“Before the movement for black lives made black radicalism cool for millennials, Cedric Robinson did the work of excavating an intellectual history we rely upon today.”—The Root
“Like W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, Sylvia Wynter, and Edward Said, Robinson was that rare polymath capable of seeing the whole....He left behind a body of work to which we must return constantly and urgently”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
Cedric J. Robinson is one of the doyens of Black Studies and a pioneer in study of the Black Radical Tradition. His works have been essential texts, deconstructing racial capitalism and inspiring insurgent movements from Ferguson, Missouri to the West Bank. For the first time, Robinson's essays come together, spanning over four decades and reflective of his diverse interests in the interconnections between culture and politics, radical social theory, and classic and modern political philosophy.
Themes explored include Africa and Black internationalism, World politics, race and US Foreign Policy, representations of blackness in popular culture, and reflections on popular resistance to racial capitalism, white supremacy and more. Essays here include:
*The Black Detective and American Memory
*Slavery and the Platonic Origins of Anti-Democracy
*Africa: In Hock to History and the Banks
*Blaxploitation and the Misrepresentation of Liberalism
*The Mulatta on Film
*Race, Capitalism, and Anti-democracy
*The Killing in Ferguson
*And much more!
Accompanied by an introduction by H. L. T. Quan and a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, this collection, which includes previously unpublished materials, extends the many contributions by a giant in Black radical thought.
Cedric Robinson was a Professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science and served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research. His books include 'Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition' (1983); 'Black Movements in America' (1997); and 'Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership' (1980).
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the associate director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, and has served as the chair of the American Studies Association and received the 'Angela Davis Award for Public Scholarship'.
