Even before the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois demonstrates, Haiti's troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past. The country's difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution---the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the surrounding colonial powers; and the intense...
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Even before the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of...
In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness--from the Atlantic slave trade to the present--to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses...
In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness--from the Atlantic slave tr...