The Humanities Graduate Centre Key Thinkers Series, in conjunction with
the Reading Group for African Critical Thought (RGFACT) and the Centre
for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA) Presents:
TWO DAYS WITH THE SPIRIT OF C.L.R. JAMES
C.L.R James (1901-1989), originally from Trinidad, was among the most
original, wide-ranging and influential postcolonial thinkers and
activists of the 20th Century. His work as a political theorist (e.g.
Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx and Lenin), historian (The Black
Jacobins), literary critic (Mariners, Renegades and Castaways), cricket
journalist (Beyond a Boundary) and writer of fiction (Minty Alley) is
too little known in South Africa.
Please join us on Tuesday, July 31st and Wednesday, August 1st for a
sustained engagement with his revolutionary ideas and a consideration of
their relevance for our times.
ALL EVENTS BELOW WILL BE HELD AT THE HUMANITIES GRADUATE CENTRE SEMINAR
ROOM, GROUND FLOOR, SW ENGINEERING BLDG.
Tuesday, 31 July
16h00-18h00 C.L.R. James's New Society and Caribbean Freedom. Lecture
by Aaron Kamugisha. Response by Keith Hart.
Graduate Seminar Room, Ground Floor, SW Engineering Building
Wednesday, 1 August
11h00-13h00 Open Reading Group on selected works by C.L.R. James.
Request electronic or hard copies of readings from:
cynthia.madalane@wits.ac.za
Graduate Seminar Room, Ground Floor, SW Engineering Building
16h00-18h00 CLR James on World Revolution: Africa and the Second
American Revolution. Lecture by Keith Hart. Response by Aaron
Kamugisha.
Graduate Seminar Room, Ground Floor, SW Engineering Building
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Aaron Kamugisha is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of
the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. He completed his PhD Social and
Political Thought at York University in Toronto, and was the 2007/8
Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of African-American Studies at
Northwestern University. His current work is a study of coloniality,
cultural citizenship and freedom in the contemporary Anglophone
Caribbean, mediated through the social and political thought of C.L.R.
James and Sylvia Wynter. He is the editor of a special issue of Race &
Class "Caribbean Trajectories: 200 Years On" (October 2007), and has
published in the Journal of Caribbean History, Race & Class, Proudflesh,
Small Axe and The Philosophical Forum. He is currently the Book Reviews
Editor and a member of the editorial working committee for the journal
Social and Economic Studies. His forthcoming edited collections include
the following: Caribbean Political Thought: The Colonial State to
Caribbean Internationalisms, Caribbean Political Thought: Theories of
the Post-Colonial State and Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation
to Diaspora, all due to be published by Ian Randle Press in 2013.
Keith Hart is Extraordinary Visiting Professor in the Centre for the
Advancement of Scholarship and Co-Director of the Human Economy Program
at the University of Pretoria. He is also Professor of Anthropology
Emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London and Honorary Professor of
Development Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban. His main
research has been on Africa and the African diaspora. He has taught at
numerous universities, most significantly at Cambridge where he was
director of the African Studies Centre. He has contributed to the
concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published
widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of Money in an Unequal
World. One recurrent theme of his work has been the relationship between
movement and identity in the transition from national to world society.
He worked with C.L.R. James in the late 1980s, and, together with Anna
Grimshaw, edited James's posthumously published work, American
Civilization (Blackwell, 1993).
