Caribbean Cultural Thought

Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora presents a critical appraisal of the range of issues and themes that have been pivotal in the study of Caribbean societies. Written from the perspective of primarily Caribbean authors and renowned scholars of the region, it excavates classic texts in Caribbean Cultural Thought and places them in dialogue with contemporary interrogations and explorations of regional cultural politics and debates concerning identity and social change; colonialism; diaspora; aesthetics; religion and spirituality; gender and sexuality and nationalisms. The result is a reader that presents a distinctive Caribbean voice that emphasizes the long history of critical writings on culture and its intersection with political work in the Caribbean intellectual tradition from within the academy and beyond. Includes contributions from: Anténor Firmin  José Martí  Jean Price-Mars  Aimé Césaire  Suzanne Césaire  Frantz Fanon  Léon Damas  Martin Carter  Marcus Garvey  Percy Hintzen  Roberto Fernández Retamar  M. Jacqui Alexander  Nicholás Guillén  George Beckford  George Lamming  Richard Price  Lucille Mathurin-Mair  Sidney Mintz  Michel-Rolph Trouillot  Fernando Ortiz  Elsa Goveia  Kamau Brathwaite  Patricia Mohammed  Peter Wilson  David Scott  Antonio Benitez-Rojo  Lloyd Best  Rex Nettleford  Jacques Stephen Alexis  C.L.R. James  Wilson Harris  Gordon Rohlehr  Sylvia Wynter  Gloria Wekker  Audre Lorde  Kamala Kempadoo  Jamaica Kincaid  Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert  Patrick Bellegarde-Smith  Barry Chevannes  Aisha Khan  Dianne M. Stewart  Stuart Hall  Sean Lokaisingh-Meighoo  Erna Brodber  Shani Mootoo  Louise Bennett  Linton Kwesi Johnson  Derek Walcott

Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance examines the Caribbean popular - an idea that has been an important and contested terrain for exploring the dynamic and oftentimes subversive cultural expressions of the region. The Caribbean popular arts, whether embodied in the hybrid musical genres or vernacular performance and festival traditions, have historically provided a space for social and political critique, the performance of visibility and also articulations of a temporal emancipatory ethos with its attendant acquisition of power and status. Beyond the spaces of their local/regional enactments and the social realities out of which they emerged and continue to circulate, Caribbean popular culture has over time contributed to contemporary understandings of global and diasporic cultures and, at the same time, the dynamics of inter-cultural encounters. The terrain of the popular has been a generative site for the study of Caribbean societies, and has produced enduring theoretical postulations that have been pivotal to the shaping of the intellectual production on the Caribbean. It is also the most powerful force that socializes contemporary Caribbean citizens into an understanding of their identities, the limits of their citizenship, and the meaning of their worlds.

Against the lethargy and despair of the contemporary Anglophone Caribbean experience, Aaron Kamugisha gives a powerful argument for advancing Caribbean radical thought as an answer to the conundrums of the present. Beyond Coloniality is an extended meditation on Caribbean thought and freedom at the beginning of the 21st century and a profound rejection of the postindependence social and political organization of the Anglophone Caribbean and its contentment with neocolonial arrangements of power. Kamugisha provides a dazzling reading of two towering figures of the Caribbean intellectual tradition, C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter, and their quest for human freedom beyond coloniality. Ultimately, he urges the Caribbean to recall and reconsider the radicalism of its most distinguished 20th-century thinkers in order to imagine a future beyond neocolonialism.

"Stuart Hall, in whose honour this volume is compiled, has made significant contributions to contemporary social and political discourse. Constantly praised for his scholarly prescience, he was at the helm of the forging and definition of the discipline of Cultural Studies and nurtured an entire cadre of young intellectuals who continue to make remarkable contributions in the fields of Cultural Studies and Social Criticism. The essays that constitute this collection, all, in different ways, contend with Hall's methodology, his philosophy, as well as many other dimensions of his rich and textured intellectual career. More importantly however, they serve to reconnect his work to the social context of his island of birth, Jamaica, and the wider Caribbean. "

Through a collection of critical essays, this work explores twelve keywords central in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: indigenismo, Americanism, colonialism, criollismo, race, transculturation, modernity, nation, gender, sexuality, testimonio, and popular culture. The central question motivating this work is how to think—epistemologically and pedagogically—about Latin American and Caribbean Studies as fields that have had different historical and institutional trajectories across the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States.

For the past 30 years, Paget Henry has been one of the most articulate and creative voices in Caribbean scholarship, making seminal contributions to the study of Caribbean political economy, C.L.R. James studies, critical theory, phenomenology, and Africana philosophy. In the case of Afro-Caribbean philosophy, he inaugurated a new philosophical school of inquiry. Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader outlines the trajectory of Henry’s scholarly career, beginning and ending with his most recent work on the distinctive character of Africana and Caribbean philosophy and political and intellectual leadership in his home of Antigua and Barbuda. In between, the book returns to Henry’s early consideration of the relationship of political economy to cultural flourishing or stagnation and how both should be studied, and to the problem with which Henry began his career, of peripheral development through a focus on Caribbean political economy and democratic socialism. Henry’s canonical work in Anglo-Caribbean thought draws upon a heavily creolized canon.

Combining an intellectual biography of V.S. Naipaul with a history of cultural thought in the postcolonial Caribbean, this book gives a revisionary portrait of one of the great authors of the twentieth century, and tells an insightful and compelling story about the evolution of Caribbean ideas.

The dawn of the twenty-first century is an opportune time for the people of the Caribbean to take stock of the entire experience of the past forty years since the ending of direct colonialism. The authors believe it is now time to chart our future by carefully learning the lessons of the recent past. This interdisciplinary collection is the first to cross traditionally restrictive disciplinary barriers to address the tough questions that face the Caribbean today. What went wrong with the nationalist project? What, if any, are the realistic options for a more prosperous Caribbean? What are to be the roles of race, gender and class in a more global, less national world? Meeks and Lindahl include thought-provoking articles from twenty-one respected thinkers in diverse fields of study. The groundbreaking articles include critiques of existing bodies of thought, reformulations of general theoretical approaches, policy-oriented alternatives for future development, and more. This book is a must for statesmen, academics and students of political theory, social theory, Caribbean studies, comparative gender studies, post-colonial studies, Marxism and Caribbean history and anyone interested