work as an activist, educator, writer, and producer.

Extent

Number of containers: 8 cartons, 1 box Linear feet: 10.2

Restrictions

All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94270-6000. Consent is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. See: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html.

Marvin X Speaks on KPOO Radio, 89.5FM, Thursday 12 Noon

KPOO RADIO

@KPOORADIO

KPOO is an independent,noncommercial station. KPOO broadcasts 24 hours a day. 89.5FM or online kpoo.com & on Tune In Radio phone app

San Francisco · http://www.kpoo.com

Marvin X will speak on KPOO radio on Thursday, 12 noon to 1pm. He will be speaking about the upcoming Black Think Thank Book Fair and reading from his writings, including his latest book The Wisdom of Plato Negro. He will invite his colleague Dr. Nathan Hare to share his wisdom. Dr. Hare will be 80 years old this April. He is the founder of Black Studies in America.

The Black Think Thank Book Fair is Friday, Feb. 1, 3-5pm., at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street. Civic Center BART exit.

The Best of Marvin X from KPOO Radio, San Francisco

Marvin X reads and is interviewed by Sister Pam Pam, KPOO Radio, San Francisco.

Dr. Nathan Hare and Marvin X will present their thoughts and writings at the Black Think Tank Book Fair, Friday, Feb. 1, 3-5pm, at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco. Koret  Auditorium, downstairs. Free. Call 510-200-4164 for more information. Other participants include Ayodele Nzinga, Mama Ayana, Meres-Sia Gabriel, Darlene Roberts, et al.

 Files (10 MB) | Download All

• Marvin X - The Gangster.mp3
• Marvin X..... on Books.mp3
• Marvin X....Old Man Young Girl.mp3
• Marvin X....on The worst enemy.mp3

Is White Supremacy the only real philosophy?

Can non-Europeans think?

What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical 'pedigree'? Last Modified: 15 Jan 2013 11:41 inShare73 Email Print Share Feedback

The works of French philosopher Michel Foucault is usually at the forefront of Eurocentric philosophy [AFP]

