thank you.

welcome. i'm going to be talking to you about my book today. the esthetic cold war, decolonization and global literature. i want to thank the commonwealth institute of black studies for making this event possible today. my pride act is about the effect the cold war, especially the effect of the competing ocean between the united states and the soviet union on literatures and the development of writing in the world what was then

called third world is now called sometimes the developing world or, the global south. so there been lots of studies of cold war literature, most of have focused on what happened in the united states and the soviet union, but i started to do my research on this. i learned that the u.s. and soviet union in the competition between them had an incredible effect on literary development in other parts of the world, especially africa, asia and the caribbean, which were the focus of this book now of offering a sort of overview and somatic overview instead of reading novels poetry and plays and about what is the effect ideological competition cold war competition in places in the south. i decided in book that i wanted to focus on two of the mechanism arms in which large states got

directly in literary competition in the global south. the first of those areas is in what i call war cultural diplomacy. the united states and soviet union sponsored libraries. they sponsored music tours. they sponsored cultural events, they sponsored museums, they sponsored book publications and book distribution schemes. they sponsored conferences. most of all. and what i talk about at great length, this book is their sponsorship of magazines that targeted writers and targeted audiences what's now called the global south is a brief snippet of some of the magazines that i look at in this project. if you look at the the top left of this slide, you'll see black orpheus. this a magazine that was founded in ibadan, nigeria, in the

1950s. and it was ultimately sponsored by the congress for cultural freedom, which we learned in 1966 and 1867 was a cia front below that on the left is transition magazine, the editor of which was written yoshi, the ugandan indian. this is probably the best known of the literary political magazines that came out of africa during the sixties. some of you may know it because this magazine was revived by louis gates at harvard and it's still running now. so if look up on project muse or whoever it is that that that carries the magazine you can find editions of transition and going all the way back to the first one in 1961 or thereabouts 2 to 2. the magazine's current day operations also sponsored by the

cia, covertly congress for cultural freedom. and i'll talk a little bit about them in a minute in the bottom left of this slide, you'll see another congress for cultural freedom magazine. they were a big in the 1960s. this was encounter, which was based in the primary audiences, were anglo american, but it had a huge impact on literary in africa. top of that slide, you'll see one of the many magazine ins sponsored by the u.s. state department called world. this was produced out of hong kong and distributed throughout the chinese diaspora in fifties and sixties. so the the writer that i talk about that that published some of her most stuff in world today is, eileen chang, who who left china in the 1950s and ultimately resettled in the

united states last night. using that, i'll point out to you on this slide probably the most successful and certainly the most durable of these was lotus writings. this sponsored by the soviet union throughout its period. it's its full print. so you can see that magazines were one area of between the u.s. and soviet union. one of the things that i've pointed out point out about lotus that was unusual was also a tri lingual magazine and it was published simultaneously in arabic in english and in french and it had circulation that ranged between five and 10,000 magazines per was published out of cairo by them by minister of culture yusuf al-sabah. i was the editor so cultural diplomacy, i'll talk a lot more that in this talk but this gives

you a overview of of the forms of competition that took place in the world of publishing arts and letters between the u.s. and soviet union in the decolonizing world, the other part of this project, if the diplomacy part of the project we might think of is the carrot that was dangled in front of african and asian writers, was the stick write the u.s. soviet union both to influence the development and of arts and letters, the decolonizing world through state intervention intelligence, putting writers jail, deporting them, censoring their work, depriving them of citizenship, and opening up monitoring and intelligence files on those writers, some for decades. and these are just some the writers that i talk about in

project there were a wide range of writers from what's now called the global south that spied upon by one or more governments. and if you read the book, you'll see actually a lot of these writers show up in both parts of the narrative. i tell write these are writers enjoyed state patronage in certain contexts and then the people who were punished by large states in other contexts. you can see on this two of africa's nobel laureates aren't that many of them. right. voice showing on the left who wrote a great, amazing prison memoir, man died that i talked about extensively in the book. he spent almost two years in in solitary. well, not all of it in solitary. a significant part of it in solitary detention in nigeria. doris lessing, another nobel laureate from africa, was spied

upon by mi5 for nearly two decades, and she knew it. she talked about it extensively in her writings. she was aware of it and they made sure that she knew she was under observation. alex laguna, the figure. the center was exiled south africa. he spent the better of ten years either in jail or under house arrest, was harassed by the intelligence services for much of his adult life while he was living in south nuala el saadawi, the great egyptian medical doctor and feminist activist, spent time in an egyptian prison. she also wrote about her experiences as didn't give you what yongle of the great kenyan writer who spent time about a year in detention in kenya. the bottom right of this slide, claudia jones and claude james.

