Module code: HST7706
Module Convenor: Leslie James
Black radical thought in the twentieth century drew on a long tradition of circulating ideas. It did so in order to formulate new readings of Enlightenment ideals that would address sovereignty and autonomy within the specific conditions of black life. This module examines how black thinkers stretched the category of "intellectual" through combined thought and practice. Workers and educated elite formulated specific analyses of the combined working of capitalism and empire, grounded in the importance of New World slavery to the modern world's political and social economy. Black women challenged the assumed distinctiveness of race, class, and gender and formulated distinctive visions of what "freedom" might mean. In this module we will think with black radicals' ideas about empire, war and expropriation, work and social life and consider their strategies for realising alternative forms of social and political organisation.