The Caribbean Intellectual Tradition That Produced James and Rodney

1 Edouard Glissant , Caribbean Discourse: selected essays (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1992).

2 Antonio Benitez Rojo , La Isla que se Repite: el Caribe y la perspectiva postmoderna (The Island is Repeated: the Caribbean and the post-modern perspective) (Hanover, NH, Ediciones del Norte, 1989).

3 Walter Rodney , Walter Rodney Speaks: the making of an African intellectual, edited by Robert A. Hill (Trenton, NJ, African World Press, 1990), pp. 112–115.

4 Maryse Conde , ‘Pan Africanism, feminism and culture’, in S. Lemelle and R. D. G. Kelley (eds) Imagining Home: class, culture and nationalism in the African diaspora (London and New York, Verso, 1994), pp. 55–65.

5 Rene Depestre , ‘Problems of identity for the Black man in the Caribbean’, in J. Hearne (ed.), Carifesta Forum: an anthology of Caribbean voices (Kingston, Institute of Jamaica, 1976), pp. 61–67; Wilson Harris, History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas (Georgetown, History and Arts Council/Ministry of Information and Culture, 1970), pp. 13–15, 23–7 and Darcy Ribeiro, Los Brasilen Äos: teoria de Brasil (The Brazilians: theory of Brazil) (Mexico, DF, Siglo XXI, 1978).

6 Walter Rodney , ‘The African revolution’, in Paul Buhle (ed.), C.L.R. James, His Life and Work (London and New York, Allison and Busby, 1986), p. 34-34.

7 Antonio Benitez Rojo , La Isla que se Repite, op. cit., p. 294-294; Virginia Radcliffe, The Caribbean Heritage (New York, Walker, 1976), pp. 120–121.

8 Sylvia Wynter , ‘Beyond the world of man: Glissant and the new discourse of the Antilles’, World Literature Today (Vol. 63, no. 4, Autumn, 1989), pp. 642–644.

9 C. L. R. James refers to this in a 1944 letter to Constance Webb–a new form of representing society developed by Walt Whitman came with his participation in social struggles, as a member of a more conscious collective unit. See Anna Grimshaw (ed.), C.L.R. James Reader (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), pp. 138–139.

10 Paulo Freire , Extensio Ân o Comunicacioân? La conscientizacioân en el medio rural (Extension or Communication? Conscientisation in the rural context) (Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI, 1973), pp. 73–79; Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, edited by T. J. Tren and R. K. Merton (Chicago, IL and London, University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 28-28, 53–4, 64-64, 97-97, 99-99, 118-118, 123-123, 142-142, 179–81.

11 Darcy Ribeiro, Los Brasilen Äos, op. cit., p.164. My translation. Elsewhere in the text, those initiated in African religions will be referred to as in secret societies.

12 C. L. R. James , Grace Lee and P. Chalieu (Cornelius Castoriadis), Facing Reality (Detroit, MI, Bewick, 1974), pp. 136-136, 138-138, 148-148, 165-165; A. M. Nethol and Mabel Piccini, Introduccion a la PedagogõÂa de la Comunicacioân (Introduction to the Pedagogy of Communication) (Mexico, DF, Terra Nova, 1984), pp. 88–9, 102–3.

13 James C. Scott , Domination and the Arts of Resistance: the hidden transcript (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1990) pp. 120–127.

14 Ted Vincent , Keep Cool: the Black activists who built the Jazz Age (London, Pluto, 1995) W. B. Turner and J. M. Turner (eds) Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem: collected writings, 1920–1972 (London, Pluto, 1988) pp. 35–51, 88–9.

15 I am very interested in finding out whether any of the radical Caribbean immigrants in New York City were connected with George Schuyler’s Young Negroes Cooperative League. This group used economic boycotts, buy-Black campaigns, collective bank accounts, volunteer services, bulk buying, group homes and the reinvention of the extended family during the 1930s. Ella Baker, ‘Fundi’, one of their leading intellectuals, published investigative journalism (based on her undercover work as a domestic servant) in the NAACP’s The Crisis during 1935.

16 Gerard Pierre-Charles , El Pensamiento Socio PolõÂtico Moderno en el Caribe (Modern Socio-political Thought in the Caribbean) (Mexico, DF, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1985); I. Phaf, ‘Caribbean imagination and nation building in Antillean and Surinamese literature’, in Callaloo (Vol. 11, no. 1, 1988) pp. 148–71.

17 The Beacon group (1929–1933) included C. L. R. James before he migrated to England in 1932. The NWCSA (1935–1945) was a small group that started in Trinidad after James went to England. The Negritude group from the Francophone Caribbean is not included because its participants were students in Paris between 1932 and 1939. Their later political interventions did not include active participation in popular movements. In Cesaire’s case, running for public office in Martinique was not even considered until after a seven-month trip to Haiti in 1944. To the best of my knowledge, Pales Matos (Puerto Rico) did not himself belong to a small research collective of activist intellectuals who co-operated with the popular movements. Schomburg did and, as a cultural promoter, he is surely on the same level as Fernando Ortiz or Jean Price Mars. His work, however, has been amply researched by others. See Elinor D. V. Sinnette, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: black bibliophile and collector, a biography (New York, New York Public Library and Wayne State University Press, 1989); Winston James, ‘Afro-Puerto Rican radicalism in the United States: reflections on the political trajectories of Arturo Schomburg and Jesus Colon’, Centro de Estudios Puertorriquen Äos (Vol. VIII, nos. 1–2, 1996), pp. 92–127, and Flor Pineiro de Rivera, Arturo Schomburg: un Puertorriquen Äo desârico del Negro (San Juan, Puerto Rico, Centro de Estudios cubre el legado histo Avanzados, 1989).

18 Edouard Glissant , Caribbean Discourse, op. cit., pp. 222–223, 61–63.

19 Allusions to the story of Hercules and the Hydra appear in European versions of the Maroon wars in the Dutch and British colonies. See Richard Price, To Slay the Hydra: Dutch colonial perspectives on the Saramaka wars (Ann Arbor, MI, Karoma, 1983), p. 15; and Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, ‘The many-headed Hydra: sailors, slaves and the Atlantic working class in the eighteenth century’, in R. Sakolsky and J. Koehnline (eds), Gone to Croatan: origins of North American dropout culture (NY, Autonomedia, 1993), pp. 129–60.