Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics: C.L.R. James' Critique of Modernity

by St Louis; Brett

• ISBN13: 9780415957724
• ISBN10: 0415957729
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Rethinking Race, Politics, and Poetics offers a critical appraisal of C. L. R. James as a major 20 th century activist-intellectual, exploring his prolific output spanning decades within genres as diverse as history, philosophy, sociology, literary and cultural criticism, prose fiction, and reportage. The book also analyzes some of the flaws and contradictions that surfaced within James' writings as a consequence of the difficult circumstances in which he worked and lived as an itinerant migrant intellectual invariably involved with fringe political groups. Assessing James as a lifelong committed Marxist and humanist, the book argues that his core concern with racial, political and cultural questions as central to human and social understanding led him to develop a distinctive critique of the modern world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Modern Epiphanies: C. L. R. James and the Reimagining of Modernity	p. 1
"They Brought Themselves": Modernity and the Emergence of the Black Jacobins	p. 13
"Elective Affinities" and the Intellectual Vocation: Race, Politics, and Poetics	p. 45
The Perilous "Pleasures of Exile": Bad Faith, Failed Gods, and the Diasporic Life	p. 83
Mapping Spontaneity: The Organic Unity of Self-Activity and Radical Struggles	p. 121
"Freedom is Creative Universality, Not Utility": Sociality and the Cultural Politics of Cricket	p. 159
Epilogue: "The Struggle for Happiness": From Epiphany to Poiesis	p. 193
Notes	p. 209
Index	p. 241
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