Professional Documents
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Post Caliban
Post Caliban
Look WITHIN
EXODUS!
Movement
Of
Jah
People
POST-CALIBAN: “Unlettered” Indigenous Thought and Afro-Caribbean Filosofi: the
I-deas of Rastafari.
Gnōthi Seauton. [Greek. Translated: “Know Thyself”. Gnōthi, a command form, = get to know,
“become acquainted with,” “learn [about]”, “know”.]
There is perhaps no more succinct a rendering of the journey of Africana peoples as is the one
offered here by Martin Carter. The Africana experience is j ourney—the easiest, of course, to chart
being geographical movements precipitating the contemporary dispersal of Africana peoples to every
proverbial ‘corner of the Earth’. The specific geographical journey that concerns us here is the
journey that African peoples were coerced to traverse to the so-called ‘New World’. The tragic
metaphysical journey paralleled the equally traumatic geographical one: African peoples journeyed
from their ontological homes to populate the chaotic and perplexing nigger yard of the subaltern. The
journey through the Middle Passage disingenuously suggested destination—for passage implied a
movement “somewhere”. Instead, Africans found themselves in perpetual middle passage, stuck
“somewhere” between home and no man’s land. This is the burden of the nigger yard—the liminal
space out of which one must journey, for it is not a place of genuine rest. Exodus from the nigger yard i s
the story, the endeavour, the purpose. It is to the world of tomorrow that the Afro-Caribbean must
turn with his strength as he repairs rupture and reclaims self.
This is the broad narrative within which we place Afro-Caribbean intellectual effort. We place
Afro-Caribbean intellectual effort within the overarching rationale to lesson the burden of the nigger
yard, the seismic waves of which reverberate into our present. The intellectual effort is the attempt to
turn to the world of tomorrow with strength. “Attempt” here must alert us to the fact that the
easing of this burden is essentially work in progress. Within this intellectual effort of Exodus,
Afro-Caribbean philosophizing is specially placed, for it is the tool that enriches the Attempt; the
tool that is most potentially radically transformative allowing us to [re]cognize alternatives where
attempts have faltered or failed outright, and, most importantly, to effect the transformation of the
hilosophizing potentially provides
Self that is a necessary precondition for transformative thinking. P
alternatives, and creates alkaline conditions for the birth of alter-natives[1].
If there is a symbiotic relationship between Self and Attempt, then it seems the ultimate imperative
is to “know thyself.” If the Afro-Caribbean is to turn to the world of tomorrow with her strength,
she must know what her strength is. The difficulty within the Afro-Caribbean space of course is
precisely this: the Attempt is partly this self-reclamation, the gaining of insight into Authentic Self;
the honest acknowledgment of precisely what this strength is.
Noble philosophical attempts have been made at elaborating the strengths of the Afro-Caribbean
intellectual effort--an effort broadly aimed at the critical Exodus from the nigger yard to the world
of tomorrow. Paget Henry’s Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy is one such attempt
which has provided crucial inspiration for this research. Our attempt here is to journey Post-Caliban,
to challenge intellectuals to be even more progressive, in order to transcend some of the limitations or
hindrances that are intrinsic to any framework which structurally posits the subaltern “Caliban”
[nigger?] as the agent of Exodus.
According to Paget Henry, the Caribbean intellectual tradition “emerges as a series of extended
dialogues that arose out of attempts to…delegitimate European projects of building colonial
societies around plantation economies that were based on African slave labour.”[2] Carter’s ‘nigger
yard’ must therefore be seen within the broad matrix of slave labour and the colonial socio-economic
structures which constituted its foundation. As Henry sees it, the most important legacy inherited
from the nigger yard which has precluded complete transcendence of Afro-Caribbean colonial
history is the appropriation by Afro-Caribbeans of colonial conceptual schemes, which have had
crippling effects on attempts to deligitmate and deconstruct colonial structure. It is this that Henry
refers to as the so-called “colonial character of our intellectual tradition”[3] or our pervasive
entrapment within the imperial communicative framework. “Colonial structure” here must be seen
in the broadest sense possible. By this is meant a convergence of reciprocally determining
politico-economic, existential, and onto-epistemic formations which have reinforced asymmetrical
dynamics between “Prospero” and “Caliban.” Indeed, ‘colonial structure’ in a vital sense is these
ointing us toward a more critical understanding of its nature as conceptual, inextricably
designations, p
intertwined with the politics of naming and identity. Tiffin and Lawson remind us that:
Within the Caribbean intellectual tradition Henry isolates “philosophy” as being crucially important
for addressing [legacies of] Colonial Structure. Indeed he speaks of “the insufficiencies in our awareness
between our philosophy on the one hand, and identity formation and knowledge production on the other.”[6] The
focal emphasis is ‘identity’ and ‘knowledge production’, for it is within these metaphysical corridors
of the Afro-Caribbean ontological and cognitive space that Colonial Structure penetrates most
insidiously. Furthermore, the “Attempt” must take its point of departure here as opposed to within
the socio-political or politico-economic realm, for as Lloyd Best reminds us, “social change in the
Caribbean has to and can only begin in the minds of Caribbean men.”[7] This is of course not to
uncritically suggest that emphasis on the socio-political, or politico-economic may not potentially
have some effect on the Afro-Caribbean circumstance, and overarching liberation project, but the
intention is to turn critical focus to our Afro-Caribbean cognitive space from which all else is born,
the womb of genuine transformation, metamorphosis. Emancipation, as Garvey and Marley remind
us, is from mental slavery. Erna Brodber reminds us of “the Task”:
But if not slave with a foot chain, who and with what? A new
conceptual framework, frame of reference, portrait of the self has to
be constructed. The end product of this activity should be a new
Blackspace. To work toward emancipation is to work toward a new definition
of self and its possibilities, a new definition of the possibilities of our collective
selves, is to reengineer Blackspace. This is the task.[8]
The very nature of the emancipation task requires the deepest philosophical engagement. The
challenge of course is not so much the recognition of this need for “philosophical engagement”, but
what this is, and how we should be philosophically engaged. If we accept the fundamental premise of
Paget Henry’s work which is that a highly developed “philosophical tradition” is crucial to
extricating ourselves from Colonial Structure, and a vital pre-condition for meaningful post-colonial
reconstruction within the Caribbean, then we must take a most nuanced and critical approach to this
imperative. The first important recognition for our purposes here is the need to tentatively
disambiguate “Philosophy” [used in the way that Henry has employed it in the title of his book
Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy] from “philosophical tradition”, and from
“philosophical engagement.” A tentative recognition of the obscure dynamics between these terms
is critical in framing the problem that we intend to address here in this essay.
