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Futures of Black Radicalism
Black rebellion has returned. Dramatic protests have risen up in scores of cities and campuses; there is renewed engagement with the history of Black radical movements and thought. Here, key intellectuals—inspired by the new movements and by the seminal work of the scholar Cedric J. Robinson—recall the powerful tradition of Black radicalism while defining new directions for the activists and thinkers it inspires.
In a time when activists in Ferguson, Palestine, Baltimore, and Hong Kong immediately connect across vast distances, this book makes clear that new Black radical politics is thoroughly internationalist and redraws the links between Black resistance and anti-capitalism. Featuring the key voices in this new intellectual wave, this collection outlines one of the most vibrant areas of thought today.
With contributions from Greg Burris, Jordan T. Camp, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Avery F. Gordon, Stefano Harney, Christina Heatherton, Robin D.G. Kelley, George Lipsitz, Fred Moten, Paul Ortiz, Steven Osuna, Kwame M. Phillips, Shana L. Redmond, Cedric J. Robinson, Elizabeth P. Robinson, Nikhil Pal Singh, Damien M. Sojoyner, Darryl C. Thomas, and Françoise Vergès.
In a time when activists in Ferguson, Palestine, Baltimore, and Hong Kong immediately connect across vast distances, this book makes clear that new Black radical politics is thoroughly internationalist and redraws the links between Black resistance and anti-capitalism. Featuring the key voices in this new intellectual wave, this collection outlines one of the most vibrant areas of thought today.
With contributions from Greg Burris, Jordan T. Camp, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Avery F. Gordon, Stefano Harney, Christina Heatherton, Robin D.G. Kelley, George Lipsitz, Fred Moten, Paul Ortiz, Steven Osuna, Kwame M. Phillips, Shana L. Redmond, Cedric J. Robinson, Elizabeth P. Robinson, Nikhil Pal Singh, Damien M. Sojoyner, Darryl C. Thomas, and Françoise Vergès.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 29, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 17, 2020
A truly superb collection of essays that further develop the great Cedric J. Robinson's work on black Marxism, racial capitalism, and theories (and practices!) of black radicalism. Wide-ranging but impeccably structured, and each and every one a delight to read. My highest recommendation!
October 17, 2020
An introduction to Black Radical thought, through the work of the late Cedric Robinson, which has upturned and expanded my ideas in so many directions. Stand out essays were that of Nikhil P Singh's on race and violence, the racial capitalocene by Francoise Verges, and the very beautiful Bruise Blues by Avery F Gordon. I would really recommend this; it goes beyond and through and into the Black future in a way that is deeply historically grounded, poetic and yet hopeful.
March 13, 2018
Was hoping for a lot more from this one. Felt like a rehashing much more than an advancement of the conversation.
July 19, 2020
Three passages from Futures of Black Radicalism:
We can describe this moment in many of the cultures with which we are most familiar as a modern phenomenon in historical terms. The blatant, vicious characterization of the Irish by English spokespersons, writers, and so forth has largely dissipated since the early part of the twentieth century. Irish historians reminded me of these earlier moments, when they were defined as objects of vilification. As E. P. Thompson suggests, much of the vilification of Blacks was transferred from the Irish in the nineteenth century. Racism has the advantage of being able to move and transfer its disaffections from one group to another without being held accountable.
– Cedric Robinson, The World We Want
Cedric answered this in probably the boldest way when he was at University of California, Irvine, a couple of years ago. He’d done a two-day seminar there. At the end of it, people wanted to know, When does it all get better? Cedric said something to them about the struggle being important, regardless of whether or not you are going to win. If it’s some kind of salvation you’re looking for, I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s not like a football game that’s going to end with your team either winning or losing. We have to understand that there is value in trying, not in winning. It’s important to recognize small victories and celebrate them and one another. There is not just victory at the end of the struggle. There is value in recognizing that. Trying to change things has a value in itself.