In a lovely little panegyric for the distinguished European philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published recently on Al Jazeera, we read: There are many important and active philosophers today: Judith Butler in the United States, Simon Critchley in England, Victoria Camps in Spain, Jean-Luc Nancy in France, Chantal Mouffe in Belgium, Gianni Vattimo in Italy, Peter Sloterdijk in Germany and in Slovenia, Slavoj Zizek, not to mention others working in Brazil, Australia and China. What immediately strikes the reader when seeing this opening paragraph is the unabashedly European character and disposition of the thing the author calls "philosophy today" - thus laying a claim on both the subject and time that is peculiar and in fact an exclusive property of Europe. Even Judith Butler who is cited as an example from the United States is decidedly a product of European philosophical genealogy, thinking somewhere between Derrida and Foucault, brought to bear on our understanding of gender and sexuality. To be sure, China and Brazil (and Australia, which is also a European extension) are cited as the location of other philosophers worthy of the designation, but none of them evidently merits a specific name to be sitting next to these eminent European philosophers. The question of course is not the globality of philosophical visions that all these prominent European (and by extension certain American) philosophers indeed share and from which people from the deepest corners of Africa to the remotest villages of India, China, Latin America, and the Arab and Muslim world ("deep and far", that is, from a fictive European centre) can indeed learn and better understand their lives. That goes without saying, for without that confidence and self-consciousness these philosophers and the philosophical traditions they represent can scarce lay any universal claim on our epistemic credulities, nor would they be able to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and write a sentence. Thinkers outside Europe  These are indeed not only eminent philosophers, but the philosophy they practice has the globality of certain degrees of self-conscious confidence without which no thinking can presume universality. The question is rather something else: What about other thinkers who operate outside this European philosophical pedigree, whether they practice their thinking in the European languages they have colonially inherited or else in their own mother tongues - in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, thinkers that have actually earned the dignity of a name, and perhaps even the pedigree of a "public intellectual" not too dissimilar to Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault that in this piece on Al Jazeera are offered as predecessors of Zizek? "Why is European philosophy 'philosophy', but African philosophy 'ethnophilosophy'?" What about thinkers outside the purview of these European philosophers; how are we to name and designate and honour and learn from them with the epithet of "public intellectual" in the age of globalised media? Do the constellation of thinkers from South Asia, exemplified by leading figures like Ashis Nandy, Partha Chatterjee, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Sudipta Kaviraj, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Homi Bhabha, or Akeel Bilgrami, come together to form a nucleus of thinking that is conscious of itself? Would that constellation perhaps merit the word "thinking" in a manner that would qualify one of them - as a South Asian - to the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals"? Are they "South Asian thinkers" or "thinkers", the way these European thinkers are? Why is it that if Mozart sneezes it is "music" (and I am quite sure the great genius even sneezed melodiously) but the most sophisticated Indian music ragas are the subject of "ethnomusicology"? Is that "ethnos" not also applicable to the philosophical thinking that Indian philosophers practice - so much so that their thinking is more the subject of Western European and North American anthropological fieldwork and investigation? We can turn around and look at Africa. What about thinkers like Henry Odera Oruka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Okot p'Bitek, Taban Lo Liyong, Achille Mbembe, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, V.Y. Mudimbe: Would they qualify for the term "philosopher" or "public intellectuals" perhaps, or is that also "ethnophilosophy"? Why is European philosophy "philosophy", but African philosophy ethnophilosophy, the way Indian music is ethnomusic - an ethnographic logic that is based on the very same reasoning that if you were to go to the New York Museum of Natural History (popularised in Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum [2006]), you only see animals and non-white peoples and their cultures featured inside glass cages, but no cage is in sight for white people and their cultures - they just get to stroll through the isles and enjoy the power and ability of looking at taxidermic Yaks, cave dwellers, elephants, Eskimos, buffalo, Native Americans, etc, all in a single winding row. The same ethnographic gaze is evident in the encounter with the intellectual disposition of the Arab or Muslim world: Azmi Bishara, Sadeq Jalal Al-Azm, Fawwaz Traboulsi, Abdallah Laroui, Michel Kilo, Abdolkarim Soroush. The list of prominent thinkers and is endless. In Japan, Kojin Karatani, in Cuba, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, or even in the United States people like Cornel West, whose thinking is not entirely in the European continental tradition - what about them? Where do they fit in? Can they think - is what they do also thinking, philosophical, pertinent, perhaps, or is that also suitable for ethnographic examinations? The question of Eurocentricism is now entirely blase. Of course Europeans are Eurocentric and see the world from their vantage point, and why should they not? They are the inheritors of multiple (now defunct) empires and they still carry within them the phantom hubris of those empires and they think their particular philosophy is "philosophy" and their particular thinking is "thinking", and everything else is - as the great European philosopher Immanuel Levinas was wont of saying - "dancing". The question is rather the manner in which non-European thinking can reach self-consciousness and evident universality, not at the cost of whatever European philosophers may think of themselves for the world at large, but for the purpose of offering alternative (complementary or contradictory) visions of reality more rooted in the lived experiences of people in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America - counties and climes once under the spell of the thing that calls itself "the West" but happily no more. The trajectory of contemporary thinking around the globe is not spontaneously conditioned in our own immediate time and disparate locations, but has a much deeper and wider spectrum that goes back to earlier generations of thinkers ranging from José Marti to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, to Aime Cesaire, W.E.B. DuBois, Liang Qichao, Frantz Fanon, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, etc. So the question remains why not the dignity of "philosophy" and whence the anthropological curiosity of "ethnophilosophy"? Let's seek the answer from Europe itself - but from the subaltern of Europe. 'The Intellectuals as a Cosmopolitan Stratum' In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci has a short discussion about Kant's famous phrase in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) that is quite critical in our understanding of what it takes for a philosopher to become universally self-conscious, to think of himself as the measure and yardstick of globality. Gramsci's stipulation is critical here - and here is how he begins: Kant's maxim "act in such a way that your conduct can become a norm for all men in similar conditions" is less simple and obvious than it appears at first sight. What is meant by 'similar conditions'? To be sure, and as Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (the editors and translators of the English translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks) note, Gramsci here in fact misquotes Kant, and that "similar conditions" does not appear in the original text, where the German philosopher says: "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." This principle, called "the categorical imperative", is in fact the very foundation of Kantian ethics. So where Kant says "universal law", Gramsci says, "a norm for all men", and then he adds an additional "similar conditions", which is not in the German original. "The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes - these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination." That misquoting is quite critical here. Gramsci's conclusion is that the reason Kant can say what he says and offer his own behaviour as measure of universal ethics is that "Kant's maxim presupposes a single culture, a single religion, a 'world-wide' conformism... Kant's maxim is connected with his time, with the cosmopolitan enlightenment and the critical conception of the author. In brief, it is linked to the philosophy of the intellectuals as a cosmopolitan stratum". What in effect Gramsci discovers, as a southern Italian suffering in the dungeons of European fascism, is what in Brooklyn we call chutzpah, to think yourself the centre of universe, a self-assuredness that gives the philosopher that certain panache and authority to think in absolutists and grand narrative terms. Therefore the agent is the bearer of the "similar conditions" and indeed their creator. That is, he "must" act according to a "model" which he would like to see diffused among all mankind, according to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working-or for whose preservation he is "resisting" the forces that threaten its disintegration. It is precisely that self-confidence, that self-consciousness, that audacity to think yourself the agent of history that enables a thinker to think his particular thinking is "Thinking" in universal terms, and his philosophy "Philosophy" and his city square "The Public Space", and thus he a globally recognised Public Intellectual. There is thus a direct and unmitigated structural link between an empire, or an imperial frame of reference, and the presumed universality of a thinker thinking in the bosoms of that empire. As all other people, Europeans are perfectly entitled to their own self-centrism. The imperial hubris that once enabled that Eurocentricism and still produces the infomercials of the sort we read in Al Jazeera for Zizek are the phantom memories of the time that "the West" had assured confidence and a sense of its own universalism and globality, or as Gramsci put it, "to a type of civilisation for whose coming he is working". But that globality is no more - people from every clime and continent are up and about claiming their own cosmopolitan worldliness and with it their innate ability to think beyond the confinements of that Eurocentricism, which to be sure is still entitled to its phantom pleasures of thinking itself the centre of the universe. The Gramscian superimposed "similar conditions" are now emerging in multiple cites of the liberated humanity. The world at large, and the Arab and Muslim world in particular, is going through world historic changes - these changes have produced thinkers, poets, artists, and public intellectuals at the centre of their moral and politcial imagination - all thinking and acting in terms at once domestic to their immediate geography and yet global in its consequences. Compared to those liberating tsunamis now turning the world upside down, cliche-ridden assumption about Europe and its increasingly provincialised philosophical pedigree is a tempest in the cup. Reduced to its own fair share of the humanity at large, and like all other continents and climes, Europe has much to teach the world, but now on a far more leveled and democratic playing field, where its philosophy is European philosophy not "Philosophy", its music European music not "Music", and no infomercial would be necessary to sell its public intellectuals as "Public Intellectuals". Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Among his most recent books is The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012). The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Black History: Timbuktu Library Torched as Rebels flee French