We can tentatively establish in accordance with Henry that there is a Caribbean Intellectual
Tradition, from which [we assume] the “Afro-Caribbean intellectual tradition” forms a subset.[9]
“Intellectual tradition” is perhaps not to be conflated with “philosophical tradition” or
“Philosophy”, for Henry posits the presence of a philosophical underpinning of Afro-Caribbean
intellectual discourses in general, which can [and should, as he opines] be distilled to form an
‘autonomous Philosophy.’ Autonomous Philosophy itself appears different from a philosophical
engagement of intellectual discourse in general. The point here is to emphasize that the very notion of
what philosophy is in our attempt to journey Post-Caliban is of critical importance.
Henry offers that a pressing problem is “the imbalance in the representation of parties to [the]
dialogues that define the [Caribbean intellectual] tradition.”[10] Thus, “in spite of a growing body of
ethnographic literature on the Afro-and Indo-Caribbean masses, their intellectual and cultural
contributions are systematically under-represented.”[11] The significance of Henry’s point here for
our effort is that there is an “under-mobilization” of our discursive space, in the Attempt to transcend
Colonial Structure and Nigger Yard. If the Afro-Caribbean masses h ave been speaking, only to be
ignored within the so-called ‘intellectual tradition’; one must marvel at this fundamental disconnect
which only suggests a disquieting ignorance of collective Self. If, as Gramsci suggests, “the starting
point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is”[12], then, Bogues is entirely
correct in suggesting that “the absence of critical and radical thought in the Caribbean”[13] [or as
Henry himself suggests, the absence of “radically decolonized philosophical practice”[14]] is largely
attributable to the fact that Caribbean intellectuals were “never trained to look at the Caribbean with
Caribbean eyes.”[15]
For Bogues, “the crisis facing the radical Caribbean intellectual is that we have yet to think of the
questions that have arisen from within our intellectual tradition.”[16] Perhaps more crucial is the
examination of the solutions that have arisen from within our intellectual tradition. The critical point
for consideration which emerges from this is what is meant by “intellectual t radition” and the
relationship between this and philosophical production as decolonization tool. An examination of
the problematic here deserves a lengthy quote from Bogues:
In a profound sense Henry is right to observe the lack of recognition of
Africaness in the ‘formal’ intellectual tradition. The problem, however, is that
Henry’s definition of intellectual tradition privileges written political and historical texts
as well as literary engagement. [I submit that] a fuller understanding of the
Caribbean intellectual tradition must raise issues of epistemology, the
relationships between thought and being, thinking and action. Obviously in a
region where, historically, language and texts have been constructed orally,
any stance that privileges the traditional Western mode of ideas subordinates
significant dimensions of Caribbean thought. So, when Henry says that “modern
Afro-Caribbean philosophy has avoided comprehensive theories of being”,
he neglects the existential reality, the creation of ideas by the slaves and
Caribbean people in their attempt to construct a way of life which moves
them out of a colonial zone of non-being. [italics mine]
The critical point of departure for this research is the insidious presence of a most striking irony.
While Henry correctly indicates that there is “an imbalance in the representation of parties to the
dialogues that define the Caribbean intellectual tradition”; Caliban’s Reason perpetuates this
asymmetrical relationship by neglecting to undertake any worthwhile engagement of the
contribution of intellectuals that produce unwritten oral text. The corollary of this is that the
contributions of the Afro-Caribbean masses do not penetrate philosophical inquiry. If, as Bogues
suggests, historically the Afro-Caribbean intellectual tradition is characteristically oral, then the
necessity of looking within, of re-examining our discursive space as site of philosophical production is
only too glaring—to employ a painfully inadequate understatement.
Henry’s noble attempt in Caliban’s Reason to “revolutionize basic conceptions of philosophy in the
Caribbean tradition and overturn the valuations placed on European and African philosophy”[17]
disappointingly rings hollow by his fundamental failure to acknowledge the deeply entrenched orality
of Afro-Caribbean discursive space. Bogues alerts us to the significant dimensions of Caribbean
thought which are neglected and subordinated as critical contributions to the transcendence of
Colonial Structure and Nigger Yard—institutions within which the Afro-Caribbean subject is not
subject. If Bogues is correct in positing that a more complete appreciation of the Caribbean
intellectual tradition must entail an understanding of the reciprocally determining and symbiotic
relationship between thought and being, thinking and action, then not only, as Henry suggests,
should our point of departure be a ‘radically decolonized philosophical practice’ but a ‘radically
decolonized philosophical praxis’.
Henry is correct except that he has fundamentally missed the import of his idea that “WE WILL
NEED A NEW SENSE OF OURSELVES WHICH CAN ONLY COME FROM BEING MORE
FIRMLY ROOTED IN OURSELVES.”[18] This is the journey Post-Caliban. The reengineering of
Blackspace armed with knowledge of Self. If much of our philosophical engagement has ignored the
existential reality of the nature of Afro-Caribbean philosophizing, and, if, indeed, as Henry laments in
Caliban’s Reason that Afro-Caribbean philosophical production has failed in a large measure to be
radically transformative, then it simply means the task is to change the way we think about
philosophizing. The map of the Post-Caliban journey therefore is this: i] Point A involves the task of
revolutionizing Afro-Caribbean philosophy and the way in which we conceive it, ii] Point B involves
the separate but related consideration of what i t is that Afro-Caribbean philosophy is directed toward
viz. the imperatives of authentic and lasting post-colonial reconstruction iii] Point C as a subset of B,
is the deconstruction of colonial and neo-colonial conceptual schemes, which necessarily turns our
critical attention to iv] Point D, the reconstruction of Afro-Caribbean agents as filosofers. The journey
is Post-Caliban, the route is Afro-Caribbean FILOSOFI[19] rooted in authentic sense of Self.
The examination of “unlettered” indigenous discourse in the form of Rastafari that this research
undertakes must be appreciated within the spirit of its delivery as simply a call, a summoning, a
beckoning, to look critically at the strengths of our discursive space as we Attempt, as we turn to the
world of tomorrow, as we Exodus from the nigger yard. The research paper is intended as
philosophical introspection. Significantly, we turn our attention to ‘I-deas’ of Rastafari—the critical
elaboration of the Self in praxis that we acknowledge to be the most imperative pre-condition of
authentic transformation. In the Exodus, as Bob Marley exhorts, “open your eyes and look within.”
