Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance

Black Critique

by Cedric J. Robinson

Cedric J. Robinson is considered one of the doyens of Black Studies and a pioneer in study of the Black Radical Tradition. His works have been essential texts, deconstructing racial capitalism and inspiring insurgent movements from Ferguson to the West Bank. For the first time, Robinson's essays come together, spanning over four decades and reflective of his diverse interests in the interconnections between culture and politics, radical social theory and classic and modern political philosophy. Themes explored include Africa and Black internationalism, World politics, race and US Foreign Policy, representations of blackness in popular culture, and reflections on popular resistance to racial capitalism, white supremacy and more. Accompanied by an introduction by H. L. T. Quan and a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, this collection, which includes previously unpublished materials, extends the many contributions by a giant in Black radical thought.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Theory, History, Race, Sociology, Political Science

400 pages, Hardcover

Published October 20, 2019

About the author

Cedric Robinson was a professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science and served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research.

Reviews

[Lacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cedric J. Robinson on U.S. imperial praxis (learning from U.S. capital's failure to preempt the Iranian Revolution):

"The Filipino revolution which the American media permitted its audience consisted of the revolving of elites. The popular revolution, the force whose very success catalyzed the transition from Marcos, was used by the American media to legitimate the stage-play in Manila. American news-makers reconstructed the Philippines by first inventing the problem (Marcos) and then the solution (Aquino – with assistance from a recomposed Reagan administration)."

Machiavelli on ruling-class praxis:

"And since this point deserves to be known and imitated by others, I do not want to omit it. Once the duke had occupied the Romagna, he found it under the control of ineffective rulers who were quicker to extort their subjects than to govern them; these rulers gave their subjects cause for discord, not harmony, so that the entire region was rife with thieving, brawling, and all other sorts of lawlessness. The duke decided that he must of necessity give the Romagna good government if he desired to pacify it and make it obey his sovereign power. Hence he placed in control Ramiro de Lorqua—a ruthless, efficient man, to whom he gave absolute power. Ramiro quickly pacified and unified the Romagna, thereby acquiring enormous prestige. The duke later deemed such immoderate power to be unnecessary, fearing that it might become intolerable. In the heart of the region he established a circuit court for civil suits with an outstanding judge presiding; each city was represented by its own lawyer. Since he realized that past severities had generated some hatred against Ramiro, and since he wanted to purge the minds of those people and win them entirely over to his side, he decided to show that if there had been any ruthlessness, it had proceeded not from him but from the harsh actions of his minister. So, once he got the opportunity, he had Ramiro's body laid out one morning in two pieces on the public square at Cesena with a block of wood and a bloody sword beside it. The brutality of this spectacle left those people simultaneously gratified and terrified."

[David Grundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

At nearly 400 pages in length, this volume collects nearly 30 short essays from across Robinson's career, published and unpublished, from work written for academic journals to shorter pieces of journalism and a conference paper apparently delivered the day after keynotes from Walter Rodney and Amiri Baraka (what a confluence!) As such, it gives a good indication of the breadth of his thought: from Amilcar Cabral to the Philippines, Rodney King to 9/11, concise introductions to the lives of particular thinkers or events sit alongside detailed explications of particular historical conjunctures, generally filtered through the lens of a particular writer, artist, thinker or radical. There are overlaps with Robinson's published books as essays excavate further corners of their topics or extend their analyses to other areas (Malcolm X as leader and the exploration of leadership in The Terms of Order; the three essays on film and Forgeries of Memory and Meaning). Robinson is excellent at surveying a field and digesting large amounts of information into readable, but complex--and sometimes polemical--accounts that are attentive to international interconnections and the workings of the dialectic. Of particular interest on a first read were the opening essays on George Shepperson and pan-Africanism; a piece on Oliver Cromwell Cox and world systems theory/western historiography; an essay on Black Radical theorisations of Fascism (which has as its complex a more detailed piece on specifically Italian Fascism); a critique of blaxploitation (one wishes Robinson had lived to extend his reading of earlier cinemas in Forgeries to later cinemas, particularly independent film). And that's just scratching the surface. Robinson is particularly acute at moving from the specific to the general and back again: a reading of a particular film will link to an argument that American cinema cannot be understood separated from its role in consolidating racial regimes of power in the post-Reconstruction era; while the explication of the dialectical nature of national liberation struggles in the essay on Cabral deftly links Cabral's own theorisations to historical conjuncture (Cabral takes the lessons of Marxist anti-Fascism from the metropole to the colony, transforming them in the course of a national liberation struggle which in turn leads to the overthrow of dictatorship in the metropole). Though the organisation of the volume is varied and retrospective, lacking the overarching framework of the books completed in Robinson's lifetime, Cabral in some ways emerges as the book's exemplary figure, for his rejection of myths of leadership, for his insistence on the importance of culture of battleground, for his commitment to struggle and his expansion of European Marxist orthodoxy on the basis of study, struggle and the lived experience of the periphery. Praxis, in other words. This will not be the best introduction to Robinson's work for those not familiar with his thought--this is not, for example, the place to come for an explanation of 'racial capitalism' or some of his other ideas now popularised. Josh Myers' forthcoming biography promises to held draw together some of the threads. But for those who've already encountered Robinson, it will be required reading.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been wanting to read Robinson for a few years now but was never sure where to start. This looked appealing because it seemed like it would provide an overview of his thinking. I'm not sure how accurate that idea was since each chapter jumps into a specific topic with no real introduction or thematic line carrying through -- but in this year of 2020 during which it is a real struggle to focus on anything, having a bunch of fairly short chapters covering a variety of topics gave me the kind of "bite sized" introduction to his work that my brain needed. I am definitely going to explore more of his writing now that I've finished this. Brilliantly insightful and beautifully written.

in the construction of knowledge there is no beginning and no end; and bounded genealogies of thought can produce as much mischief as enlightenment." (p340)

[Sydney Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every piece included in this work is excellent. Whether is an academic critique or a social/societal examination I really enjoyed this collection of Robinson’s work. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interest in Black studies, Black political thought, or socio-historical examinations across the African Diaspora.