i'll talk about them a little bit later. my discussion, they're both from the of trinidad in the caribbean they both spent time in england as well as in the united states. they were both deported from the united both have very fbi files that looked at and somewhat more slender but substantial mi5 files that were collected on them during their time in. the bottom center. you'll note more krishnan the great indian. he's pictured here at the 1958 tashkent meeting of the african asian writers association. next to him is w.e.b. the great african-american political theorist and writer who was denied a passport for many in the united states. his passport was reinstated enough in time for to attend the first meeting of the afro-asian

writers association. this is the group that sponsors the lotus magazine. their first meeting was in tashkent in the soviet union in 1958, and dubois was there. rajat niazi, the editor transition. he also spent time in detention in uganda before to the us. sajjad, the indian and pakistan writer, an intellectual and and more crushing on these two of the earliest figures who show up in the intelligence files that i examined. they were being tracked by british and indian security services during, the colonial period. well, back into the 1930s. so of writers is something that happened over a very extensive period of time. many writers had with state agencies through cultural diplomacy efforts. but many of these same writers were the victim, if you like of state apparatus that tracked their movements monitored their

work. so let me turn now tell you a little bit more about what i with cultural diplomacy in this project and i'll start that by giving you a little bit of an anecdote about how i got started on this research in the early 2000s between about 2005 and 2010, i was working on a book project that, had to do primarily with connections between white metropolitan british writers and their counterpart from the decolonizing world. and i was especially interested in a bbc radio program called caribbean voices that hosted black and other writers of color from the caribbean, alongside some of their white british counterparts. and i was at the harry ransom center in texas doing some archival research for this project. and whenever i go to archival work, i like to describe what i'm doing to the librarians and

archivists, because they always know stuff. they know stuff that i don't know and they know way more about their own holdings than i do. so i was describing work on my interest in bbc to an archivist and she said to me, okay, you've got to talk to one of my colleagues. this guy called bob taylor. she made an appointment with me to meet with him the next day i show up to the meeting and bob sits me down and says, have you heard of the transcription center? i heard that you're doing this work on bbc radio and this program called caribbean voices. have you heard of the transcription center? i said, not ringing any bells. i don't know. i have no idea what you're talking about, he said. okay, well during the 1960s, in london, there was this bbc producer called denis durden who had a recording studio and he invented this thing, started this thing called the transcription center. and they brought in all of

emerging african writing channels of the 1960s when they passed through london. so they did interviews with yinka nkosi. he killed pele. she knew uhf, the whole alex, the puma, the 1960s generation of writers. boy, that sounds really fascinating going to i'm going to check it out as soon as i'm done this this this other book that working on and he said, okay, just wanted to make sure you're aware of it. we've got all the stuff here, the harry ransom center. and we were sort of getting to lead. and he sort of said with a twinkle in, i said, oh, i almost forgot to tell. and i said, oh, he said to, transcription center was covertly funded by the cia. now he had my attention i said, why on earth was the cia in 1960

263 supporting an that was recording pro-gay with volleys showing and other luminaries from that generation and them around the world. i just it didn't make any sense to me and he said that's for my job ends and your job begins right? you need to find out. the cia was doing backing a program this and you need to make that story known. so that's kind of how my research started. i pulled some files that very afternoon. this was a an archive that had been acquired by the harry ransom center, but it hadn't even been cataloged yet. so i just said, you know, bring me some boxes. and i started looking. this document is one of the earliest spock's earliest documents that i found in my searches. this is a program from 1962. it's called the embalming