I’ve told students in the past that they can make choices about what their lives are going to be like when they leave the university. I’ve told them that most of them are going to go into all-white environments, unless they choose to do something different. You can choose to participate in racist and classist structures, or you can choose not to. That is really important.
I want people to be free to enjoy the fullness of their experiences, whatever they are, wherever they are. Cedric was talking earlier about being able to say boldly what it is we think about something. There’s so many instances where we can’t do that. To try to create more spaces where we can at least approximate it, where we can talk openly and freely with each other, that is important.
– Elizabeth Robinson, The World We Want
Domination produces resistance, and resistance plants the seeds of a new society within the shell of the old.
– George Lipsitz, What Is This Black in the Black Radical Tradition?
We can describe this moment in many of the cultures with which we are most familiar as a modern phenomenon in historical terms. The blatant, vicious characterization of the Irish by English spokespersons, writers, and so forth has largely dissipated since the early part of the twentieth century. Irish historians reminded me of these earlier moments, when they were defined as objects of vilification. As E. P. Thompson suggests, much of the vilification of Blacks was transferred from the Irish in the nineteenth century. Racism has the advantage of being able to move and transfer its disaffections from one group to another without being held accountable.
– Cedric Robinson, The World We Want
Cedric answered this in probably the boldest way when he was at University of California, Irvine, a couple of years ago. He’d done a two-day seminar there. At the end of it, people wanted to know, When does it all get better? Cedric said something to them about the struggle being important, regardless of whether or not you are going to win. If it’s some kind of salvation you’re looking for, I don’t think it’s going to happen. It’s not like a football game that’s going to end with your team either winning or losing. We have to understand that there is value in trying, not in winning. It’s important to recognize small victories and celebrate them and one another. There is not just victory at the end of the struggle. There is value in recognizing that. Trying to change things has a value in itself.
I’ve told students in the past that they can make choices about what their lives are going to be like when they leave the university. I’ve told them that most of them are going to go into all-white environments, unless they choose to do something different. You can choose to participate in racist and classist structures, or you can choose not to. That is really important.
I want people to be free to enjoy the fullness of their experiences, whatever they are, wherever they are. Cedric was talking earlier about being able to say boldly what it is we think about something. There’s so many instances where we can’t do that. To try to create more spaces where we can at least approximate it, where we can talk openly and freely with each other, that is important.
– Elizabeth Robinson, The World We Want
Domination produces resistance, and resistance plants the seeds of a new society within the shell of the old.
– George Lipsitz, What Is This Black in the Black Radical Tradition?
June 25, 2021
I found some of this very interesting, but overall hard going, I think mainly because I'm not fond of the style of academic writing in which in takes a lot of time to say everything, and everything is kept very vague.
Some of the essays/chapters were engaging. I liked "Class Suicide : The Black Radical Tradition, Radical Scholarship, and the Neoliberal Turn", "The World We Want : An Interview with Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson", and "Winston Whiteside and the Politics of the Possible". Mainly because it felt like these contributors knew what they were trying to say, and were able to express it clearly.
Some other essays for me were very self-indulgent and academically pretentious, with no clear message or idea. Such as "Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence", in which the writer argues in favour of getting rid of prisons, while only making one very vague reference to how communities would replace that means of protecting individuals and society. That could have been an interesting and useful piece, if there had been some focus on whether or not there is a good alternative to prison for serious and violent criminals, but that is just skated over. I like made-up terms and they can be valuable in sociological writing but some of the uses thereof in here seem to be gratuitous - such as multiple references to "time-space", without any attempt to develop or explain what is meant by that term in this context.
I'm sure if I had more prior knowledge I could have got more from it. So I would say definitely definitely don't read this as an introduction to this topic. For me overall there are some really good chapters but also some that really needed a lot of editing, and for the contributor to think about what they actually wanted to say and convey. A problem in a lot of academic writing.