Torch and go: Islamists burn down rare manuscript library in Timbuktu Published: 28 January, 2013, 18:49   Islamist rebels have burnt down a library full of ancient manuscripts in the Malian town of Timbuktu as they fled, according to officials. The South African-funded library contained thousands of priceless documents dating back to the 13th century. Ancient manuscripts displayed at the library in the city of Timbuktu. Islamists fleeing Timbuktu in the face of a French-led offensive have torched a building housing ancient Arabic manuscripts, security and army sources said on January 28, 2013 (AFP Photo / Evan Schneider) "The rebels sit fire to the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute built by the South Africans … this happened four days ago," Timbuktu Mayor Halle Ousmane Ciffe told Reuters by telephone from Bamako. According to the official, he received the information from his chief of communications, who had traveled south from the town on Sunday. The manuscripts were being kept in two different locations, an old warehouse and a new research center – the Ahmed Baba Institute. Both buildings were burned down, according to the mayor, who was unable to say immediately if any of the manuscripts had survived in fire. Named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare, the Ahmed Baba Institute housed more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts. Some were stored in underground vaults. “The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali's heritage, but the world's heritage. By destroying them they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north," added Ciffe. The majority of the ancient books burnt were written in Arabic and covered a wide range of topics such as astronomy, music, poetry, medicine, geography, history and religion. The oldest dated back to the beginning of the 13th century. The Islamist fighters also burned down the town hall and the governor's office, and reportedly shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military. French troops and the Malian army closed in on Timbuktu on Saturday night and secured the local airport and roads leading to the desert town. But they got there too late to save the leather-bound manuscripts from fire, which were a record of sub-Saharan Africa's medieval history. The Islamist rebels had captured the trading town nine months ago. During their rule, the militants have had systematically destroyed UNESCO World Heritage sites in Timbuktu, according to its mayor. A researcher for the Ahmed Baba Institute, Seydo Traore, told media that some rebels had been sleeping in the new institute. "They were the masters of the place," he said, adding that the militants had also destroyed the shrines of more than 300 Sufi saints dotted around the town. Timbuktu is situated 950km north of Mali’s capital of Bamako and lies on an ancient caravan route. The destruction of the town’s library marked the latest inroad by the two-week-old French mission to oust radical Islamists from the northern half of Mali. French-led troops regain Timbuktu from rebels