conference, but it was also called the african writers of english expression conference at mclaren university in kampala, uganda and it's got a list of participants all large this in a second to show you some the major figures who were at this conference. so i knew the first time i saw this roster of attendees is that these are all people who accepted money, at least indirect plea from the cia. interesting. now, when this conference happened. they should point out that cia sponsorship covert. they did not say the cia is sponsoring. it was sponsored by an organization the congress for cultural freedom. but i should point out that the congress for cultural freedom made absolutely no bones its ideological orientation. right in their manifesto which was published in 1950. they say things totalitarianism

of the kind practiced by the soviet union is is the greatest threat to mankind. and since the stone age, for instance, perhaps exaggerated, but my point is that the ideological orientation of the congress for cultural freedom was no secret, even if the funding was secret. here's a blow up. i don't know how well you'll be able read it. so i highlighted a few names of figures who showed up at the 1962 conference. there's one in the bottom corner there. ralph, the great african-american and essayist. we don't think he actually attended the conference, but he was invited. he on the program. he may have run into complications. i don't. but if you look at the rest of this document, especially the top half of it, you'll see that the whole generation, 1960s anglophone writers is there from chinua achebe, dennis durden, the guy who directed it the

transcription center that i talked about a moment ago was there, alex lagoon and we'll talk about in a moment was fresh off the publication of a walk in the night he was he was he was invited also no show because he was detention the south african authorities would not let him leave the country. christopher okigbo oh the great nigerian poet who sadly died in the civil war in nigeria a few years later was there. louis nkosi in gujarati congo. he was known as james in googie, was there. ezekiel, esquire, pele, the great south african writer was in many ways the de facto host of the event. he was the brainchild of it. he was for the congress for cultural freedom at this time. v.s. naipaul to be doing a fellowship in u. south africa at the time. and he was there, as was langston hughes, who was kind of the presiding luminary, the guest of honor at at the

conference. so when i saw this document a narrative, again, it's very early on in my research in my research, a narrative started form in my mind right. okay. what we have here, front of us, in front of me that time is a is kind of stable of writers who had taken patronage from an anti totalitarian organization and we can already see writers lining up and taking sides in this cold war. at least this is what i thought i saw when i saw this document. here's a picture of chinua achebe at that 1962 conference. and i'm already forming in my mind this group of writers who partizans of the us and advocates of some kind of anti totalitarian agenda. i should point out briefly while i'm on this slide, congress for freedom was unmasked as a as a

as a cia backed organization when in 1966, 67, it was started in 4950 aftermath of world war and ran until about 1967. and they were extra active throughout the decolonizing world. so there's a choubey and a bunch of other people that i won't mention here at that conference and then a couple of years later i started turning my attention to the writers association, the counterpart of, the congress for cultural freedom, the competing organization, the congress for cultural freedom, their magazine was called lotus the prize. they awarded the grand prize that they awarded literary figures was the lotus. and here you can see chinua achebe was awarded lotus prize. and ihought, like all scholars

do. interesting. th is an anomaly, right. and i'm going to put brackets around it and i'm going to put i'm going to put it over here. i'm going to deal with it later. i'not going to, like, suppress it because. that would be, you know, something don't want to do. but humanists love omalies we love weird facts, right? this one of them. i'll deal with it later. alex the guma great south african writer who could not attend the 1962 malaria conference was never the less an important figure. there his his first novella, a walk in the night, had recently published by embery publishers that was a publishing outfit that was started in ibadan, nigeria, and it was closely affiliated, the congress for cultural freedom. they took congress for cultural freedom, money and a walk in the

night was the centerpiece at the 1962 democratic conference of the fiction discussions. they broke the conference up into some fiction panels, some poetry panels and some drama panels and a walk in the night. mcgovern's book. even though he couldn't be there, was the centerpiece of those discussions. fast forward to 1973 and here you'll see a picture of alex laguna at the savoy it affiliated afro asian writers association meeting. he's actually the lotus prize, one of the first lotus prizes in 1969. he's here. he looks like he's strang going to be seen. the great french-algerian, but he's actually congratulating khattab yassine on his lotus prize. this is yusuf el-sayed by, the egyptian writer and minister of culture in during the seventies, during sadat's regime regime.

