I am delighted to
announce the launch of two book series dedicated to path-breaking work in the
areas of Caribbean philosophy, creolization, and political theory. These are
one result of an intellectual collaboration between Roman & Littlefield
International and the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA), of which I
serve as Chair of Publishing Partnerships.
The CPA is an
international organization of scholars, artists, and community activists
dedicated to articulating a place for ideas in the Caribbean context and their
global significance. Our central goal is encapsulated in our motto: “Shifting
the Geography of Reason.” Dominant models of reason have located thought in
First World nations and mere experience and mimicry elsewhere. The CPA has been
working actively to de-legitimize this framework, demonstrating instead how
theoretical investigations and critical scholarship forged within the Caribbean
shape the interpretations of regional and global challenges faced by the
twenty-first century as humanity struggles toward the twenty-second.
The first series, edited
by Jane Anna Gordon and Neil Roberts, is Creolizing the Canon. It seeks to
revisit the thought of canonical philosophers and political theorists in the
humanities and social sciences through the lens of creolization. This means
offering fresh readings of familiar figures and presenting cases for the study
of formerly excluded ones. Our approach does not follow a comparative model,
however. Creolization means that intellectual resources are mixed and explored
even at methodological levels.
Beginning with the
familiar and working its way out to the more surprising exemplars, books
published in Creolizing the Canon will be edited anthologies. We welcome
proposals that consider questions of method and the formation of academic
disciplines as well as those focused on questions of political and social life
such as problems of freedom, inequality, and justice. We expect the series
audience to include, though not be limited to, the fields of philosophy,
political science, Caribbean studies, comparative literature, cultural studies,
English, French and Francophone studies, and German studies.
Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis
R. Gordon, and Nelson Maldonado Torres are editors for the second series,
Global Critical Caribbean Thought. They underscore how W.E.B. Du Bois, writing
at the dawn of the twentieth century, described a color line dividing the world
in two. Potentiated double consciousness emerged when someone could interpret
what it was to occupy and to know both sides—the first moved by the avowed
aspirations and ideals of a society and the other by their many contradictions
and failures. A significant portion of Caribbean writing exemplifies this form
of consciousness. Viewing the globe forged by European modernity through the
tumultuous seas and grounds out of which it was birthed, scholars are
increasingly revealing the predicament of the Caribbean as prototypical,
showing that the region, as a geopolitical space, has anticipated what is now a
shared global condition of constant migration, dislocation, and creolization.
In spite of the notable
intellectual production from the region hitherto, the Caribbean continues to be
the focus of primarily empirical and literary study rather than theoretical and
philosophical engagement. Global Critical Caribbean Thought foregrounds
scholarship exemplifying potentiated double consciousness, turning this lens on
the unfolding nature and potential future shape of the globe by taking concepts
and ideas that while originating out of very specific contexts share features
that lend them transnational utility.
We anticipate that work
in this series will engage a range of figures integral to modern Caribbean
thought and explore concepts such as coloniality, decoloniality, double
consciousness, and la facultdad. Whereas Creolizing the Canon will consist of
edited volumes, Global Critical Caribbean Thought will include monographs and
anthologies.
Creolizing the Canon and
Global Critical Caribbean Thought together seek to broaden the horizon of
thinking and shift reason’s geography, thereby fundamentally refashioning
existing insular narratives about what ideas we study and how we are to analyze
them.
We encourage anyone
interested in proposing monographs and edited collections to contact us:
jane.gordon@uconn.edu, lewis.gordon@uconn.edu, Neil.Roberts@williams.edu, and
nmtorres7@gmail.com
Neil Roberts, Associate
Professor of Africana Studies and Faculty Affiliate in Political Science,
Williams College
