The Black Jacobins Reader

Published by Duke University Press 2017

The Black Jacobins Reader

Edited by: Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg

In the series The C. L. R. James Archives

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373940

Overview
Contents

About this book

Containing a wealth of new scholarship and rare primary documents, The Black Jacobins Reader provides a comprehensive analysis of C. L. R. James's classic history of the Haitian Revolution.

Author / Editor information

Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool.

Christian Høgsbjerg is Teaching Fellow in Caribbean History at University College London's Institute of the Americas.

Robert A. Hill is Research Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

"This book is a welcome contribution that can assist in ensuring that [C. L. R.] James continues to educate future generations of activists."

-- Brian Richardson Socialist Review

"What the The Black Jacobins Reader accomplishes is a masterful dialogue not only with respect to The Black Jacobins itself, but with historical writing in general, bringing together some of the most notable voices in Haitian and Caribbean intellectual history to consider the incredible durability of James’s work. The Black Jacobins Reader also manages to stage this dialogue as one that is preoccupied with the ongoing predicament of our time – that of asking the question, time and again: what is freedom?"

-- Bedour Alagraa Contemporary Political Theory

"Provides the most thorough and wide-ranging study of James’s seminal text to date.... The Reader reminds us of the audacity of James’s text in its time and the inspiration it provided to generations of readers...."

-- Kate Quinn French Studies

“First, and most importantly, the Reader offers a documentary history of how The Black Jacobins has been studied and how it helped to inspire new knowledge and new movements. Second, the Reader persistently portrays James’s meditations on the Haitian Revolution as contributions to the philosophy of history.”

-- Jesse Olsavsky The Black Scholar

"Containing rare primary materials, new scholarship, and personal reflections from an impressive array of activists, writers, and scholars, The Black Jacobins Reader affirms the enduring relevance of James’s achievement. Forsdick and Høgsbjerg’s Black Jacobins Reader stands as testament to the fact that some 80 years after its first publication, The Black Jacobins continues to inspire, challenge, and provoke."

-- Philip Kaisary Slavery & Abolition

"This exhaustive collection of essays, reflections, and introductions to James’s epic treatment of the Haitian Revolution will be the authoritative companion to his history for decades to come. . . . An important contribution to postcolonial and Caribbean studies . . . A bracing and consequential collection."

-- Justin Rogers-Cooper SX Salon

"The Black Jacobins Reader provides a wealth of bibliographical sources and historical documents (including a fascinating conversation between James and Studs Terkel about Black Jacobins), new scholarship, and reminiscences about James and the contexts in which Black Jacobins was used during the 1960s and 1970s. . . . The Black Jacobins Reader is an invaluable tool for contextualizing one of the great classics of the black Marxist tradition."

-- James Smethurst Science & Society

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword Robert A. Hill Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Haiti David M. Rudder Publicly Available Download PDF	xxi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxiii
Introduction Rethinking The Black Jacobins Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. Personal Reflections
1 The Black Jacobins in Detroit: 1963 Dan Georgakas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
2 The Impact of C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins Mumia Abu-Jamal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
3 C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins, and The Making of Haiti Carolyn E. Fick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
4 The Black Jacobins, Education, and Redemption Russell Maroon Shoatz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
5 The Black Jacobins, Past and Present Selma James Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Part II. The Haitian Revolution: Histories and Philosophies
6 Reading The Black Jacobins: Historical Perspectives Laurent Dubois Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
7 Haiti and Historical Time Bill Schwarz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
8 The Theory of Haiti: The Black Jacobins and the Poetics of Universal History David Scott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
9 Fragments of a Universal History: Global Capital, Mass Revolution, and the Idea of Equality in The Black Jacobins Nick Nesbitt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
10 “We Are Slaves and Slaves Believe in Freedom”: The Problematizing of Revolutionary Emancipationism in The Black Jacobins Claudius Fergus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
11 “To Place Ourselves in History”: The Haitian Revolution in British West Indian Thought before The Black Jacobins Matthew J. Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Part III. The Black Jacobins: Texts and Contexts
12 The Black Jacobins and the Long Haitian Revolution: Archives, History, and the Writing of Revolution Anthony Bogues Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
13 Refiguring Resistance: Historiography, Fiction, and the Afterlives of Toussaint Louverture Charles Forsdick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
14 On “Both Sides” of the Haitian Revolution? Rethinking Direct Democracy and National Liberation in The Black Jacobins Matthew Quest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
15 The Black Jacobins: A Revolutionary Study of Revolution, and of a Caribbean Revolution David Austin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	256
16 Making Drama out of the Haitian Revolution from Below: C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins Play Rachel Douglas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
17 “On the Wings of Atalanta” Aldon Lnn Nielsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Part IV. Final Reflections
18 Afterword to The Black Jacobins’s Italian Edition Madison Smartt Bell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
19 Introduction to the Cuban Edition of The Black Jacobins John H. Bracey Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	322
Appendix 1. C. L. R. James and Studs Terkel Discuss The Black Jacobins on WFMT Radio (Chicago), 1970 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
Appendix 2. The Revolution in Theory C. L. R. James Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	353
Appendix 3. Translator’s Foreword by Pierre Naville to the 1949 / 1983 French Editions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	383
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	415

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 424
Illustrations
- Other: 3 illustrations

eBook

Published: January 6, 2017
ISBN: 9780822373940