Suchergebnisse

"Across the Anglophone Caribbean, the great expectations of independence were never met. From Black Power and Jamaican Democratic Socialism to the Grenada Revolution, the radical currents that once animated the region recede into memory. More than half a century later, the likelihood of radical change appears vanishingly small on the horizon. But what were the twists and turns in the postcolonial journey that brought us here? And is there hope yet for the Caribbean to advance towards more just, democratic and empowering futures? After the Postcolonial Caribbean is structured in two parts. In 'Remembering', Brian Meeks employs an autobiographical form, drawing on his own memories and experiences of the radical politics and culture of the Caribbean in the decades following the end of colonialism. In 'Imagining' he takes inspiration from the likes of Edna Manley, George Lamming and Stuart Hall in reaching towards a new theoretical framework that might help forge new currents of intellectual and political resistance. Meeks concludes by making the case for reestablishing optimism as a necessary cornerstone for any reemergent progressive movement."--

"These essays by Brian Meeks, a noted public intellectual in the Caribbean, reflect on Caribbean politics, particularly radical politics and ideologies in the postcolonial era. But his essays also explain the peculiarities of the contemporary neo-liberal period while searching for pathways beyond the current plight. In the first chapters, titled 'Theoretical Forays,' Meeks makes a conscious attempt to engage with contemporary Caribbean political thought at a moment of flux and search for a relevant theoretical language and style to both explicate the Caribbean's recent past and confront the difficult conditions of the early twenty-first century. The next part, 'Caribbean Questions,' both retrospective and biographical, retraces the author's own engagement with the University of the West Indies (UWI), the short-lived but influential Caribbean Black Power movement, the work of seminal Trinidadian thinker and activist Lloyd Best, Cuba's relationship with Jamaica, and the crisis and collapse of the Grenadian Revolution. As evident in its title, 'Jamaican Journeys,' the concluding section excerpts and extracts from a longer, more sustained engagement with Jamaican politics and society. Much of Meeks' argument builds around the notion that Jamaica faces a crucial moment, as the author seeks to chart and explain its convoluted political path and dismal economic performance over the past three decades. Meeks remains surprisingly optimistic as he suggests that despite the emptying of sovereignty in the increasingly globalized world, windows to enhanced human development might open through policies of greater democracy and popular inclusion"--

In 2014, the author published a volume of essays, Critical Interventions in Caribbean Politics and Theory, which Small Axe editor David Scott proposed might form the basis for a discussion around Meeks's work and its broader contribution to debates surrounding contemporary Caribbean politics and society. Obika Gray and Maziki Thame contributed review essays, tackling many of the issues explored in the book, including the Caribbean black power movement, the Grenada Revolution and its demise, the contemporary state of Jamaican politics, Caribbean intellectual traditions, and the possible directions for Caribbean politics in the near future. While largely sympathetic to many of their comments, Meeks engages with Gray specifically around what Meeks considers Gray's minimalizing of the distinctions between radical activists of the 1970s and contemporary "Dons," the role of Cuba in the Grenada Revolution, and Gray's underestimation of the importance of the generation born in the 1950s and 1960s for contemporary Caribbean social sciences and the humanities. Meeks then engages with Thame's proposal that there is potential for renewal in what Meeks describes, in Critical Interventions and elsewhere, as a moment of hegemonic dissolution. Meeks argues that this notion must be handled with care, since there is no easy road back to renewal and recovery from a genuine state of societal collapse.