New Published Essay on Jacques Roumain

The Journal of Postcolonial Networks just published my new articles on Jacques Roumain entitled “Faith, Secular Humanism, and Development: A Reading of Jacques Roumain’s Religious Sensibility and Marxist Rhetoric.” Happy Reading!

Excerpt

“This essay investigates the intersections of religion, social transformation, and Marxist social theory in the thought of Jacques Roumain. It argues that Roumain’s radical perspective on religion and development, and his critiques of institutionalized Christianity, were substantially influenced by a Marxist conception of historical materialism and secular humanist approach to faith and human progress. Roumain rejects Christianity for its ineffective societal role in fostering social change. This essay also contends that Roumain’s rejection of religious supernaturalism and divine intervention in human affairs and history was shaped by his non-theistic humanism and secular worldview on faith. Ultimately, the essay demonstrates that Roumain believes that only through effective human solidarity and collaboration can serious social transformation and real human freedom take place. He downplays the potential role of religion to deal adequately with the ambiguities of life in this world. Roumain holds that man is the measure of all things and his own agent of liberation. Consequently, individuals themselves must cooperate and unite in order to alter the social order toward a fruitful life of peace, harmony, and freedom.”

 

Aimé Césaire: A Centenary Celebration

Reblogged from Repeating Islands:

Aimé Césaire: A Centenary Celebration
At the French Institute,
17 Queensberry Place,
London
SW7 2DT
24th June, 2013
Aimé Césaire, the great poet, politician and playwright, was born in Martinique on 26th June, 1913.
He has been hailed as the leading francophone poet of the twentieth century and one of the prophets of negritude – the 1930s black consciousness movement whose steadfast aim was to ‘decolonise the mind’ and reassert pride in the African cultural values of the diaspora.

Read more… 135 more words

Jean McGianni Celestin Interviews Actor Jimmy Jean-Louis

Reblogged from Repeating Islands:

Jean McGianni Celestin writes about the largely untold history surrounding Toussaint Louverture and interviews actor Jimmy Jean-Louis on his iconic role as the famous revolutionary. See excerpts here:

Toussaint Louverture is one the most iconic figures in modern history. Born into slavery on a plantation in Saint-Domingue in 1743, he became the father of the Haitian Revolution, which catalyzed independence movements throughout Latin America — including Simón Bolivar’s Revolution in South America.

Read more… 633 more words

Celebrating with the indefatigable George Lamming

Reblogged from Repeating Islands:

This editorial appeared in Jamaica’s Observer.

Tomorrow, Barbados will celebrate National Heroes Day, and highlighting the activities will be the presentation of the prestigious Clement Payne Appreciation Award to legendary Barbadian novelist, political commentator, essayist, and public intellectual, Mr George Lamming, appropriately marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, In the Castle of My Skin.

The octogenarian still exudes the physical profile of a 1960s Black Power advocate and is possessed of the erudition and razor-sharp mind that has been emblematic of his long and distinguished career.

Read more… 377 more words

Frantz Fanon: Focus of "The Black Scholar

Reblogged from Repeating Islands:

The most recent edition of The Black Scholar is dedicated to Martinique-born scholar and revolutionary Frantz Fanon. This issue was produced by guest editors Daynali Flores Rodríguez (Illinois Wesleyan University) and Joseph Jordan (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

The Black Scholar is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal providing cogent articles that help the understanding of issues of social concern to black Americans and other peoples of African descent across the world.

Read more… 167 more words

The case for compensating the Caribbean

Reblogged from Repeating Islands:

This article by SIR RONALD SANDERS appeared in Jamaica’s Observer.

In 1838, British slave owners in the English-speaking Caribbean received £11.6 (US$17.8) billion in today's value as compensation for the emancipation of their "property" — 655,780 human beings of African descent that they had been enslaved, brutalised and exploited. The freed slaves, by comparison, received nothing in recompense for their dehumanisation, cruel treatment, the abuse of their labour, and the plain injustice of their enslavement.

Read more… 963 more words

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Haiti historian who chronicled capital dies at 88 – Haiti – MiamiHerald.com#.UVzvnTPzMEw.twitter

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Haiti historian who chronicled capital dies at 88 – Haiti – MiamiHerald.com#.UVzvnTPzMEw.twitter.