gravalicious

“ Fanon’s ideas do not comport well with neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The thing is, they do not also work well with postmodernism, or at least how postmodern scholarship has been in opposition to liberatory and revolutionary aspirations. Some critics have argued that Fanon is more a relic of the past, even though much of what he wrote in, for example, Year V of the Algerian Revolution, known under the title of A Dying Colonialism, and many of his observations in the collection of essays edited by his widow Josèphe Dublé-Fanon, ring true to the current social and political climate of North Africa and West Asia. This applies to depersonalization, torture, suicide bombing, conflicts over secularization, settlement colonialism, and more. Others try to ignore these issues by prioritizing a single set of problematics—for example, sexual politics—and offer those as the sole bases of assessing Fanon’s legacy. What they miss is that Fanon can be criticized for all of these precisely because he took the time to write on all of them. In other words, we may wonder, why did he devote attention to issues ranging from the quest for recognition in a racially hostile environment to the complexity of adornment and its relationship to gender embodiment? Above all, Fanon was concerned with the status, the value, the dignity, the struggles, of the human being, of what it means to be human, and what can be done at the level of intellectual work and engagement in praxis toward developing a better understanding and relationship of human being to human beings. This surely has implications well beyond the academy.

— Lewis Gordon

01.18.13 ♥ 6

Artist: Ken Boothe

Song: Moving Away

Album: Studio One Presents Rare Reggae: Collectors Edition

Plays: 49

Ken Boothe - Moving Away

01.15.13 ♥ 8

“ I’m always surprised by what intellectuals say about the role of God among the poor…It has nothing to do with spirituality…(The Haitian people) use God to convince themselves that they’re not alone on this earth and that their lives are not just a beadwork of mimicry and pain.

— Dany Laferriere

01.13.13 ♥ 0

Artist: Joe Harriott

Song: Blues Original

Album: Just Goofin'

Plays: 39

Joe Harriott Quartet - Blues Original

01.04.13 ♥ 12

Artist: Lloydie & the Lowbites

Song: Birth Control

Album: Trojan Box Set: X-Rated Reggae Disc 1

Plays: 9

Lloydie and The Lowbites - Birth Control

R.I.P Lloyd Charmers

12.28.12 ♥ 1

“ I love the [African] race. I am not fighting for the race for my personal benefit, for having obtained the object of my ambition, I could sit down and practice my profession; but I believe that the cause of the people is greater than the cause of the individual, hence I am associated with it.

— Henry Sylvester Williams (1901)

12.22.12 ♥ 0

Artist: Badasse

Song: Walk and Talk

Album: Boogu Yagga Gal: Jamaican Mento 1950's

Plays: 9

Badasse - Walk and Talk

12.21.12 ♥ 4

Artist: Count Lasher

Song: Calypso Cha Cha Cha

Album: Jamaica before Ska

Plays: 30

Count Lasher - Calypso Cha Cha Cha

12.06.12 ♥ 1

Artist: Lord Composer & The Silver Seas Hotel Orchestra

Song: Hill and Gully Rider/Mandeville Road

Album: Mento Madness

Plays: 9

A little piece of Mento.

12.01.12 ♥ 1

Black History Month Reading List: African-Caribbean Edition

Beckles, Hilary. (1990) A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Nation-State (New York; Cambridge University Press)

Beckles, Hilary and Venere Shepherd (1999) Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World: A Student Reader (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers)

Bryan, Patrick. (1991) The Jamaican People 1800 - 1902: Race, Class and Social Control (London: MacMillan)

Carew, Jan (1994) Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the birth of Racism in the Americas (New York: A & B Publishers)

Desch-Obi, T. J. (2008) Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press)

Devaux, Robert (1997) They Call Us Brigands: The Saga of St. Lucia’s Freedom Fighters (Castries: Optimum Press Ltd)

Fanon, Frantz (2008) Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto Press)

Fick, Carolyn (1990) The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennesse)

Figueroa, Luis (2005) Sugar, Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press)

Frazier, E. F. (1957) Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, IL: Free Press)

Gasper, David Barry and David Patrick Geggus, eds. (1997) Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press)

Hart, Richard (2002) Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Blacks In Rebellion (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press)

Haynes, Aaron (1983) The State of Black Britain (London: Root Publishing Co)

Henry, Paget (2000) Caliban’s Reason: Introducing African-Caribbean Philosophy (London: Routledge)

Henry, William (2006) What the Deejay Said: A Critique From The Street (London: Learning By Choice Publications)

Honychurch, Lennox (1984) The Dominica Story: A History of the Island (Oxford; MacMillan)

Irereton, Bridget, ed. (2004) General History of the Caribbean: The Caribbean in the Twentieth Century (London: Unesco Publishing)

James, Winston (1999) Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America (London; Verso)

James, Winston and Clive Harris, eds. (1993) Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (London: Verso)

Jimenez Romain, Miriam and Juan Flores (2010) The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

John, Gus (2006) Taking A Stand: Gus John on Education, Race, Social Action and Civil Unrest (Manchester; Gus John Partnership Ltd)

Keita, Maghan (2000) Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx (New York: Oxford University Press)

Knight, Franklin (2011) The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press)

Murrell, Nathaniel Samuel (2009) Afro-Caribbean Religions: An Introduction to their Historical, Cultural, and Sacred Traditions (Philadelphia: Temple University Press)

Owuso, Kwesi, ed. (2000) Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (London: Routledge)

Rogers, Joel (1996) World’s Great Men of Color: Volume 2 (London: Simon & Schuster)

Ruck, Rob (1999) The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic (Lincoln, NE: First Bison Books)

Perez Sardy, Pedro and Jean Stubbs, eds. (2000) Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba (Florida: University Press of Florida)

Richards, Yvette (2004) Conversations with Maida Springer: A Personal History of Labor, Race, and International Relations (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press)

Sloat, Susanna, ed. (2005) Caribbean Dance From Abakua to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida)

Smith, Richard (2004) Jamaican Volunteers In The First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness (Manchester: Manchester University Press)

Smith, Keith and Fernando Carol Smith (1989) To Shoot Hard Labour: The Life And Times of Samuel Smith, an Antiguan Working Man, 1877 - 1982 (London: Karia Press)

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press)

Wade, Tony (2001) How They Made a Million: The Dyke and Dryden Story (London: Hansib Publications)

Wade, Tony (2007) The Adventures of an Economic Migrant (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers)

Warner-Lewis, Maureen (2003) Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press)

10.18.12 ♥ 45