Some of the essays/chapters were engaging. I liked "Class Suicide : The Black Radical Tradition, Radical Scholarship, and the Neoliberal Turn", "The World We Want : An Interview with Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson", and "Winston Whiteside and the Politics of the Possible". Mainly because it felt like these contributors knew what they were trying to say, and were able to express it clearly.
Some other essays for me were very self-indulgent and academically pretentious, with no clear message or idea. Such as "Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence", in which the writer argues in favour of getting rid of prisons, while only making one very vague reference to how communities would replace that means of protecting individuals and society. That could have been an interesting and useful piece, if there had been some focus on whether or not there is a good alternative to prison for serious and violent criminals, but that is just skated over. I like made-up terms and they can be valuable in sociological writing but some of the uses thereof in here seem to be gratuitous - such as multiple references to "time-space", without any attempt to develop or explain what is meant by that term in this context.
I'm sure if I had more prior knowledge I could have got more from it. So I would say definitely definitely don't read this as an introduction to this topic. For me overall there are some really good chapters but also some that really needed a lot of editing, and for the contributor to think about what they actually wanted to say and convey. A problem in a lot of academic writing.
October 4, 2022
A disappointing read for me. There seems to be a large seam running through Black Academia (my capitalization) where an exceedingly large amount of deference is paid, in writing, to the past, to "how we got here", to "who got us here". So much so that if you have already read C.L.R. James, Fanon, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, Angela Davis (and on and on...) then you can skip about 75% of what is written, as it merely summarizes, quotes, or praises previous writings. By the time one gets past that, there is little room left to make the point(s) of the essay, and at times the author seems to not have anything of their own to say. I get it. There is a massive deficit of Black Stories across every academic discipline, maybe more of a purposeful erasure instead of a mere lacking. Still, one could argue that spending too much time in the past means you miss the present and can't help make the future. Anyway. Entirely too much of this book follows that logic. I won't question the depth of Cedric J. Robinson's contributions to Black Radicalism, Activism, and Scholarship. But if I want to read Robinson, I will, I don't need cherrypicked quotes and paragraphs passed off as original ideas or intellectual points to ponder (i.e. - His 'Black Marxism' is case in point: Robinson repudiates Marxism as Eurocentric and racist, so references to this book taken out of context could lead one to miss his point entirely). Filling an essay about the future of Black Radicalism with the words of a load of other writers, thinkers, and social justice warriors is easy enough. Copy-and-Paste. I search out books like this for new ideas, or alternative takes on known theories, or expansions on current trends in academia and radical action. There's none of those here. It felt like the worst kind of academic writing, essays written for insiders and scholars, those "in the know", but hardly useful or applicable to the lay person, intelligent or otherwise. If this reflects the future of Black Radicalism, we are in serious trouble. I am reminded of why my own city cannot seem to escape its racist past, as it seems there are too many people here holding on to that past as a large part of their identity as The Oppressed who won't allow new, young, fresh, different, dare I say radical?, ideas to take hold and force the changes we need to build a new future. "You haven't lived here long enough to tell Us what we need!". And so we traffic in pain, anger, and violence as badges of honor, never realizing they offer no respite or path to freedom, just more of the same. This book is a nice homage of sorts, and if that is what you are looking for you will like it significantly more than I did. New ideas? Not so much.
January 8, 2019
Futures of Black Radicalism is a necessary read for anyone studying the Black Radical Tradition (and the many disciplines and sub-disciplines that it intersects with), and really, necessary reading for anyone considering themselves a scholar of race. Building off each and all of Robinson's seminal interventions, the authors in this piece seek to apply, extend, and understand the Black Radical Tradition and racial capitalism in the context of contemporary modes of neoliberalism, the global war on terror, state violence, and modes of policing and surveillance. Each of the authors' contributions are much too rich and vast to describe individually in this summary, but each essay, each chapter, stitches together into an illuminating, thought-provoking, sometimes-contradictory, moreso-than-not-hopeful tapestry of the Black Radical Tradition and all the interventions that it has, does, and will contribute to our understandings of the world as it it ordered.
