Creolizing Rousseau [Paperback]

This edited volume by Gordon and Roberts contains an introduction, ten essays, and a bibliography. The work attempts to challenge existing barriers in comparative political theory by 'creolizing' Rousseau, or identifying his 'strong resonance' in 'Caribbean thought and politics.' . . . The approach and thematic core of the book holds . . . promise. . . .[and] the attempt to 'enlarge the range of relevant interlocutors' also offers the possibility for the advancement of knowledge. . . .The essays in this collection vary considerably in terms of scope and modes of analysis . . . Chapter 3 (Mickaella Perina) and chapter 8 (Neil Roberts) are significant contributions in their own right. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate, research, and professional collections.This excellent volume highlights the strong resonance of Rousseau in Caribbean thought and politics. Through a web of theoretical m?tissage that challenges traditional modes of Western thought, its contributors recast the work of major Caribbean thinkers like C?saire, James and Fanon through a Rousseauean prism, revisiting historical, political, and social trends in Caribbean thought to highlight the complexities and contradictions of modernity.Advancing a creolizing reading of the eighteenth-century philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this volume explores Rousseaus strong resonances in Caribbean thought and politics.In 1967, C.L.R. James, the much-celebrated Afro-Trinidadian Marxist, stated that he knew of no figure in history who had such tremendous influence on such widely separated spheres of humanity within a few years of his death as the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While this impact was most pronounced in revolutionary politics inspired by political theories that rejected basing political authority in monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church, it extended to European literature, to philosophies of education, and the articulation of the social sciences. But what particularly strulC(