March 28, 6pm, Wolff Conference Room (6 E 16th St, Room 1103)
Neil Roberts Associate Professor, Africana Studies Program and Faculty Affiliate, Departments of Political Science & Religion, Williams College
Neil Roberts’s colloquium talk draws upon core claims advanced in the author’s recent book Freedom as Marronage and it delves into the implications of the work’s argument for the meaning of freedom, the types of texts we consult to study ideas and phenomena, the nature of political theory, and the black radical tradition. It argues that marronage is a conception of freedom emanating from the latter whose heuristic value spans epochs and intellectual traditions. The talk discusses black politics, Afro-Caribbean thought, the meaning of radical, and the contours of the black radical tradition; posits marronage as a suggestive philosophy and political imaginary to radicalize this tradition in more useful ways than alternative contemporary discourses; and responds thematically to the most challenging critiques to its theorization.