January 31, 2021
This book was my first introduction to Cedric J. Robinson's work. While I definitely intend to read Black Marxism, it was interesting to first understand how a variety of scholars in the area of Black Radical Thought perceive his interpretations of this tradition along with his coined understanding of racial capitalism.
One of my favorite essays was written by Steven Osuna ("Class Suicide: The Black Radical Tradition, Radical Scholarship, and the Neoliberal Turn"). As the opening piece to this anthology, Osuna discusses the importance for those engaging in radical scholarship to align with the individuals they are writing and theorizing about. I really connected with this because as a Black woman in academic spaces, I have witnessed how this phenomenon occurs with people of color who are granted access to social capital. Osuna implores those of us in these spaces to resist the conversion into petit-bourgeois intellectualism that removes the link between the work of radical work and the people it should be benefitting. Using the work of theorists like Frantz Fanon, Osuna argues that "real-life struggles of the people...provide the colonized intellectual with better knowledge of real-world struggles than the 'falsity' of the theories, values, perceptions, and cultural preoccupations taught to them by Western civilization." Just... YES. This is a practice I am fully trying to embody as someone who does really want to engage in Black radical scholarship, theory, and practice while also maintaining the essential connection to the communities that I endeavor to support. We can't act within the framework of white supremacy and ideas of success and validation under white supremacy to care for marginalized people.
That is just one component of the variety of essays that discuss concepts such as Black internationalism and its relation to global struggles including that of Palestine, marronage, fugivity, Afro-futurism, anti-imperialism, climate catastrophe, and abolition geography. With the voices of individuals with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Y. Davis, and other prominent intellectuals and radicals, this book offers a great understanding of how Black radicalism continues to manifest itself in the ways we are changing the landscape of modern capitalism and manifestations of eurocentrism (including the ideas of "governance.")
Many of the works tie Black creativity to a rejection of Western standards, which I believe is such a key component of our community. I particularly enjoyed the work by Shana Redmond and Kwame Phillips, "The People Who Keep on Going: A Listening Party, Vol. 1", and their recognition of how the Black Radical Tradition shows up in our music and creative expression from the past to the contemporary era.
I only give the book four stars because while there is so much to unpack, it still does use heavy academic language in some of the essays that make it a bit difficult and inaccessible to general audiences.
Regardless, it was a wonderful read and extremely timely given the myriad of systemic and societal shifts we are undergoing. And I am extremely excited to read Black Marxism after this multi-faceted and nuanced introduction to the Black Radical Tradition.
One of my favorite essays was written by Steven Osuna ("Class Suicide: The Black Radical Tradition, Radical Scholarship, and the Neoliberal Turn"). As the opening piece to this anthology, Osuna discusses the importance for those engaging in radical scholarship to align with the individuals they are writing and theorizing about. I really connected with this because as a Black woman in academic spaces, I have witnessed how this phenomenon occurs with people of color who are granted access to social capital. Osuna implores those of us in these spaces to resist the conversion into petit-bourgeois intellectualism that removes the link between the work of radical work and the people it should be benefitting. Using the work of theorists like Frantz Fanon, Osuna argues that "real-life struggles of the people...provide the colonized intellectual with better knowledge of real-world struggles than the 'falsity' of the theories, values, perceptions, and cultural preoccupations taught to them by Western civilization." Just... YES. This is a practice I am fully trying to embody as someone who does really want to engage in Black radical scholarship, theory, and practice while also maintaining the essential connection to the communities that I endeavor to support. We can't act within the framework of white supremacy and ideas of success and validation under white supremacy to care for marginalized people.
That is just one component of the variety of essays that discuss concepts such as Black internationalism and its relation to global struggles including that of Palestine, marronage, fugivity, Afro-futurism, anti-imperialism, climate catastrophe, and abolition geography. With the voices of individuals with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Y. Davis, and other prominent intellectuals and radicals, this book offers a great understanding of how Black radicalism continues to manifest itself in the ways we are changing the landscape of modern capitalism and manifestations of eurocentrism (including the ideas of "governance.")
