Description
Caribbean Reasonings: Rupert Lewis and the Black Intellectual Tradition recounts the work of a renowned scholar and activist who has made an indelible mark on Caribbean life. Through a collection of academic papers and personal reflections, primarily proceeding from a 2013 conference, some of the leading contemporary political minds in the Caribbean have converged in this volume to put forward a collection of essays that detail Rupert Lewis’s impact on issues such as black nationalism and identity, social and racial equality, and Caribbean and human liberation.
The volume boldly highlights Lewis’s earnest study of the political teachings of Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney and the African-Caribbean experience, to promote understanding the realities of blackness and to chart a course forward for African people throughout the diaspora. It also expertly details his contribution to the discourse on the Grenada Revolution, Caribbean sovereignty, globalisation, capitalism, radicalism in art and the media, and black feminism in political activism.
In a career spanning decades, Rupert Lewis has amassed a legacy which details his rise from a student activist at the UWI to a stalwart of Caribbean political thought who has guided the Department of Government at Mona, the Institute of Jamaica and its African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica as well as institutionalising Liberty Hall and the Museum of Marcus Garvey among other contributions.
About the Editors
Clinton A. Hutton is a Professor at The University of the West Indies specialising in Caribbean Political Philosophy, Culture and Aesthetics. He has published numerous book chapters and journal articles on the Haitian Revolution, the culture of enslaved Africans, the Morant Bay uprising, Caribbean Art and Aesthetics, Rastafari, Revival and Jamaican popular music. His most recent book is Colour for Colour Skin for Skin: Marching with the Ancestral Spirits into War Oh at Morant Bay (2015). He is lead editor and author of Leonard Percival Howell and the Genesis of Rastafari (2015). Hutton is a noted painter and photographer.
Maziki Thame teaches political science at Clark Atlanta University. Her research interests and publications focus on the postcolonial Caribbean, the place of race, violence, radicalism, identity and gender in political life.
Jermaine McCalpin is Assistant Professor and Director of the African and African-American Studies program at New Jersey City University. He specializes in transitional justice, genocides and truth commissions, and has written on reparations for African enslavement, the Armenian genocide and the South African, Haitian and Grenadian truth commissions.
Contents
Introduction
Maziki Thame
Acronyms and Abbreviations
- UWI Mona and the Government of Jamaica, 1967–69
Ken Post
- Jamaican Black Power in the 1960s
Rupert Lewis
- Reflections on the Caribbean Radical Tradition: A Conversation with Professor Rupert
Lewis
Rupert Lewis interviewed by Jermaine McCalpin
- Radical Caribbean Thought: Rupert Lewis and the Politics of an ‘Internal Dread’
Anthony Bogues
- Edward Seaga and the Question of Levelling: Seeing Manley from the Other Side
F.S.J. Ledgister
- Characteristics of the Grenadian Revolution and the Caribbean Situation
Maurice Bishop interviewed by Rupert Lewis
- Blowing the Abeng: Rupert Lewis and the Rebuilding of Caribbean Socialism
Paget Henry
- Echoes of the Bandung Movement in the Caribbean and China’s Presence in the Region
Today
Rupert Lewis
- Quobna Ottobah Cugoano: Black Radical Heretic or Black Radical Liberal?
Charles W. Mills
- Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Haitian Revolution: Global Agency of Universal Modernity
Clinton A. Hutton
- The Sett Girls and the Pedagogy of the Streets: An Aural Black Counterpublic
Linda Sturtz
- ‘Sankofa’: Garvey’s Pan Africanism, Negritude, and Decolonising Narratives
Mawuena Logan
- Arthur Lewis: Mild Afro-Saxon or Militant Anti-Racist? Lessons from His Struggles and
His Disparagement by Other Black Power Advocates
Mark Figueroa
- Memory Gems of Revolution: The Lived Experiences of Elean Rosalyn Thomas
Linnette Vassell
- Pedagogy and Leroy Clarke’s Philosophy of Being, Freedom and Sovereignty
Clinton A. Hutton
- The Radical Aesthetic of Sistren Theatre Collective, Jamaica
Nicosia Shakes
Contributors
Index