yusef al-sabah was the founding editor of lotus magazine. alex laguna went to edit the magazine for a time and also became the general secretary of the afro-asian writers association, the chief executive, if you like, of the effort. afro-asian writers, sessions so that the brackets that i had pushed way over here are now kind of sitting on my shoulder a little bit right. chinua achebe is shown as a figure at both events. alex guma has shown up a figure at us sponsored and soviet sponsored events. i'm to think, okay, this is more than an anomaly. i might need to deal with it. this is a picture of sambo whose mind? the great senegalese novelist and filmmaker i've never i don't know if anybody else has, but i've never seen a picture of him without a pipe. you let me know you find one. but if you ever see a photograph

of a senegalese guy in, you know, traditional dress might call it smoking a pipe chances are it's sembene is mine right here he is at the very first meeting of the afro-asian writers association in 19 5058, in which is then part of the soviet union here. he is at the french language equivalent of the macarena conference that is hosted on his home turf in, dakar, senegal. so this a congress for cultural freedom. it a event that he attended a few years after, the tashkent event here. he is smoking his pipe and. here he is 1973, except getting his own lotus award at the afro-asian writers association. meeting in the middle is a vietnam poet to long and over here is a young ish in googie

whitianga we don't have a picture him at the 1962 macready conference or at least i couldn't find picture of him there. also who attended the soviet affiliated afro asian writers association meetings. so this weight over here is now like a millstone around my neck and i'm in a blind panic thinking. the whole premise with which i started at least half of this book, is now shot to pieces. what am i going to do? here's the great canon poet, a playwright f sutherland. at the first 1958 afro-asian writers association meeting in the audience there is w.e.b., who was know, just as langston hughes had kind of presided over the mccreary event. w.e.b. dubois was at the the tashkent event. f was sutherland is somebody

like sembene, like laguna was going back and forth between congress for cultural and afro-asian writers association events. this is a an abbreviated list. some of the major figures in african literature from the fifties, sixties and seventies that went back and forth and had very s levels of involvement and engagement with both united states affiliated cultural apparatus and its soviet counterpart, lotus magazine and the afro-asian writers association. most of these writers published in at least one congress for cultural publication. well, as some of those lotus magazine issues that i talked about a few moments, so as was churning through information, one of the most difficult things

for me to do, writing this book was to account for this, but it was also one of the most liberating parts of doing this project, trying to reckon with this archival and i'll call it empirical data that i found as i was my research, my original hypothesis was completely sunk. but one of the things that i discovered is that it became possible to rethink this moment, not as a moment when writers from the colonizing parts of the world were declaring their allegiances lining up neatly in one camp or another through systems of patronage, cultural diplomacy, but in fact, i make the argument in the first half of this book that this was a moment when a very savvy and canny group of writers were willing to play sides of this. they were willing to seek patronage and opportunities, publish their work in both the soviet union and its affiliates

as well as in the united states and his and its affiliates. and as you can see here, i argue in contrast to the people in there are a few of them there, scholars who argue that cold sponsorship of writers from africa and asia effectively defanged anti-colonial writing. i argue in my book that vibrant and competing cultural diplomacy networks led by the u.s. and soviet union allow for at least a brief period sad the global south writers to work across and between camps carving out a space for indigenous writing for themselves and for anti-coal o'neill resistance in their work you have two superpowers down on bended knee, asking for the favors of global south and they knew how to work the system. and i argue that they did that very effectively at least for a brief period of time the 20 or so years after.

world war two. so now i want to talk a little bit the other half of this project, maybe less fun half, but nevertheless. yes, an part of this project we all know that writers faced significant sanctions. some of those were dissident writers who were not afraid to, speak truth to power and suffered the consequences for it. some of them were apolitical, nonpolitical writers that various states deemed dangerous for one reason or another. one of the points that i make in book is that state surveillance of writers was ubiquitous during this. there is not a national or an international superpower during this period of time that did not collect intelligence on writers. it happened in the united states

and african-american and queer writers, as we know, were overwhelmingly not, exclusively, but overwhelmingly the targets of that surveillance. so it's an old story in the soviet union and perhaps an overplayed story because the soviet union were not the nation during this time that sanctioning writers right. and it certainly happened in independent states of the post-colonial world in africa and asia and elsewhere. all collected intelligence on writers, all states writers that they found to be unsatisfactory, dangerous or problematic for one reason or another. so i want to talk with you today and give you sort of one case study briefly from the book that deals with claudia jones and, claude james, the great trinidadian intellectuals on