Many of the works tie Black creativity to a rejection of Western standards, which I believe is such a key component of our community. I particularly enjoyed the work by Shana Redmond and Kwame Phillips, "The People Who Keep on Going: A Listening Party, Vol. 1", and their recognition of how the Black Radical Tradition shows up in our music and creative expression from the past to the contemporary era.
I only give the book four stars because while there is so much to unpack, it still does use heavy academic language in some of the essays that make it a bit difficult and inaccessible to general audiences.
Regardless, it was a wonderful read and extremely timely given the myriad of systemic and societal shifts we are undergoing. And I am extremely excited to read Black Marxism after this multi-faceted and nuanced introduction to the Black Radical Tradition.
October 29, 2021
I bought this book along with Black Marxism thinking I’d read Robinson’s book first and then this one. Well, I started Robinson’s and felt I was in way over my head. I put that aside and started this instead.
There were essays in here that were still way over my head, but the variety helped me get through it. Bruise Blues and the interview with Angela Davis were the weakest for me. Bruise Blues was commenting on an art piece we the readers couldn’t see and may or may not be familiar with. And Angela Davis’s interview was just really short!
The rest of the essays I struggled with more or less depending on how academic they got, but I pulled something from all of them. Some nugget got through. It’s probably a book I should hold onto and reread as I gain the ability to get more out of it.
As a librarian working in higher education I appreciated the essay on class suicide. The most radical, immediate thought is often not provided in academia-accepted formats, but it shouldn’t be ignored.
I also enjoyed the multiple essays that connected Black struggle in the US with emancipatory movements across the world. “Emancipatory internationalism” and “Black internationalism” were new things for me.
I also felt challenged by the essay about the ungoverned and our expectations on the ungovernable. That we need to create better theoretical space for those folks.
Favorite quotes:
… Trump‘s success [is] an indication not of the strength of white supremacy and the dominance of the United States in the global market, but of the fragility and fissures in their constructions.
Yet, waste embodies, more than ever before, the new era of the Capitalocene. Capitalist production is waste production.
… Black visibility is not the same as Black power.
… the state’s memory, however, must not be our only memory.
There were essays in here that were still way over my head, but the variety helped me get through it. Bruise Blues and the interview with Angela Davis were the weakest for me. Bruise Blues was commenting on an art piece we the readers couldn’t see and may or may not be familiar with. And Angela Davis’s interview was just really short!
The rest of the essays I struggled with more or less depending on how academic they got, but I pulled something from all of them. Some nugget got through. It’s probably a book I should hold onto and reread as I gain the ability to get more out of it.
As a librarian working in higher education I appreciated the essay on class suicide. The most radical, immediate thought is often not provided in academia-accepted formats, but it shouldn’t be ignored.
I also enjoyed the multiple essays that connected Black struggle in the US with emancipatory movements across the world. “Emancipatory internationalism” and “Black internationalism” were new things for me.
I also felt challenged by the essay about the ungoverned and our expectations on the ungovernable. That we need to create better theoretical space for those folks.
Favorite quotes:
… Trump‘s success [is] an indication not of the strength of white supremacy and the dominance of the United States in the global market, but of the fragility and fissures in their constructions.
Yet, waste embodies, more than ever before, the new era of the Capitalocene. Capitalist production is waste production.
… Black visibility is not the same as Black power.
… the state’s memory, however, must not be our only memory.
August 28, 2020
An impressive selection of essays on Cedric Robinson’s entire oeuvre with specific focus on Black Marxism where Robinson innovates the concepts of racial capitalism and racial regimes of dispossession.
The essays trouble the deliberately propagated systems of oppression that coalesce into premature death such as the quotidian violences of occupation, neoliberal assaults on ungovernable populations, mass incarceration, policing, surveillance, wealth inequalities, deportation, environmental genocides or “ecocides” as well as the aforementioned, intimately linked concepts that permit them.
