[size=1pt][font="]Sex and thesubversive alien: The moral[/font][/size] life of C. L.R. James[size=1pt][/color][/size]
[size=1pt][font="][/color]W. Chris Johnson[/font][/size][size=1pt][/color][/size]
[size=1pt][font="][/color]Yale[/font][/size][size=1pt][font="][/color] University[/font][/size][size=1pt][/color][/size]
Abstract
This articleexplores the importance of morality, gender, and desire for C. L. R. James’sself-representation as a revolutionary intellectual. Social scientific theo-riesthat depict radicalism as a one-way Caribbean export to the United Kingdomandthe United Stateshave obscured shared traditions across the modern Atlanticworld. Throughout histransatlantic migrations from 1932 to 1952, James traf- ficked in moral frameworksgrounded in heterosexist lessons of discipline, loyaltyand self-denial. As apublic intellectual, he championed the ‘Puritan’ ethics of his protestantmiddle-class family in colonial Trinidad. Inhis private life, James had an unsteady orientation to their moral compass. Thehistoriography of the BlackRadical Tradition has erased women and gender fromthe horizons of revolutionaryaction. The intimacies of radical politicalorganizing in the United Kingdomand the United Statesled James to revise, reject, and reproduce patriarchal values of his colonialupbringing. During the 1940s and 1950s he co-founded the Johnson-ForestTendency, an interracial, intergenerational organization that theorized andorganized for the liberation of women, youth and workers. Despite the Tendency’sintersectionalagenda, James concentrated political power within himself throughthe sexualdomination of women. Confronting a cold war government intent ondeporting him,James staked his claim for UScitizenship on the body of his second wife Constance Webb. An absent husbandand authoritarian political leader, Jamesdenied his political affiliations andmarketed himself to immigration officials as amoral patriarch. In crafting hisintellectual legacies, he censored women from hisrevolutionary biography
[size=1pt][font="][/color]W. Chris Johnson[/font][/size][size=1pt][/color][/size]
[size=1pt][font="][/color]Yale[/font][/size][size=1pt][font="][/color] University[/font][/size][size=1pt][/color][/size]
Abstract
This articleexplores the importance of morality, gender, and desire for C. L. R. James’sself-representation as a revolutionary intellectual. Social scientific theo-riesthat depict radicalism as a one-way Caribbean export to the United Kingdomandthe United Stateshave obscured shared traditions across the modern Atlanticworld. Throughout histransatlantic migrations from 1932 to 1952, James traf- ficked in moral frameworksgrounded in heterosexist lessons of discipline, loyaltyand self-denial. As apublic intellectual, he championed the ‘Puritan’ ethics of his protestantmiddle-class family in colonial Trinidad. Inhis private life, James had an unsteady orientation to their moral compass. Thehistoriography of the BlackRadical Tradition has erased women and gender fromthe horizons of revolutionaryaction. The intimacies of radical politicalorganizing in the United Kingdomand the United Statesled James to revise, reject, and reproduce patriarchal values of his colonialupbringing. During the 1940s and 1950s he co-founded the Johnson-ForestTendency, an interracial, intergenerational organization that theorized andorganized for the liberation of women, youth and workers. Despite the Tendency’sintersectionalagenda, James concentrated political power within himself throughthe sexualdomination of women. Confronting a cold war government intent ondeporting him,James staked his claim for UScitizenship on the body of his second wife Constance Webb. An absent husbandand authoritarian political leader, Jamesdenied his political affiliations andmarketed himself to immigration officials as amoral patriarch. In crafting hisintellectual legacies, he censored women from hisrevolutionary biography