LeRoi Jones's Radio and the Literary "Break" from Ellison to Burroughs

The recognition of Baraka's interest in both the future, or "post-Western," and the "pre-Western" "beginnings of our expression" (as he put it in a 1970 essay, "Technology & Ethos") matters particularly at this supposedly "postracial" moment when depictions of Africans and African Americans continue to circulate as signifiers for premodern authenticity in a postmodern global media culture.1 Interracial Radio Baraka's early treatment of radio in Preface and System builds on Ellison's radiophonograph in Invisible Man to consider technology as both a means of and metaphor for interracial encounter. Critics note the deep nostalgia that poems such as "In Memory of Radio" and "Look for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today" show toward Baraka's childhood radio drama heroes such as Captain Midnight, Green Lantern, and the Lone Ranger.2 Yet they miss how Baraka's fondness for radio participated in the wrenching conflict he experienced, negotiating his identity in the period of transition from bohemianism to black nationalism.