Thinking Beyond Coloniality: Toward Radical Caribbean Futures

Abstract

This essay reviews Aaron Kamugisha’s reading of the works of C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter in his 2019 book Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition. Kamugisha issues a resounding call to reenergize the radical Caribbean intellectual tradition, saving us from our own alienation, colonization, and ambivalence. This essay takes inspiration from Beyond Coloniality to respond to the climate-political-social-cultural crisis in the Caribbean and to think through the possibilities for futurity in relation to reparative justice and ecological repair. It considers how the multiple devastations of recent “unnatural disasters” in the Caribbean are the outcome of the coloniality of climate, the deadly logics of racial capitalism, and the persistence of antiblack racism globally. The coloniality of climate calls for attention to repair, care, and reparations. We need to ask, Who is responsible, who is harmed, and who should be accountable?