Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition

by Aaron Kamugisha

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253062635
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2022
Series:	Blacks in the Diaspora
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Aaron Kamugisha is the Ruth Simmons Professor in Africana Studies at Smith College.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Beyond Caribbean Coloniality
2. The Contemporary as Absurdity: Denials of Citizenship in the Caribbean Postcolony
3. Caribbean Racial States
4. A Jamesian Poiesis? C.L.R. James's New Society and Caribbean Freedom
5. The Caribbean Beyond: Reading Sylvia Wynter on Freedom and the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Percy C. Hintzen

Aaron Kamugisha engages with the contradictions of coloniality and the post-colonial condition in the English...Caribbean through critical reading of the work of its major intellectuals. A tour de force that demonstrates how histories embodied in the performances and performatives of the popular and embedded in their poetics and aesthetics produce and reveal the future.

Mimi Sheller

In this major study of the intellectual tradition of Caribbean critical thought, Aaron Kamugisha situates C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter in their historical, political, and intellectual context and in relation to a wider field of political and literary interlocutors. We gain a far better understand of not simply what their work says, but of what their work does in the world. Kamugisha shows their relevance for Caribbean radical thought today, and this will make this book widely read and appreciated.

From the Publisher

"In this major study of the intellectual tradition of Caribbean critical thought, Aaron Kamugisha situates C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter in their historical, political, and intellectual context and in relation to a wider field of political and literary interlocutors. We gain a far better understand of not simply what their work says, but of what their work does in the world. Kamugisha shows their relevance for Caribbean radical thought today, and this will make this book widely read and appreciated." --Mimi Sheller, author of Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom

"Aaron Kamugish engages with the contradictions of coloniality and the post-colonial condition in the English and, less so, the French Caribbean through critical reading of the work of its major intellectuals. A tour de force that demonstrates how histories embodied in the performances and performatives of the popular and embedded in their poetics and aesthetics produce an reveal the future." --Percy C. Hintzen, author of Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora

Robin D. G. Kelley

This much anticipated book reminds us that decolonization is an unfinished, global project, and the richest, most radical thinking on what is required to achieve real freedom for the colonized comes out of the Caribbean. In this luminous meditation on how Sylvia Wynter, C. L. R. James, and their various interlocutors come to understand the modern Caribbean in the world, Kamugisha brings to light the conditions of possibility for the world—a new world in the making. Destined to be a classic.

Editorial Reviews

"Beyond Coloniality is, unsurprisingly, a superbly well-informed and complex book. Forthright in tone and urgent in message, it is also remarkably engaging, and Kamugisha does his scholarly job of identifying important lacunae and unpaid debts in the existing literature on Caribbean thought."—Social Text

"Most absorbing is the book's critical assessment of how certain theories and metanarratives are inadequate to address the current realities of political-cultural discord in the contemporary Caribbean."—Small Axe.net

"Kamugisha moves with great skill between the more specific discourses of the state, the middle class, tradition and modernity, and his close readings of members of the Caribbean intellectual tradition."—Paget Henry, Brown University, New West Indian Guide

"This much anticipated book reminds us that decolonization is an unfinished, global project, and the richest, most radical thinking on what is required to achieve real freedom for the colonized comes out of the Caribbean. In this luminous meditation on how Sylvia Wynter, C. L. R. James, and their various interlocutors come to understand the modern Caribbean in the world, Kamugisha brings to light the conditions of possibility for the world—a new world in the making. Destined to be a classic."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"Aaron Kamugisha engages with the contradictions of coloniality and the post-colonial condition in the English...Caribbean through critical reading of the work of its major intellectuals. A tour de force that demonstrates how histories embodied in the performances and performatives of the popular and embedded in their poetics and aesthetics produce and reveal the future."—Percy C. Hintzen, author of Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora

"In this major study of the intellectual tradition of Caribbean critical thought, Aaron Kamugisha situates C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter in their historical, political, and intellectual context and in relation to a wider field of political and literary interlocutors. We gain a far better understand of not simply what their work says, but of what their work does in the world. Kamugisha shows their relevance for Caribbean radical thought today, and this will make this book widely read and appreciated."—Mimi Sheller, author of Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom

"Aaron Kamugisha's Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition, represents the radical dimension of the black nationalist tradition."—Society for U.S. Intellectual History

From the Publisher

Aaron Kamugisha's Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition, represents the radical dimension of the black nationalist tradition.

Society for U.S. Intellectual History

Kamugisha moves with great skill between the more specific discourses of the state, the middle class, tradition and modernity, and his close readings of members of the Caribbean intellectual tradition.

New West Indian Guide - Paget Henry

Most absorbing is the book's critical assessment of how certain theories and metanarratives are inadequate to address the current realities of political-cultural discord in the contemporary Caribbean.

Small Axe.net

Beyond Coloniality is, unsurprisingly, a superbly well-informed and complex book. Forthright in tone and urgent in message, it is also remarkably engaging, and Kamugisha does his scholarly job of identifying important lacunae and unpaid debts in the existing literature on Caribbean thought.

Social Text