James Baldwin and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism
CALL FOR PAPERS: James Baldwin Review
Modern Language Association
2026 MLA Convention
January 8-11, 2026
James Baldwin and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism
Social domination, as exerted and felt through the categories of race, class, sex, and gender, finds itself expressed in and through James Baldwin’s work, often unevenly, subject to the peculiarities of his historical moments. Both Baldwin and his interpreters can be seen to elevate one vector of domination in racial capitalist modernity over the others, or forget one at the others’ expense, obscuring our vision of such domination and our capacities for struggling against it.