this slide, i give you a sort of brief overview of claudia jones's. she's born in trinidad in 1915, i think celia james born in 1901. so they're not quite contemporaries, but they're close she comes to u.s. as a child and goes to new york city in 1936 was a fairly young woman. she joins the communist. it's not until 1942, actually, that fbi file opens. when the fbi file opens, it really opens wide right. claudia jones dossier is over a thousand pages in length. about 800 pages of which are now available. certain parts of the file still remain under wraps, redacted, not available to the public for reasons that don't know and can't fully explain, but it's

not until 1942 that they begin tracking for about 100 pages of the file they think she's born. virginia or somewhere in the u.s. and it's not much later in the file. they figure out that she she she migrated to the u.s. as a young person in 1950. she's detained for short period on ellis island, where claire james is also going to be detained. she spends 11 months in prison not all that far from here in west virginia with a number of other of communist active s because she was not born in the u.s. they had the government also had the ability to deport her. they did that after she was released from prison after serving her roughly 11 months of prison. and at that she went back to back to england. she went to england for the first time and lived much of the rest of her life in england, where the mi5, which is the sort

of domestic security apparatus in united kingdom, also tracked her, although that file has either been lost or, suppressed. i was not able to it. some interesting features about claudia jones's file that want to mention to you so this is a document taken from her file. when i first got my hands, that file i expected see some really interesting stuff i expected to see wiretaps. i accepted it. i expected to see all kinds of secret agents alluded to. i expected to see all kinds of covert. of one kind or another. i was don't want to say disappointed, but surprised when i read her file it is kind of a boring slog. there's a thousand pages of it and a lot of it is boring.

but that got me interested that that did to the quotidian nature of and that the sort of reporting that the fbi use to keep track of what claudia became really interesting me so this is one of the documents taken from claudia jones's file. there are these long documents within the file that are called prosecutor of summaries and the fbi assembling these from the very earliest stages of tracking. claudia jones. and what these were were a kind of game plan, right? how do we convict this person? this is the that we give to a prosecutor so the fbi is there to investigate, not actually to prosecute they're going to hand that material off to a prosecutor. and what they do when they're tracking and want to potentially have them prosecuted for a crime is they assemble a assemble a

game called a prosecutor of summary some of these. and claudia is file are huge the largest. is 111 pages long this game plan for how are we going get claudia jones from the perspective of the government but these documents were fascinating in and of themselves here is a document taken one of them the star is not going to be some of secret informant that had insulted created claudia jones's circle. it's not going to be an intelligence expert who's been tapping her phones. it is going to be the headline librarian of the new york public library. and the library of congress and their exhibits are going to be documents from the daily worker. other newspapers and magazines where claudia jones had published her work. this to me was fascinating the main bit evidence for claudia

jones and against claudia jones was by librarians. and the main evidence against her was things that she'd written things that today would be legal, things that then were from probably legal. and yet so it's interesting. i had a vision intelligence agents doing one thing, but the more and more i sat with these files, the more the intelligence agents that the fbi used to track. claudia jones and as i'll show in a moment, celia james they did kind of work that i do and that librarians and that archivists do. they read a lot of stuff they clip out little things from, newspapers. i mean, this is pre-internet days, right? so they're not using their google box to search up everything. right. they're taking clippings from newspapers. they're stuff they're attending

rallies, notes on what people say in their speeches just like a few of you are today. right everything that i do interpret, interpret texts. right. that's as a as a professor of english and somebody who's got a strong interest in history. that's what i do. that's what i spend most my day doing. it's exactly what the fbi agents were doing as they developed the case against claudia. so wrap things up. turning to claude james, like claudia jones is born in trinidad. unlike her he goes when he leaves trinidad, goes to england first, he spends. about six or seven years there and publishes a number books and also reports on the great game of cricket for the manchester guardian before going to the united states just as he was publishing his great history of the haitian revolution in the