It is necessary to undertake at least a tentative definition of terms before fully embarking on our
journey Post-Caliban. We wish to, from the very outset, remove “unlettered” from any pejorative
connotations—instead opting to bestow on the term the narrowest of meanings. By “unlettered” we
do not pejoratively mean “uneducated or “illiterate”. We simply are emphasizing a feature of a kind
of discourse that is not principally defined by a scribal or written tradition. We stress instead a
“praxis-oriented” and “oral” type of discourse. We derive our understanding of “indigenous” partly
from its standard association with having originated from a particular geographical locus, and partly
from Sylvia Wynter’s formulation which suggests that within the context of colonial orders and their
legacies, “the indigenization process represents the process by which the dominated culture survives
and resists.”[20] We establish Rastafari properly within the category of the “unlettered” by
appreciating the simple fact that “few Rastafarians have written an epistemology or philosophy of
their beliefs.”[21] Rastafari is not defined primarily in terms of written doctrine, but in terms of a
system of beliefs which receive their most translucent expression in “livity”—the Rastafari way of
life; t he all-encompassing “totality of the Rastafarian’s being in the world”[22] or the Rastafari’s
chosen lived r eality in the world.
We also establish Rastafari as properly indigenous in both s enses of the term. Rastafari is a
[religio-filosofical] movement originating within the Caribbean; thus from the Caribbean perspective
it is indigenous. It also posits itself principally as a black counter-culture and/or system of ideas
which “rejects [the] Western Colonial Philosophy which was programmed into the minds of African
peoples in the Americas.”[23] In the latter sense of “indigenous”, Rastafari represents the resistance
and survival of the dominated black culture within the colonial and post-colonial space.
Why Rastafari? The literature suggests that while much attention has been paid to Rastafari theology,
culture and political beliefs, there is a critical need to unveil the possible corrective value of Rastafari
outside t hese most salient domains. Niaah alerts us to the fact that Rastafari “is often marginalized
and discredited as not having a genuine intellectual distinction.”[24] This marginalization obfuscates
the [potential] contributions of Rastafari to world critical discourses. It is within this context that
Niaah suggests we “broaden the applicability of Rastafari articulation” [25], to achieve, as Stanley
recommends, the necessary “expansion of the small space” of Afro-Caribbean knowledge
production[26] in order to widen the gamut of who can know.
Two significant recognitions arise from this which provide argumentative strength for the rationale
of this research. The first is that while there is a general under-representation of Afro-Caribbean
intellectual and cultural production within the broad Caribbean intellectual Dialogue, there is
correspondingly an under-representation of Rastafari simply because it constitutes part of that
largely unexplored Afro-Caribbean intellectual tradition. The second recognition, which must be
considered parallel to the first, is that while there is overall under-mobilization and exploration of
Afro-Caribbean discursive space, there is correspondingly a microcosmic representation of this as it
pertains to Rastafari discourse in particular. The research here therefore attempts to treat two sets of
insufficiencies.
…my primary concern with Rastafarian thought is the accuracy of the
providential claim that the meaning of black suffering and oppression
in the New World is to be found in the expiatory penance that we must
do for the “disobedient ways” of our African ancestors. This claim
involves a reading of God’s intentions on the historical plane, whose
accuracy or mode of justification I find wanting.[27]
While this might be doctrinal aspect of [particular sects of] Rastafari, to isolate its supposed
“providential historicism” as the essence of the Rastafari position is injurious to a more holistic
understanding. Henry demonstrates the urgent need for Afro-Caribbean Philosophy to undertake a
much more in depth, filosofical treatment of Rastafari, in order to prevent an unsatisfactory
reductionist reading of the movement which sees it as a series of [disparate] theological claims. That
Henry is able t o isolate Rastafari in this way in his broad explication of what Afro-Caribbean
Philosophy supposedly is, is particularly instructive for our effort Post-Caliban. We are forced to
resume our introspection to consider the epistemic and indeed, ontological barriers that would
prevent serious consideration of this specie of “unlettered” indigenous thought. The corollary of this
is our bringing into sharper and more honest focus the anti-black and indeed anti-Caribbean paradox
of Afro-Caribbean Philosophy.
The word most often used by Rastafarians to describe both their
subjective and objective condition is “dread”. A dread experience is
one that confronts or challenges the subjectivity of the Rastafarian.
Thus it is the experience and conquest of a certain kind of terror that
defines the Rastafarian concept of dread.[28]
Henry claims that the Rastafari “dread” is not the Kierkagaardian dread [though ostensibly closely
related], but the dread of “socio-historical denial”, which “interrupts normal ego-genesis” and forces
the Rastafarian into “anguished struggles against persistent threats of ego-collapse.”[29] Against
these “persistent threats” the Rastafari “reconstitutes the self”. Our approach here must be to
journey beyond t he existentialist reading, [which unfortunately still remains locked in the jailhouse of
the looming “threat” of non-being despite Henry’s most valiant efforts to open the doors] to
interrogate how it is that Rastafari reconstitution of the self imbues it with tools of
“de-construck-SHUN”; which operate to reengineer a new conceptual Blackspace.
The difficulty with Henry’s existentialist reading is that it has not given sufficient attention to
Rastafari re-constitutive apparatus but relies entirely too much on a framework plagued with
off-target notions such as “terror”, “ego-collapse”, “dread”, “threat” , and “denial”. The titles of
Bob Marley’s last three albums are illuminating in terms of its brilliant encapsulation of a broader
Rastafari ethos. Survival i s followed by Uprising, w
hich culminates in a Confrontation. R astafari
understands the imperative of survival, but this survival is not pitted against a persistent threat of
“ego-collapse” though it recognizes socio-historical “denial”. It is a type of survival that is intrepid in its
astafari “de-contruck-shun” entails shunning t he categories of the
capacity to “uprise” and confront. R
existentialist framework, which remain immobilized in an all too pervasive paralysis.