Their incisions surpass narrow appropriations of race and capitalism by combining multiple factors to address the plural and accumulated catastrophes stymieing and shortening Black life.
It is rather bulky but seismic and totally worth it.
The essays trouble the deliberately propagated systems of oppression that coalesce into premature death such as the quotidian violences of occupation, neoliberal assaults on ungovernable populations, mass incarceration, policing, surveillance, wealth inequalities, deportation, environmental genocides or “ecocides” as well as the aforementioned, intimately linked concepts that permit them.
Their incisions surpass narrow appropriations of race and capitalism by combining multiple factors to address the plural and accumulated catastrophes stymieing and shortening Black life.
It is rather bulky but seismic and totally worth it.
November 26, 2024
a collection of essays responding to and engaging with cedric robinson's seminal work. although I've yet to read black marxism, there's enough context here to broadly understand the arguments robinson made. having just finished edward said's the question of palestine, I found the writing on black radicalism's connection to palestinian struggles especially relevant
“Just as the aforementioned project of whitening the United States was a response to an underlying disorder that included Black insurgency, Israel’s actions likewise represent a defensive reaction against the Palestinians’ continued intransigence. Palestinian liberation should therefore not be seen simply as a reaction to the brutality of the occupation. On the contrary, the brutality of the occupation is a reaction to Palestinian liberation."
“Just as the aforementioned project of whitening the United States was a response to an underlying disorder that included Black insurgency, Israel’s actions likewise represent a defensive reaction against the Palestinians’ continued intransigence. Palestinian liberation should therefore not be seen simply as a reaction to the brutality of the occupation. On the contrary, the brutality of the occupation is a reaction to Palestinian liberation."
August 11, 2020
Futures of Black Radicalism is a robust study of the black radical tradition. Editors Gaye T. Johnson and Alex Lubin deliver an intelligently-organized collection of essays that understand and explain the rich history of black radicalism while also defining new terrains of study and consideration. Futures of Black Radicalism is an ambitious book too. Topics include but are not limited to politics, class, economics, identity, literature, art, and music. This demonstrates the myriad of concerns and preoccupations housed under the black radical umbrella. Reading Futures of Black Radicalism while protests for racial equality and police accountability spanned the world offered a reminder of the limitless relevance of the black radical tradition.
April 25, 2018
The book has some brilliant insights with a feeling of connection with Cedric Robinson and the reader. While I've dropped a star (should be like half a star) because there is sometimes a lack of clarity where the academic language is in full flow (while not understanding bits is my fault one of the premises at the beginning of academic work in the tradition is it's necessity of availability to ordinary folk), but where conclusions are well defined as structures exposed the book is inspiring
March 7, 2021
One of the very few essay collections I've read that comes together as a cohesive and readable whole without sacrificing intellectual depth or quality. Absolutely vital and inspired reading for anyone hoping to imagine, theorize, or build black futures, regardless of your areas of focus or past reading.
August 2, 2021
"Perhaps it all boils down to this: love and affirmation; holding on to the notion of the possible; preserving the ontological totality."
This book is ultimately one of hope. Though naming the futures of Black radicalism, it draws so much from the past and anchors on the hope, love, and affirmation of enslaved Black people and their descendants. Definitely will require a re-read.
This book is ultimately one of hope. Though naming the futures of Black radicalism, it draws so much from the past and anchors on the hope, love, and affirmation of enslaved Black people and their descendants. Definitely will require a re-read.
August 9, 2018
it's very insightful! i'd say my favorite contributions are from vergès, lipsitz, and quan, but on the whole it's a neat work that provides a lot of avenues for further research and action. it can get a little opaque in its language at times but not enough to turn me off of it
January 28, 2021
An interesting collection of interviews on the legacy of Cedric Robinson and the Black Radical Tradition, ranging from racial capitalism, to the police state, to analysis of music and literature.
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December 8, 2017323.1196 F9968 2017
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