Turning History Upside Down

Abstract

This chapter maps out the general aims of this study and explains both the historical sociological approach taken and the key concepts that will be used. In particular, it provides an overview of the Foucauldian genealogical approach to the history of freedom. The aim is to enable readers new to these approaches and concepts to make sense of the micrological as well as the macrological lenses of vision that this study brings to the formation of the Black Caribbean free woman. It will then go on to explain why and how this approach when informed by postcolonial, critical race, transnational feminist and decolonial theories of modernity will be particularly useful in analysing and unravelling contemporary and historical constructions of the free Black Caribbean woman and of British liberalism. This leads on to an explanation and discussion of the concept of governmentality that is central to this book’s analytical framework. Recognizing the influence of Foucauldian theory both on this study and on postcolonial theory, this chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of Foucault’s work for understanding the colonial temporalities of modernity and modern freedom.