Sylvia Wynter’s focus on the “poetics of knowing, the semiotic and mythopoetic processes that
establish our categories of knowing”[30] is precisely what Henry perceives to be the crucial
component of the onto-epistemic transformation which will allow Afro-Caribbean Philosophy to
extricate itself from Colonial Structure/Imperial Communicative Framework. According to Wynter’s
paradigm of the episteme— t he entity which “provides societies with the underlying order of things
and the order of knowledge”[31]— the foundational process informing human self-positing is that
of autopoesis. In autopoesis, the “symbolic representations of the individual self or I”[32] constitute
the founding category. The liminal category is that which is most antithetical to the founding
category, by which “other” is represented, such that the relationship between the founding and
he process of autopoesis is symbiotically related to the episteme; the
liminal category is one of binary opposition. T
latter deriving its categories, concepts, symbols, analogies, and rules of statement formation from the
oppositional binary relationship between founding category and liminal category. The difficulty with
epistemes, as Sylvia Wynter understands it, is their inherent instability because of the
misrepresentations which tend to be posited as the liminal category or “other”. The basis of
differentiation on which the founding category rests, is compromised when the polar opposite by
which it differentiates itself is misrepresented. The episteme is prone to collapse.
According to Wynter, it is the “liminized”, or the “others” who people the liminal category that hold the key to
epistemic change. The “liminized” are typically the first to recognize how it is that they have been
misrepresented within an episteme, and therefore take corrective action to re-posit or reconstitute themselves
in light of distortion.[33] Epistemic change occurs when the “liminalized” “identify the sources of
misrepresentation, propose and execute their rewriting. ”[34]
According to Chevannes:
…Where I situate the legacy of the Rastafari, for the most-part [is]
men consumed with ideas--not any ideas, but ideas central to the
consciousness of the self, and hence central to critical
elaboration.[36]
The most attractive quality of Rastafari is not so much its agenda of
change and social transformation, as its new elaboration of the
architecture of the self.[37]
We can, in light of Chevannes’ notions here, locate the most fundamental significance of Rastafari
filosofi to the Afro-Caribbean philosophical epistemic project as the elaboration of a new [autopoetic]
ontological self-positing. Recognizing themselves as the liminized w
ithin Babylon[38], or for our
purposes, the bourgeois episteme, Rastafari have taken corrective action to reconstitute themselves
through an alternate coding. Edmonds explains the reconstitutive ontological architecture of
Rastafari:
Since “I” in Rastafarian thought signifies the divine principle that is
in all humanity, “I-an-I” is an expression of the oneness between two
[or more] persons and between the speaker and God. “I-an-I” also
connotates a rejection of subservience in Babylon culture and an affirmation of the
self as an active agent in the creation of one’s own reality and identity.[ 39]
Rastafari Post-Caliban Exodus defines i tself by its commitment to the repairing of the liminal through
this first step of ontological positing.
The I-an-I locution epitomizes de-construck-SHUN; for it is a “conscious effort to transvalue
existing patterns and principles in society” while “codifying the terms of the emerging
self-awareness.”[41] The Rastafari symbiotic relationship between “I-an-I” as ontology and “I-an-I”
as locution is instructive for any truly radically transformative Afro-Caribbean Post-Caliban project.
McFarlane explains: “Rastas see no difference between being, knowing and doing.”[42] Bogues recognizes in
the same spirit that “thinking and being are mutually constitutive, and that Caribbean intellectual
experiences [especially of the folk] are indicative of this.”[43]
The crucial lesson that must be extrapolated here for Afro-Caribbean Philosophy is that it is not
enough to know that d econstruction is necessary to extricate Afro-Caribbean minds from the
tentacles of Colonial Structure/Imperial Communicative Framework/Bourgeois Episteme, but this
recognition must be translated i nto life, and being, as action that can be consciously done.
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy must PAY ITS ATTENTION TO indigenous consciousness that
actually deconstructs. Rastafari provides the template for movement from “radically decolonized
Philosophical practice” to a radically decolnized filosofical praxis. While Henry insists that the
Afro-Caribbean ego must be transformed mythopoetically “into a more authentic and genuinely
creative agent of post-colonial transformation”, he has not provided us with, nor attempted to even
LOOK here in the Caribbean for a sustainable and plausible framework for a ubiquitous and holistic
Afro-Caribbean ego-transformation potent enough to wrench discourse from its “entrenchment in
European sign systems.”[44] The Rastafari framework of ongoing saying/doing translated into a lived
experience is one that provides a necessary template for the realization of this imperative.
Ironically, if this analysis is correct, much of the Afro-Caribbean mindscape is populated with
liberated agents who already occupy a new [or partially reengineered] Blackspace. If the paradoxes of
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy provide an honest index, it would appear that where entrenchment in
European sign systems is most pervasive is within Academic Establishment. It is no surprise that
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy has not been able to posit a framework for reengineering. The lettered
have [much] to learn from the “unlettered”—a fact, acknowledged [“we should pay attention to the
intellectual and cultural contributions of the Afro-Caribbean masses”]—but given only the most
disingenuous and superficial lip service.
One of Henry’s pressing criticisms of C.L.R. James’s work as Afro-Caribbean philosopher par
excellence is that “it never included an explicit philosophy of language” and that the failure to
“thematize language as a domain or medium of human self-formation eliminated it as a base of
deconstruction.”[45] Most interesting for our journey Post- Caliban here [indeed this is quite fitting
for our attempts to go beyond Henry whose article is appropriately t itled “Caliban as
Deconstructionist”] is the recognition that, as McFarlane has pointed out, Rastafari as filosofers par
excellence have already articulated an explicit filosofi of language as base for de-construck-SHUN.
Similarly Rastafari imbues Tiffin and Lawson’s objective of “De-scribing Empire” with interpretive
nuance through its maxim “Words, Sounds, Power!” The effort Post-Caliban, the transcendence of
Nigger Yard/Colonial Structure/Imperial Communicative Framework/Bourgeois Episteme, is
realizable within a framework, Rastafari suggests, of ongoing saying. I n the beginning there was the
word. And Jah said, “let there be light”; and there was light. The Rastafari paradigm of saying imbues
epistemic participants with a sense of responsibility f or creating their world. A sense of responsibility
that is a necessary pre-condition for any attempt at genuine post-colonial transformation.