Malian and French troops enter the ancient city of Timbuktu, but one northern town remains in rebel hands. Last Modified: 28 Jan 2013 23:19 inShare Email Print Share Feedback

French and Malian troops have taken control of the historic Malian city of Timbuktu, after rebel occupiers fled the ancient Sahara trading town and torched several buildings, including a priceless manuscript library. The French-led coalition troops were welcomed by residents of the town, AFP news agency reported with some residents saying that the rebel fighters had left the city several days ago. "The Malian army and the French army are in complete control of the town of Timbuktu. Everything is under control," a colonel in the Malian army told AFP on condition of anonymity. A French military source said there were fears they could have dotted the city with mines, adding that they were in the process of "securing" it. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Timbuktu said that the streets were almost empty when the coalition troops arrived. "As we got deeper into the city the crowd got bigger." Malian troops have been leading the entrance into various towns with the French troops numbering about 3,000 behind them. Rowland said that this was intended to give the impression that Malian troops are retaking the town while they were actually being reinstalled in the town by the French troops. She said that there had been little fighting as the coalition troops re-took various towns, and that the rebels had simply "melted away", possibly into Mauritania and other neighbouring countries. "Some people say that this may look like a problem postponed," with likelihood of the return of the rebels at a later stage, Rowland said. 'Winning' Earlier on Monday, a breakaway group from the al-Qaeda linked Ansar Dine group and Tuareg rebels announced that they had claimed control of a northern town, Kidal. French President Francois Hollande told reporters on Monday that France was winning the battle, but added that it would be up to African forces to tackle rebels in the northern part of Mali once the key towns in the region were retaken. "Then the Africans can take over the baton," Hollande said. "They are the ones who will go into the northern part, which we know is the most difficult because that's where the terrorists are hiding." Nearly 8,000 African troops from Chad and the west African grouping ECOWAS are expected to take over from the French troops, but their deployment has been sluggish with 2,700 split between Mali and Niger. The African-led force will require a budget of $460m, with the African Union pledging $50m to the mission on the final day of its summit in Addis Ababa on Monday. Ancient manuscripts One resident who had cried out "Vive la France" was "burnt alive" as the rebels left the Timbuktu. Fears also soared for the city's cultural heritage when a building housing tens of thousands of manuscripts from the ancient Muslim world and Greece was set aflame. Mayor Ousmane confirmed the fire at the Ahmed Baba Centre for Documentation and Research which housed between 60,000 and 100,000 manuscripts, according to Mali's culture ministry. However, Shamil Jeppie of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project at South Africa's University of Cape Town said he had no news from the ground but believed some of the most important documents may have been smuggled out or hidden in recent months. "I've heard from reliable sources on the ground that the private libraries took good care of hiding or taking out their stuff," Jeppie said.