Seizing the Word (History, Art, and Self in the Work of W.E.B. Dubois).

In his latest book-length discourse on W.E.B. DuBois' (1994) Seizing the Word, Indiana State University (ISU) professor of English and literature, Keith Eldon Byerman, observes that the great Ghanaian American polymath's life encapsulated a diachronic reflection of 19th- and 20th-century American, national intellectual culture. This study, which was part of the author's graduate dissertation, posits DuBoisian literature as one that meticulously engages ideological and moral issues regarding the amorphous and ambiguous place of the "colonized" African diaspora personality in the United States. But, perhaps, even more important, Byerman envisages DuBois' private and professional lifestyles in Afro-centrically wholistic terms. To this effect, the writer notes,

DuBois' career shows a clear pattern of the interaction of the personal, the intellectual, and the political . . . he consistently intertwined his personal and professional experiences; he often, for example, took as personal insults criticism of his publications or activities. He had a propensity for attacking the integrity of those who questioned his positions on key or even minor issues. (p. xi)

Even so, the ISU scholar depicts his African personage as a Promethean character who consistently …