Rethinking C.L.R. James

Rethinking C.L.R. James
ISBN-10
155786599X
ISBN-13
9781557865991
Category
Social Science
Pages
225
Language
English
Published
1996
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Author
Grant Farred

Description

This collection of essays provides a critique of C. L. R. James's contribution to a broad range of intellectual pursuits. The Trinidadian-born James was a political activist in the Caribbean, the US and Britain, as well as being one of the leading figures in the early Pan-African movement. He also wrote extensively on literature, culture, cricket, and marxism. This book engages all these aspects of James's life to demonstrate his centrality to the current debates around the issues of postcoloniality and popular culture. James, for too long unavailable to readers, is presented as an intellectual who participated in several key historical developments of the twentieth century. The book locates him in the history of the earliest struggles against colonialism, but it also clearly shows how his thinking - particularly his interest in nineteenth-century British literature - was shaped by the experience of growing up as a colonial subject in Port-of-Spain. The collection grapples with the paradoxes, the tensions, and ironies that characterized James as much as it shows how creatively he applied the lessons of those ambiguities and contradictions.

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