ABSTRACT
Finding common ground between theory and the ‘founding condition of Afro-American intellectual history’,1 Houston A. Baker, Jr argues that both seek explanations at a ‘metalevel’. Baker comes to this conclusion because of the way in which his intellectual project is always firmly grounded in the history of Afro-American existence, especially an awareness of the uprooting, dispossession and victimization that constituted the African slave trade. Early Afro-Americans maintained their cultural heritage during slavery in ways in which the dispossession of material goods could not touch, leading not just to a privileging of spirituality and spiritual leaders within slave communities, but also the privileging of autobiography as a genre in which Afro-Americans could reinforce and reinvent self-worth in the midst of their debasement. This confluence of theory and intensely personal history is one of the factors that has led to Baker’s groundbreaking work in the field of Afro-American literary studies. Born in 1943, in Louisville, Kentucky, Baker was educated at Howard University and the University of California, Los Angeles; his early work on literary criticism involved writing a thesis on Victorian aesthetics, which he achieved in part through his researches at Edinburgh University in Scotland (1967-1968). At Yale University, where Baker initially worked as an instructor, his interests shifted to Afro-American literary studies. In 1970 Baker became a member of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia, and in 1974 he became the director of the Afro-American Studies Programme at the University of Pennsylvania. Baker was awarded the prestigious post of Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. In his early publications, Baker’s focus was on defining, mapping and performing a critique of the ‘black aesthetic’ in America: major texts from this period include Long Black Song: Essays in Black American Literature (1972), Singers of Daybreak: Studies in Black American Literature (1974) and the edited collection Reading Black: Essays in the Criticism of African, Caribbean, and Black American Literature (1976). In the introduction to Reading Black, Baker argues that while it is difficult to precisely date the origins of a black aesthetic, it is possible to offer a basic map that includes:
The establishment of LeRoi Jones’ Black Arts Repertoire Theatre School, the founding of new literary and cultural
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ance of invaluable anthologies and critical volumes by Black writers.2