There are several wholesome corollaries of calling the new episteme into being. Yawney explains the
process of Rastafari “reasoning” as “an open-ended, dialogical discourse between two or more
brethren”[47]; the sine qua non of a filosofi with “I-an-I” at its foundation. According to Yawney,
“two brethren may reason together, each prompting the other to higher and higher I-ights [heights],
accreting layer upon layer of meaning until a satisfactory view of reality is reached.”[48] Rastafari
reasoning is an oral process of incantation and locution, in which reality is called into being by
co-reasoners. To borrow from Niaah’s paradigm of the “side-walk University”, which illuminates the
urban tradition of street preaching and gatherings for knowledge production on side-walks, the
Rastafari reasonings or knowledge-producing episodes are roughly similar side by side gatherings in
the yards of leading brethren. Though there is “vertical learning” in Rastafari reasonings from
teacher to student, the reasonings are marked by a lateral knowledge-producing relation in which
there are co-reasoners, sitting side by side, with an equal opportunity for knowledge-impartation
and knowledge-obtainment.
The orality of Rastafari reasonings as sessions in which the new episteme is called into being,
hich serves not only as a useful but necessary paradigm for
emphasizes a kind of epistemic inclusiveness, w
the creation of the new episteme outside of the imperial communicative framework. Edward Kamau
Braithwaite induces us to appreciate that:
So if I may stray from the definition of intellectual in the role of
academic literary critic to a prescription for such a role, I would
propose that the essential and supreme function of the
critic/intellectual, in our circumstances, is to be a mediator of text;
and the area of mediation must travel beyond the enclave of specialist
and student, or specialist in contention with specialist. It must attempt
to travel beyond this domain to link the human substance of the text to the
collective consciousness…[50]
Furthermore:
This role of mediation [as a force of resistance against the Western
hegemony] cannot be cultivated where the critic/intellectual functions almost
exclusively within an academic enclave where the text offers a battleground
for a battleground for conflicting diagnoses between specialists and
students who may also aspire to the role of “teacher”. Such enclaves
define and limit the terrain of mediation.[51] [emphasis added]
It is this paradigm of multi-textual communicative reasoning that creates alkaline conditions for the
“expansion of the small space” of knowledge-producing crucial to the creation of episteme—a vast
discursive space, requiring discursive mobilization on all fronts. The voice o f the Rastaman
communicates to everyone as he Chants Down Babylon—extricates himself from, and resists Nigger
Yard/Colonial Structure/Imperial Communicative Framework/Bourgeois Episteme.
Anderson speaks in the spirit of this essay when she declares that “to think Afro-Caribbean is to
think in Afro-Caribbean. The next phase in Afro-Caribbean philosophy should be termed Caliban’s
RIIZNIN [the Jamaican Creole rendering of “reasoning”]: an Afro-Caribbean p rocess of
intellection.”[52] She argues that the problems of Afro-Caribbean philosophy IS the [deeply
oxymoronic] “Caliban’s reason”, and the key to their resolution “Caliban’s rizniin”—rooted, of
course in a decolonized Afro-Caribbean filosofi. We take this the necessary step further to recognize
that ‘Caliban’s riiznin’ is now Post-Caliban, so we can do without Caliban, the savage, and liminal
category of the imperial episteme, and ontologically posit ourselves, as the Rastafari have done. As Marley
categorically declares in “Babylon System”:
we refuse
to be
what you wanted us
to be
we are what
we are
that’s the way
it’s
going
to
be.
Bogues usefully points out that in Wynter’s most recent work she suggests that epistemic change is
effected partly by the process of autopoeisis and partly by symbolic codes.[53] Whereas Rastafari has
ruptured the autopoetic schema of the bourgeois episteme to effect its own ontological positing, we
now consider the value of the Rastafari template of symbolic [re]coding. Symbolic recoding refers to
the way in which the self is invested with meaning, through symbol. The liminalized ‘invent and
restructure’ its own set of symbolic representations, subverting the symbolic order of the dominant
episteme. Wynter alerts us to the supreme significance of symbolic representation as a method in
which epistemic control is maintained; and that bourgeois symbols must either be recoded, or
removed from the epistemic space of the liminalized entirely.[54]
Shakes suggests that Rastafari “be studied within the framework of the legitimization of African
orders of knowledge and not just a movement which glorifies Africa on the physical and spiritual
levels.”[55] It is this indigenous component of Rastafari, in the sense of it perpetuating, or ensuring
the survival of African orders of knowledge within the imperial hegemonic conceptual space that
supports symbolic recoding.
A critical African cosmological retention in Rastafari is its emphasis on the potency and magic of
words, again expressed by the maxim “Words, Sounds and Power!” Pradel indicates that “in [West]
African religion rhythm, symbol and word are vital sources”[56] and “the power of words produces action,
liberating the ‘active’ [vital] source. ” According to Alleyne, “music, song, dance, religion, and social
organization were closely integrated in West African culture.”[57] An important conjunct to this is
that in the African cosmology “there is no rigid dichotomy between the sacred and the secular.”[58]
It is these African cosmological antecedents that bestow Rastafari with the power of symbolic
recoding—such that Paget Henry is correct to prescribe a return to traditional African cosmological
principles as our foundation for reconstruction, except that Henry does not seem to be inclined to
look anywhere within the Afro-Caribbean space where African cosmological principles are
contemporarily operative, and therefore accessible.
Spencer explains that “Rastafarians have attempted to bring about change in society by chanting
down their metaphorical Babylon.” He explains that it is the arts t hat have become key “weapons” in
this deconstructionist activity. It is through “music, visual art, drama, poetry and celebrating new
heroes [that] Rastas have promoted, globally, their message against Babylon”—the imperial
communicative framework. Rastafari takes an integrated approach, which, as Shakes suggests, reflects
the cosmological structure of African knowledge systems. It is the collapse of the sacred/profane
dichotomy which arguably allows that Rastafari arts, are not merely a rts for the sake of entertainment,
but that they possess a more ‘sacred’ function—epistemic liberation, the liberation of consciousness
through symbol. The prominence of [Reggae] music in Rastafari as a ubiquitous device of symbol
dissemination, further creates an alkaline environment for epistemic participation—w hich in turn has
the capacity to effect a more holistic ego-transformation, creating a more authentic post-colonial
order. Wynter grasps this when she offers that:
Filosofical engagement with Rastafari dev-I-ces impels us to use the strengths of our
Afro-Caribbean processes of intellection. What we realize is that these must be recognized f irst as
strengths, with which we will ‘turn to the world of tomorrow.’ Rastafari dev-I-ces show us the light,
remove the veil of self-deception, revealing to us a feasible way forward i n terms of a cosmological,
ontological and epistemological blue-print or framework within which we can transcend Nigger
Yard/Colonial Structure/Imperial Communicative Framework/Bourgeois Episteme to see with our
discerning I’s our own strengths and cognitive capacities. Rastafari implores us to “know thyself.”
