Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance

Conclusion: Some Remarks on the Critical Implications of Queer Black Marxism

In my introduction, I said that one of my aims is to open McKay’s critical closet door for a more expansive discussion than has been possible until now. For this conclusion, I would like to offer a few comments on the future of Mc­ Kay studies as well as black literary studies, radical leftist historicism, and queer cultural studies and to map out the “worldliness,” to use Edward Said’s term, between such spheres. By worldliness I mean the way in which scholarship is inexorably caught up in the civic sphere. Existing in a world where survival dictated one’s aims, McKay endeavored to control the level of how “out” he would be, and among the writerly acts of the black transnational author was an attempt to consume rather than be consumed, demonstrated by the imagery of consumption in “America” (1921). My task has been to trace McKay’s lines of flight, to listen closely to both what the queer black Marxist author said and what he felt prevented from saying openly. I also articulated in my introduction the problem of how impediments between Black Renaissance, black Atlantic, black diaspora, queer,andradicalrecoverystudiesmaypreventthesecriticalmodesfromcollaborating . But I would add here that a greater difficulty lies in the hazardous political situation that presides in present humanities studies. Today the Right is secure in its conviction that it has prevailed over the Left—formerly notorious black Communists and Trotskyists like McKay are apparently no longer a concern. conclusion Some Remarks on the Critical Implications of Queer Black Marxism 226 * Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha The Right’s confidence that history, in other words Marxism and leftism, has achieved mortality is demonstrated vividly by a section of the FBI Web site set aside to release files made available through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FBI Web site prominently displays an FOIA “library,” with an electronic “reading room,” something like the bureau’s online version of the reading room in the British Library, the place where Marx composed much of his most important work and McKay, on a borrowed membership card, first read Marx. Enacted in 1966, the FOIA lurched along toothless for a decade until the Watergate era in the mid-1970s, when Ralph Nader headed an effort forcing legislation that enabled the law (Foerstel 48–49). In the late 1970s, the bureau was finally constrained to release files on figures like McKay. The agency dragged its heels because they claimed that the FOIA files contained still sensitive material and that declassification would jeopardize national security (an argument the federal government still counts on, as other parts of the FBI Web site make clear). The FBI was justifiably worried about being revealed as an organization of Stasi-like fanatics, persecuting anyone who did not toe the line of narrow rightwing ideological beliefs—in other words, that the chief danger to the American public was, after all, not Communism but the United States’ policing of Communism . During the present time of obsession with international terrorism, however, the FBI apparently is no longer anxious about divulging classified information in the form of surveillance dossiers from the interwar period and even after. In fact, the FBI Web site readily avails the Internet surfer with formerly sensitive files through easy-access portable document format downloads, a prominent part of the bureau’s site being devoted to easy access to many dossiers, including Claude McKay’s. Because of the relative lengthiness of the file, the FBI’s McKay PDF “file” download is separated into two parts. The page describes the author accurately: Claude McKay’s roots were in Jamaica and he was never a United States citizen. He spent some time in Russia in the early 1920’s and was expected to return to the U.S. in 1923. McKay was an editor of the “Liberator.” He wrote several articles for the “Negro World,” advocating the extension of “bolshevism” in the United States as a means of obtaining freedom for the Negro. The accuracy of the succinct description isn’t surprising because the FBI has nothing to lose, as the threat posed by formerly dangerous radicals like McKay is no longer viable. Conclusion: Critical Implications of Queer Black Marxism * 227 I suppose I might be grateful to the FBI for making the files so easily accessible , considering that only a few years ago obtaining such files, as Claire Culleton hilariously relates in her introduction to Joyce...