black jacobins, he goes to the u.s. to go on a lecture tour in 1939, and war breaks out while he's in the u.s. and he ends up staying for about 15 years in the u.s. before he is detained on ellis island like claudia jones and eventually, at which point he goes back to england. unlike claudia jones, we have. as claire james, mi5 file to compare to fbi file. now i should point out that selah james is ultimately deported for overstaying his visa, but it's not like he was living in hiding during this time. he divorced, he married, a u.s. citizen during this period, i believe that he also registered for selective service for the draft during this period, although i haven't been able to to to fully confirm that there

is a strained note that i found in his archive to that effect. so he was hardly in hiding during this period. the f, the f sorry mi5 had been tracking him while he was in england in the 1930s, fbi gets on his trail in 1947. he's deported. 1952 and mi5 picks up the file from their this is one of the earliest document that i found in sealed james's file. i'll show you a blow up of it here. this is one of the early earliest describing claude james and right from the earliest reports, james, the agent says we're going to deport this guy, we are going to get him out of our country as an alien subversive. so the fbi, although it

sometimes took years for to produce a case, they didn't fool around, especially with aliens of color right their goal was to prosecute and get them out of the country more or less as quickly possible. and it's evidence in jones's file from the very beginning as well as from james's file now, this was an interesting little tidbit that sort of backs up some of what i was saying about claudia. this is taken from the prosecutor portion of claude james. he actually fought his deportation in court. and one of the argument that claude made in court to the judge is, hey, listen, i i'm interested in marxism he was a trotskyite, by the way. so he and claudia jones, who was a card carrying of the communist party, did not see eye to eye. right, for jones, somebody like

claude is an apostate right. so james in court said, hey, like, don't, don't get upset. i'm a writer. like, don't deport me. i'm not or plotting to overthrow the government. i'm not sparking a seditious. i'm a just go take it easy and here's here's what the prosecution says in response. him james's his attorneys claim that the is not an action ist revolutionary merely a writer philosopher is our impression the world revolutionary movement has founded and led by engels, whose name they misspelled marx, lenin and others. the books, the responding admits to have written or worked on our world revolution a history of the -- revolution from 1700 in 1937. black jacobins a work not yet.

at the time of the hearings on herman, which would become mariner's renegades and castaways. so this is this is an interesting moment where james says, hey, i'm just a writer. writers aren't really that dangerous to write. and the us says, darn right you're a writer and your kind are the most people that we have. so if you know, if in our own moment there are times when those of us who are interested in writing and ideas feel like a wider public doesn't notice. this was a time when people paid attention to what writers had to say at the very at the very least least this and i'm just just in the process of wrapping up here is another document that i just i like the geek in me had show you this document right it's all redactions write all these all these black marker spots are redaction. there's a little bit here, hard

to read, says england. right. which gives us a sense that mi5 and fbi are collaborating and sharing intelligence. and they're not the only ones who was. is that seal or james was involved with a very small trotskyite organization that this time that was based in the detroit area. and what i suspect is that these names are all because they're secret informants. right. and one of the things that i sort of imagine when i see a document like this impossible to know, at least based on the information that i have, is that james, is there right? everybody else is gathering. right. and typically with, informants, they don't know who else is informing. right and so they're all gathering information on one another. but james's file that sticks

this. is a document from claude mi5 file and showing to here because it's information that was collected by an informer on the boat james took when was deported. right. and mi5 were right there. they were not waiting him to show up in portsmouth or wherever he was landing, wherever he was landing in england, they were there on the ss italia was the name of the boat, right when it left the docks in new york. the report is is humorous for all kinds of reasons they say hey unlike the fbi he's got a lot of books nothing of interest, a lot of books of a left wing nature, nothing to take special note of. he's tall. he's handsome. he's very well dressed. he's extremely articulate and well spoken. a special search of his baggage was made, but apart from showing he read books, a pro left wing nature, nothing of particular

interest was revealed. whereas horn rimmed glasses very well-spoken, natty suit of good appearance. one of the interesting things that i found as i delved more into seal james's mi5 file as well as doris mi5 file is that there are some subtle but key differences between the kind of intelligence operations that were conducted by the fbi in the u.s. and mi5 in, the u.k. in the us, the intelligence were pretty zealous in prosecuting writers of deporting them, if possible, putting other constraints on them. if that was not possible in the united kingdom, there was a slightly different dynamic because its relation to the decolonizing right and argument

