Creolizing Marcuse bridges the gap between traditional interpretations of Herbert Marcuse and Caribbean/Africana theory. It challenges the rigid boundaries often found in Marcusean scholarship, especially those shaped by ideas of purity and scarcity, both historically and in current debates. Rather than simplifying Marcuse’s theory, this book embraces its complexity to offer new insights into contemporary discussions on freedom, reciprocity, liberation, oppression, repression, and object relations theory. Creolizing Marcuse moves beyond producing static theoretical frameworks, instead urging decolonial, anti-racist, feminist, and queer scholars to actively incorporate Marcuse’s ideas into evolving, practical approaches to difference and social justice. The book calls for theorists, activists, and scholar-activists alike to engage in ongoing, dynamic practices that resist standing still.
Contributors: Jake Bartholomew, Jina Fast, Stefan Gandler, Craig Leonard, Nicole K. Mayberry, Ricardo J. Millhouse, Yiamar Rivera-Matos, Sid Simpson, Dave Suell, Margath Walker, and Stacey-Ann Wilson.
Jina Fast is the SHIFT Associate Professor of Applied Ethics and the Common Good and Director of the Learning Collaboratives at Hampshire College, USA. As a feminist epistemologist, queer theorist, and critical philosopher of race, her work centers theories produced by and through the experiences and work of marginalized folks across disciplines. Dr. Fast's work has been published in the
Journal of Critical Race Inquiry,
Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, & Social Justice,
Philosophy and Global Affairs, The Journal of Education, and Hypatia, among others. Her first book, entitled
Decolonizing Existentialism and Phenomenology: The Liberation of Philosophies of Freedom and Identity, was published in December 2023 by Rowman and Littlefield International. She previously edited a volume of essays on Herbert Marcuse entitled
The Marcusean Mind as part of Routledge's Philosophical Minds series in 2024. She is currently at work on a book on creolizing 20th-century post-war aesthetics.
Jane Anna Gordon is Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut and President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Her books include Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black-Jewish Conflict Over Community Control in Ocean-Hill Brownsville, 1967–1971 (2001), Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age (2010) and Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon (2014).
Nicole K. Mayberry is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, USA. She is a cultural geographer and political theorist whose work examines the spatial and institutional production of anti-Blackness across the United States and the Americas. Dr. Mayberry's scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the scholarly journals
Somatechnics, Gender, Place & Culture, Journal of Classical Sociology, and Azimuth, and her public-facing writing has appeared in
Scientific American and
Issues in Science and Technology, among other venues. Previously, she co-edited
The Marcusean Mind as part of Routledge's Philosophical Minds series, alongside Jina Fast and Sid Simpson. Her book,
I, Slave: Robot Stories and the Shrouded Cartographies of Anti-Blackness, is forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press, USA.
Neil Roberts is John B. McCoy and John T. McCoy professor of Africana studies, political theory, and the philosophy of religion at Williams College, where he also serves as associate dean of the faculty. He has published widely on modern and contemporary political theory, politics in literature, and theories of freedom. His books include
Freedom as Marronage and
A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass.
How to Live Free in an Age of Pessimism is his next monograph.
Sid Simpson is Associate Professor of Politics at Sewanee: the University of the South, USA. He is Director of Sewanee's Environmental Arts & Humanities Program, and is affiliated faculty in the Department of African & African American Studies as well as in the Sewanee Integrated Program in the Environment (SIPE). Previously, he was a Perry-Williams Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy and Political Science at the College of Wooster, a position facilitated by the Consortium for Faculty Diversity. He received his PhD in political theory from the University of Notre Dame (2019) and his BA from the Honors College at the University of Houston (2014). Dr. Simpson's original research has appeared or is forthcoming in the scholarly journals Antipode, Constelaciones: Revista de Theoría Crítica, Constellations, Contemporary Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, International Relations, Philosophy & Literature, Philosophy & Social Criticism, and Theory & Event. Additionally, he has reviewed academic books in History of Political Thought, Political Theology, Review of Politics, and Thesis Eleven, as well as written on the intersection of pop culture and philosophy in Black Mirror and Philosophy and The Expanse and Philosophy. He previously edited a volume of critical essays on Herbert Marcuse entitled The Marcusean Mind for part of Routledge's Philosophical Minds series, with his co-editors for this text Jina Fast and Nicole K. Mayberry.