Phenomenology is a perpetual critical self-reflection…a constant meditation.[60]
We begin this chapter by taking note of Robert Birt’s recognitions in “Existence, Identity and
Liberation”:
Birt’s elaboration of human liberation as necessarily involving a transformation of consciousness as
well as dissociation from routine ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and understanding imbue Paget
Henry’s call for a phenomenological approach to Africana, and by extension, Afro-Caribbean
cognitive transformation with greater significance by placing it explicitly within the overarching
objective of freedom. According to Paget Henry, “phenomenological refection on the existential
dynamics of the black self is a philosophical practice that is indispensable for Africana
philosophy”[62], [we surmise] because of its intrinsic corrective value in its ability to address “the
existential deviations that colonialism have inserted into the self-formative process of Caribbeans
[and Afro-Americans].”[63]
Henry characterizes phenomenology as “a self-reflective activity in which a conscious agent comes
to greater awareness of the constitutive determinants of the self-formative process that makes
everyday life possible.”[64] The [Africana-oriented] phenomenology that Henry argues is so critical
to Africana philosophy in general is one that is “capable of dissolving the defensive formations and
layers of meaning that have enacted black invisibility in the consciousness of blacks”[65] and one
that would have to “uproot white images of blacks that the latter have internalized, thus restoring
visibility presence and ontological space to African elements of black identity.”[66] [italics added]
We therefore can extrapolate three fundamental features of the phenomenological approach which
must work in tandem. T he first is the capacity of phenomenological approach to uncover or reveal
existential deviations, the second is its capacity to dissolve existential deviations, and the third is its
capacity to ontologically restore a gents subject to these deviations. W
e see therefore that in addition
to the penetrative insights that a phenomenological approach might generate, it has an explicitly
re-constitutive function.
Henry further points out the suspension of the “natural attitude” that phenomenological reflection
entails: “because we are usually unaware of many of these determinants [of the self-formative
process] phenomenological self-reflection often results in a transcending o f everyday levels of
awareness.”[67]As Birt suggests, we break with the familiar routine ways of seeing, hearing, feeling
and understanding.
These are the fundamental questions, which can only be addressed adequately by re-interpreting
somewhat the premise that the phenomenological approach involves ‘transcending everyday levels
of awareness”. Rastafari does two things which allow us to maintain the overall conclusion as to the
corrective value of a phenomenological approach while simultaneously challenging it. The first is
that Rastafari expresses a framework in which everyday levels of awareness are transcended such
that it breaks with familiar routine ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and understanding. This is
fundamentally expressed in Rastafari transvaluation through radical symbolic recoding and
ontological re-positing that we have elaborated in the previous two chapters. The second is that
Rastafari challenges a phenomenological approach by transcending everyday levels of awareness A ND
transforming this transcendence into a paradigm for everyday consciousness. Rastafari phenomenological
reflection into the self-formative process is a perpetual critical self-reflection; a constant meditation effected
by cosmological paradigms which synthesize being, knowing and doing. Rastafari defies a binarism
which relegates a phenomenological approach to the theses of academics by incorporating this into a
lived experience, directed toward the actual goal of post-colonial transformation which is not
something ‘out there’, but personal—residing fundamentally in living breathing human beings who
experience. True reflection leads to action.
For all the elaboration of the transformation of consciousness through the break with the routine,
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy has not escaped the routine, clearly evident in its inability to see, hear and
understand what the supposed subjects of its analysis are actually doing as agents.
Our phenomenological reflections have set the tone for the meditative mood here. We could, as it
were, construct a series of logically impeccable arguments which would have supposedly counted as
a treatment of objections to the foregoing analysis. The meditative mood here, the introspection that
this filosofical engagement demands, impels us to suspend the usual academic modus operandi.
I am compelled to begin this section by taking myself as academic hopeful out of the picture. The
spirit of this research is selfless—perhaps fundamentally at odds with the imperatives of securing a
good academic performance which is in critical respects an individualist endeavour. The spirit of the
research demands that we invert the terms of academic scholarship to substitute an individualist
self-consciousness for the consciousness of I-an-I. This manouvre is indeed “something for which
our education and environment have ill-prepared us”. We must become greater in spirit, larger in
outlook.
Why does all of this demand a suspension of individualist self-consciousness? Simply put, because
this paper is a message, a call t o the academic community of philosophers to turn its gaze away f rom
itself to co-riizin with fellow intellectuals. Dialogue, Engagement. The Afro-Caribbean Liberation
Project as OURS demands nothing less. None but ourselves can free our minds. The journey
Post-Caliban is nothing short of collaborative. I do not pretend to advance an entirely egalitarian
type of collaboration. The paradoxes of Afro-Caribbean Philosophy demand that the discourse
situate itself at the feet of filosofers in a humble attempt to reflect, to listen, to pick up on a different
sound frequency. This is not something “new”. The great man who overstood the urgency of this
inversion now appears on posters in the Assembly Hall of the University of the West Indies, when
we choose to remember the 1968 riots conducted in his name, while only vaguely remembering his
message. This man is Walter Rodney whose words stand immortalized:
Because I learnt. I got knowledge from them, real knowledge. You have to speak
to Jamaican Rasta, and you will have to listen to him very carefully…And when
you get that, know you get humility because look who you are learning
from…. [68]
Perhaps one wonders whether our elaboration of “unlettered” philosophy is incongruous with
scholastic effort. In a critical respect, our heading “problematizing unlettered thought and scholarship”
is disingenuous, for indeed there is no ‘problem’ here at all provided that we extricate ourselves from
binary dichotomized thinking which would operate to polarize ‘unlettered’ and ‘scholarship’ and
create a paradox.. Afro-Caribbean people are adept at negotiating apparent binaries—indeed, if the
reader is unsatisfied that the relationship between the unlettered and scholarship does not create a
paradox, then we simply need to turn out attention to the existential fact, cosmologically supported,
that the Afro-Caribbean mindscape is populated by [apparent] paradox which exists quite
comfortably in the lives of our people.
