Walter Rodney's Anticolonial Praxis in Post-Independence Jamaica

Abstract

The wave of social consciousness regarding the linkage between race and class due to colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism in the 1960s created a monumental shift in ways that independence was formed as an epistemic tool of political resistance. I articulate how Rodney’s The Groundings With My Brothers demonstrates how anticolonial independence can be understood as a broader social movement struggle through cultural independence rather than simply a formal political process that established claims of independence by post-independence nation-states. This work will demonstrate how Rodney maps out ‘dimensions’ of independence that mobilize black sovereignty and autonomy in the hands of citizens rather than elite stakeholders within Jamaica. These dimensions of independence guide a radical approach to understanding anticolonial independence-building through cultural avenues rather than appealing to policymakers in the neocolonial state. I will trace these four cultural dimensions that enrich modes of anti-colonial praxis, which include black press freedom through radical independent publishing, practices of national cultural autonomy, black international cultural identity, and the conversational pedagogy of groundings.