W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century An Essay on Africana Critical Theory

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century utilizes Du Bois's thought and texts to develop an informed critical theory of contemporary society. This book broadens the base of critical theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, and non-Western European philosophy focused by placing it in dialogue with theory and phenomena that had been heretofore woefully neglected. Taking the preeminent black intellectual of the twentieth century as his primary point of departure, Reiland Rabaka identifies and analyzes several key contributions that Du Bois and the black racial tradition offer to those interested in redeveloping and racially revising contemporary critical social theory. With chapters on critical race theory, postcolonial theory, feminism, and Marxism, this volume builds bridges from Africana Studies to disparate discursive communities, accessibly demonstrating Du Bois's, and the black radical tradition's, contributions to, and the potential impact on, a wide-range of new social scientific research and radical political struggles.

Reiland Rabaka is an associate professor of Africana studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also an affiliate professor of women and gender studies and a research fellow at the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA). He is the author of Du Bois's Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory and Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition from W.E.B. Du Bois to Amilcar Cabral, both to be published by Lexington Books.