In the spirit of dialogical conversation, we put these ideas into sharper focus by close engagement
with Kwame Dawes’ treatment of reggae aesthetic as template for Caribbean literary production in
Natural Mysticism: Towards a New Reggae Aesthetic in Caribbean Writing. Tracing the development of
Jamaican Nation Language as artistically employed, he states:
The emergence of Jamaican Nation Language as the language of
artistic expression represents a further crucial development. For the
Caribbean writer, finding the language with which to describe
experience has always related to the question of the relationship
between standard English and the language spoken by the majority of
people. In reggae, the language is almost inevitably and
unselfconsciously rooted in the language of the majority. The use of
this language naturally affects the cosmological basis of the discourse.
The fact that reggae from its beginnings articulated complex and
varied ideas and emotions in the language of the society inevitably
began to affect the way writers regarded language. Prior to the 1960s,
dialect or Nation Language was used in quite limited ways...the
implication was that the dialect voice was regarded as inadequate to
the needs of philosophical or contemplative discourse.[69]
Further, Dawes points out that in Reggae, due to its Rastafari ethos:
Language is treated as weapon of liberation. The use of Jamaican
Nation Language in its most inscrutable forms often represented a
defiant articulation of the intention of the reggae artist to speak to the
people of Jamaica first and the rest of the world last…Above all,
however, the reggae lyric, the eloquent and innovative poetic
articulations of some of the best reggae artists, gave the Caribbean
writer a sense of possibility in the nation language that had not
existed before.
In instructive respects for our analysis the dynamics between Caribbean writing and Jamaican
Nation Language mirror the dynamics between Afro-Caribbean Philosophy and “Unlettered
Indigenous Thought”. The first significant recognition in terms of a broad similarity is the initial
tension between Caribbean literature and Jamaican Nation Language, and the problem that we have
identified in this paper as the tension between Afro-Caribbean Philosophy and “unlettered”
indigenous thought, in terms of the former’s failure to engage the latter, perhaps because of a
deep-rooted uncertainty as to its “properly Philosophical” import. Significantly, the usage of
Jamaican Nation Language in reggae emerges out of an indigenous space, paralleling Rastafari—and
is based on alternate cosmological precepts. The relationship between Caribbean literature and
Jamaican Nation Language/Reggae is of course more evolved than the parallel relationship between
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy and “unlettered” indigenous thought insofar as the aesthetics of reggae
provide a new sense of literary possibility while the filosofical possibility of unlettered indigenous
thought remains insufficiently engaged or realized.
The scope of Caribbean literature is expanded with this engagement of indigenous space.
This is the paradigm that I am prescribing as the nature of the relationship between scholarship and
unlettered thought. Not only is the scope of Caribbean literature ‘expanded’, but there is an
important sense in which engagement with indigenous space effects the requisite decolonization o f the
literature, allowing it to reflect the realities of Caribbean people within the terms of their experience. The
reggae aesthetic provided the catalyst for the necessary introspection and self-knowledge that
Caribbean literature required—all it needed to be able to do was see t he possibilities.
Similarly, it is possible and necessary that Afro-Caribbean philosophical scholarship engage with the
‘unlettered’ in a dialogical fashion—a free flowing, interpretively rich conversation full of liberatory
f this
potential. Importantly we realize that it is the “unlettered indigenous” that is the cornerstone o
liberatory capacity—demanding a new spirit and outlook of humility on the part of scholars as they
engage and learn.
Dawes’ exploration of the reggae aesthetic considered apart from its embrace of Jamaican Nation
Language is also critically important in terms of creating a paradigm for dialogical relations between
the ‘unlettered’ and ‘scholarship’. On the Rastafari synthesis of the political and spiritual expressed
lucidly in Reggae as an art form, Dawes comments that:
…in its many incarnations [it] can be sensual and sexually explicit,
but this kind of dancing can be and is performed to songs that may
be celebrating spirituality or espousing revolutionary ideas. There is
no contradiction here, but simply a reflection of the Jamaican psyche
that allows for these seemingly disparate entities to function within
the same moment. Dialectic rather than dualism, then, is elemental to the
reggae psyche and to the aesthetic that emerges from it.[71] [italics
mine]
The cosmological foundations of a dialogical and dialectical relationship between scholarship and
“unlettered thought” are antecedently f ound within the Afro-Caribbean discursive space. In
constructing a paradigm for their engagement, we realize that we already have the tools of
intellection that would dissolve any apparent contradiction between scholarship and “unlettered
thought”.
It is fitting to end our considerations here with another passage from Walter Rodney. A man who
appreciated, perhaps better than any Afro-Caribbean scholar, that the journey Post-Caliban is a
humanist one, demanding the highest dialogical engagement:
I was prepared to go anywhere that any group of Black people was prepared to sit
down to talk and listen. Because, that is Black Power, that is one of the elements,
a sitting down together to reason, to ‘ground’ as the Brothers say. We have to
‘ground together’.[ 72]
I have deliberately opted not to name this section “conclusion” for fear that the message of this
essay is missed. If I succeed in inspiring even the tiniest moment of reflection, then I humbly
consider my work done. “Conclusion” simply sounds too formalistic. In the spirit of dialogical
conversation I opt to leave my thoughts here open-ended, as reflections, in the spirit of brotherly
grounding. Effectively our journey has come full circle. We have charted a track in the attempt to
extricate ourselves from crippling ways of thinking—encapsulated by the idea of “Caliban”.
Eschewing Caliban, as Rastafari implores us to do, forces us into a deeper and more intimate
relation with ourselves.
I am at the same time both saddened and heartened. I am saddened because the paradoxes of
Afro-Caribbean Philosophy demonstrate that in many respects we do not trust ourselves as
Afro-Caribbean people. I am heartened because there ARE solutions within; sophisticated filosofizing
which comes from the root. From the African foundation of the Caribbean, which, as Dr Clinton
Hutton signals, is the locus of our creative thinking[73]. A deeper knowledge of collective Self must
bring us into conversations with ‘I’s. This is the fundamental lesson which Rastafari offers to the
Afro-Caribbean Intellectual Tradition writ large. For our scribal intellectuals, to whom this essay is
directed, the corollary of a deeper knowledge of collective Self is simply an engagement with OUR
space, the traversal of our collective mindscape.
