Sovereignty, freedom, and the problem of blackness in Jamaica

Abstract

ABSTRACT Within the pursuit of black freedom, this article is concerned with the everyday experiences of the black poor in 21st Century Jamaica. I refer to both this experience and its potential politics as organic blackness. I locate this notion in relation to the coloniality of power in the postcolonial state and to creole nationalism which brought Jamaica to independence. I argue that colonial power norms worked alongside creole nationalism to produce limited sovereignty, particularly concerning the conditions of the black majority on the island. In thinking about what ‘black freedom’ could look like from an ‘organic blackness’ perspective, I question what is demanded by those who live blackness as a lack of resources, space, and power. My interrogation is mainly concerned with the intersection of blackness with poverty and how thinking about sovereignty from below or as ‘people’s sovereignty’ versus ‘state sovereignty’ would construct black spaces as sites of upliftment.