CSC: "Theorizing Freedom, Radicalizing the Black Radical Tradition"

with Neil Roberts, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, political theory and the philosophy of religion at Williams College, and President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Thursday, March 2, 2017 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM EST
Johnson Center, Meeting Room D

GMU Cultural Studies presents, in conjunction with the English Department: Roberts' public lecture draws upon core claims advanced in the author’s award-winning book Freedom as Marronage and the contemporary implications of the argument for the meaning of freedom, the types of texts we consult to study ideas and phenomena, and the black radical tradition. It argues that marronage is a conception of freedom emanating from the latter whose heuristic value spans epochs and intellectual traditions. The talk discusses black politics, Afro-Caribbean thought, the meaning of radical, and the contours of the black radical tradition; posits marronage as a suggestive philosophy and political imaginary to radicalize this tradition in more useful ways than alternative contemporary discourses; and responds thematically to the most challenging critiques to its theorization.