Though this essay takes its inspiration from the shortcomings of Afro-Caribbean Philosophy--
indeed directing heavy criticism at it, there is something that we must recognize. The reengineering
of Blackspace is work in progress. Criticism is necessary but must be mediated by that recognition. We
criticize not for the sake of c riticism or for the sake of argument a s is characteristic of the Western
philosophical tradition. We criticize because there is work to be done. Afro-Caribbean filosofi is a
liberation project, a Movement, not a Stayment to be oversatisfied by what it has already achieved. It
is the Exodus from the no-man’s land of the liminalized; the Movement of Jah people into the
Post-Caliban phase.
Rise
Ye Mighty People
Rise
[1] See Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s “The African Presence in Caribbean Literature.” [1974].
[2] Philosophy and the Caribbean Intellectual tradition p. 5
[3] Ibid.
[4] T iffin and Lawson p. 3-4
[5] Ibid., p. 5
[6] Philosophy and the Caribbean Intellectual tradition p. 5
[7] Caribbean Quarterly page 23 [get proper reference.]
P, 73 Caribbean Quareterly.
[8]
[9] Indeed the nomenclature “Afro-Caribbean” is problematic, but engagement with the problematics of this term is
beyond the scope of this paper.
[10] Phil and the Caribbean Intellectual tradition p. 6
[11] Ibid.
[12] Gramsci from Bogues or from Lamming.
[13] Radical Caribbean Intellectual Tradition p. 30
[14] Philosophy and the Caribbean Intellectual tradition p.25
[15] Radical Carib p, 30
[16] Ibid., p. 32.
[17] Caliban’s Reason p. 90
[18] Philosophy and the radical intellectual tradition p. ?
[19] The Jamaican Creole rendering of “philosophy”. Jamaican Creole is, of course, predominantly oral. The point
here of the switch to “filosofi”, is to emphasize through employment of “unlettered” [unwritten] indigenous
language, “unlettered” indigenous thought a s product of Afro-Caribbean discursive space. The use of “filosofi”
throughout the paper hinges fundamentally on three ideas: i] the engagement of oral thought which is a product of
Afro-Caribbean discursive space, ii] the corollary of this engagement which is a more advanced knowledge of
collective Afro-Caribbean Self, and iii] the potential that this engagement has for decolonization of Afro-Caribbean
thought.
[20] “Jonkunnu in Jamaica: Toward the Interpretation of Folk Dance as Cultural Process.” p. 39 of the Jamaica
Journal Vol 4:2, 1970.
[21] “The Epistemological Significance of I-an-I as Response to Quashie and Anancyism in Jamaican Culture.” p.
119 of Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader.
[22] “Marcus Garvey and the Early Rastafarians.” p. 155 of Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader.
[23] Rastafari: A Universal Philosophy in the Third Millennium. p. 20.
[24] “Poverty [Lab] Oratory: Rastafari and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Studies Vol. 17.6 [2003] p. 825.
[25] Dissertation: “ Rasta Teacher, Leadership, Pedagogy and the New Faculty of Interpretation.” p. 4.
[26] D issertation: “ Expanding the Small Space: Rastafarians as Knowledge Producers.”
[27] “Culture, Politics and Writing in Afro-Caribbean Philosophy: A Reply to Critics.” Small Axe V
ol. 11 [2002] p.
185.
[28] “Rastafarianism and the Reality of Dread.” p. 157 of Existence in Black: an Anthology of Black Existential
Philosophy.
[29] Ibid., p. 158.
[30] Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy p. 124.
[31] Ibid., p.130
[32] “Wynter and the Transcendental Spaces of Caribbean Thought.” p. 261 of After Man: Towards the Human:
Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter.
[33] Ibid., p. 268.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid., p. 269.
[36] “Rastafari and the Critical Tradition.” p. 112 of Betwixt and Between: Explorations in an African-Caribbean
Mindscape.
[37] Ibid., p. 113.
[38]See the glossary of Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader. “Babylon” ‘describes what Rastas perceive
as the oppressive social, political, economic, and cultural realities of Jamaica and the Western world.’
[39] “Dread ‘I’ In-a Babylon: Ideological Resistance and Cultural Revitalization.” p. 33 of Chanting Down
Babylon: the Rastafari Reader.
[40] “The Epistemological Significance of ‘I-an-I’ as Response to Quashie and Anancyism in Jamaican Culture”. p.
107 of Chanting Down Babylon: the Rastafari Reader.
[41] Ibid., p. 108.
[42] GET PAGE REF.
[43] Investigating the Radical Caribbean Intellectual tradition, p. 37.
[44] “Legitimizing Africa in Jamaica.” p. 301 of After Man, Towards the Human: Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter.
[45] “Caliban as Deconstructionist.” p. 132 of C.L.R.James’s Caribbean.
[46] Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Chant Down Babylon” on Confrontation.
[47] As quoted by Edmonds in “The Structure and Ethos of Rastafari.” p. 355 of Chanting Down Babylon: the
Rastafari Reader.
[48] Ibid., p. 356
[49] History of the Voice p p. 18-19.
[50] “Western Education and the Caribbean Intellectual.” p. 16 of Coming, Coming, Home. Conversations II.
[51] Ibid., p. 17
[52] “Caliban’s Reason and the Future of Afro-Caribbean Philosophy.” Small Axe V ol. 6.1 [2002] p. 176.
[53] “The Human, Knowledge and the Word: Reflecting on Sylvia Wynter.” p. 320 of After Man, Towards the
Human.
[54] “We Know Where We Are From’: the Politics of Black Culture from Myal and Marley.”
[55] “Legitimizing Africa in Jamaica.” p. 293 of After Man, Towards the Human: Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter.
[56] African Beliefs in the New World: Popular Literary Traditions of the Caribbean, p . 43
[57]Ro ots of Jamaican Culture p. 109
[58] Ibid., 119.
[59] “We Know Where We Are From”: the Politics of Black from Mayal to Marley.” pp. 45-46.
[60] Dan Zahavi. “Phenomenology”—in Routledge. [get page reference]
[61] Existence in Black p. 205. [footnote properly—like how you have done CDB]
[62] Caliban’s Reason p. 150
[63] Ibid., p. 152.
[64] Ibid., p. 151
[65] Ibid., p. 150
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid., p. 151.
[68] The Groundings with my brothers p. 67
[69] Natural Mysticism p. 97.
[70] Natural Mysticism p. 99.
[71] Ibid., p. 102.
[72] Groundings With my Brothers pp. 62-63[1969]
[73] See Huttons Creative Ethos.
[74] Henry 108