that i make in the second half of the book is that there were subtle but meaningful differences between the way that mi5 conducted its intelligence operations and the fbi and mi5 were happy keep people like claude james and doris lessing and, george padmore and all of the other anti-colonial agitators in london, in a way from colonial. when doris lessing went to rhodesia, her home as, it was then known she was tailed every second of the way when she tried to go to south africa, put her on a plane back to rhodesia. when claudia jones in jail, discussing she was going to do in response the deportation notice that she knew was going to be served on her an ambassador, not the ambassador, but someone from the diplomatic from the uk came to visit her and told her, you have a uk

passport legally, you're allowed to go anywhere in the united kingdom and its dependencies. but you are not welcome in trinidad you to london if you want to. that is fine by us. you go to trinidad. we will make trouble for you. and it was the same for celia james. he could go shout his mouth off at hyde park every sunday morning, all he wanted to go to colonial territories and you were going to run into problems. that was one of the key differences between the fbi and. mi5 were doing. so i'm going to end presentation there. i hope i've given you sense of the project a whole. i'm happy to take it questions and i want to thank you for joining me.

i think if anybody does have question, we're going to get them up. the microphone, which is in the center aisle. we the question, be my guest, please. thank you for really interesting and stimulating talk to ask a question about your first client and what i'm interested in is this that these writers and the articles are using one statements sources of support from both for laughs. yeah but they're also interesting what you say about the relationship their opportunism versus versus the fact that they're all part of a decolonized world and they're

all involved in the marshall discourses about decolonization and revolution liberation. so to what extent are they intentionally taking advantage of this funding strained resources supporting to sustain activities and ideas that are already all in versus you know taking opportunities that you know like me getting a freelance contract, it's filling, you know, sort related to what i do but maybe not my main interest but hey it's going to pay the bills and give me an opportunity to advance my my name. yeah, that's a great question so one of the things that i'll say that my belief is that many of the writers who accepted opportunities were doing that partly for professional reasons right in. the soviet union in particular they had a massive, massive of translation scheme, right. i mentioned briefly that lotus

magazine was published in three languages. right. and this was of huge importance for writers in the decolonizing world to feel their work could reach audiences in multiple languages and usually not always often for writers, publishers in lotus, this was gateway to the wider soviet market. the soviet union had by far and not even close the world's largest translation system. so exploiting opportunities with these different cultural diplomacy agencies led to kinds of professional opportunities. but i want to i guess complicate that by saying that many of these writers also took an opportune unity to accept support, to build up what they saw as indigenous cultural institutions would serve their

own needs and their own, their own purposes. so my sense is that relatively few said, all right, i'm just going to write this thing satisfy you know, my readers in the soviet union or my in the united states. but i have no investment in it and part of the reason i think that is because writers can be very stubborn and incredibly bad taking directions from anyone. hard for me and this may be looking at things in retrospect, it's hard for me to imagine valeska or yinka, you know, like writing on piece like that guy writes what he wants to write and says what he wants to say, the people he wants to say it and he, he, he is he's not worried about what you will think. and that at times that cost him very dearly. right. he spent a couple of years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement. he almost died during that time

because believed in what he wanted to say. so, you know, when i say that, it's hard to tell those what to say, i may have sounded somewhat flippant, but i take that very, very seriously. some of these writers. learned at great rate, great personal cost to that saying what you like can get you some some very serious. so thank for that question. thank you for a great talk. very interesting. my question i think with angela davis and so she visits the soviet union i think in 1975 and she goes to tashkent in part to sort of celebrate the nonwhite status of the soviet union. and i know from the soviet angle they loved the racial strife that the united states was going through in the 1960s. right. absolutely welcome the black

