On the Very Idea of a Black Radical Tradition

Abstract

This short essay offers one frame in which to think about the idea of a black radical tradition, a term whose elements are all essentially unstable and contested. What is at stake is a historically minded inquiry into “uses” rather than “meanings”—that is, the historical conjunctures in which the idea of a black radical tradition has been employed. The essay suggests that “Africa” and “slavery” are recurrent tropes of this tradition and gives the example of Edward Kamau Brathwaite's discussion of Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.