panthers. they welcomed the race riots because this was sort of capital ism and its death throes. right. and so i'm wondering if there was a sort of an equal but opposite response, the united states trying to form racial resentment within the soviet union. oh, great question. anyway, in your research, did you see the cia trying engage groups in central asia? i don't know, because i think it's something that we the kind of gets lost in this whole debate is how multiethnic. the soviet union in fact is. yeah so that's a great question. it did not come up a lot in my research and it's partly because the cia records that are available us and the cia releases nothing anyone right the cia records that are available to us in the context of my research have to do with the quirks the congress for

cultural freedom, the way it was established. so that i hope this doesn't get too technical this answer but so cia set up basically. fake 503ci think is what it is right? that's a nonprofit that. 503c right. okay. so they up a fake 503c to do all of the business for the congress for cultural. they funded it secretly but for even for tax in the u.s. it looked like a legitimate nonprofit and so when the cia wound operations they just stopped giving money. but it's not like they went into the offices and raided the paperwork and took it back. and so somebody at some point said, we got all these papers around. let's let's find a home for them. and they ended up at the university chicago in the special collections. that's how we can see the congress for cultural freedom stuff.

now what i will is that you don't see in those particular documents a lot of interest in the u.s. trying to drum up racial or even better religious strife in the soviet union right the soviet union were central asian writers as their kind of trump card in this cultural warfare right in the u.s. there were significant problems with the public perception of racism and racial overseas right in the soviet union made sure that that was in front of writers in the decolonizing world every so they would bring they brought audrey lord to one of these events she's got a great essay about it that i talk about in book. they would you know they would bring angela davis they would bring they would bring w.e.b. dubois for the very first one of

these events. and they would say them like, look, people of color are an equal of the soviet project, right? that was a big part of their pr. now, on the flip side, the congress for cultural freedom was always on the back foot on the question of discrimination in the u.s. so in the congress for cultural freedom would go on their road show in asia and in africa, people would say, yeah, you know, how do you treat people look like me in your country, right? that was always the major problem. so they did some interesting things. they were a huge supporter of people, a skier in parallel and lewis and coetzee and alex laguna. these were all people who had serious problems, eventually became exiles from south africa. so its interesting, right? the us gop politically was

aligned quietly, but aligned firmly with south africa, right? but in terms of their cultural diplomacy see, they say very explicitly our job is to condemn what is happening in south cc is two different arms. the united states government working essentially at cross-purposes. the people in the congress for cultural freedom, they had a significant degree of latitude and autonomy and they said, you know, the u.s. line is not going to work if take this position on south africa. we're sunk, have no chance here. and so they, the congress for cultural freedom in their african activities condemned in the strongest possible terms for everything that was happening in apartheid africa and no mistake, the u.s. and soviet union, they

had spies at one another's cultural diplomacy. there's a there's some there are some documents i found about that. there, checking out what with the other guys with the competition is doing. somewhat well. it's just really wonderful. fascinating. and i'm wondering if you have in study, if it's sort of given you the if you've taken the opportunity to sort of reflect on the legacies the of this mechanism right. and it's sort of contemporary iteration. if that is, you know, something that you've sort of thought through, you know, the thing that comes to mind is what i like where ma says about the publishing industries, for example, penguin and so forth and of that's one angle. but whether institutional or otherwise, wondering if you've thought much about its sort of contemporary iterations or the legacy of that mechanism. yeah. so let i'm going to spin that

question which is an excellent question in 1967, there's a huge right because the cia is unmanned as the supporter of the congress, cultural freedom, that's a key moment right in this in the story that i tell and. then, of course, 1990 followed the berlin wall. all end of the soviet union is another key, key moment because interest and know you could say russian interest in supporting this kind of work in the decolonizing it stops completely what you have i think in the contemporary moment is a really interesting resurgence of cultural diplomacy not through literature but through right if you see the way that large states are trying to establish legitimacy it is no longer

primarily through books magazines international conferences that gather together intellectuals. right. but it is with major state investment in sports to. try to make large regimes seem more legitimate in the in in the international community sports is been a part of that right germany hosted the 1936 olympics in berlin. but now the level of invest in sports in particular or it's analogous to it's similar to the kinds of investments in arts and culture during this period. but it's happening and appealing a very different group of people. right because the global audiences sport are far, far vaster than they ever were for the of books and magazines that we're talking here. so great question thank you for that that is all that we have time for