Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism and the uses of historical geography

Abstract

Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition is one of the key sources of the idea of ‘racial capitalism’ and offers an important account of the lineage of Black radical thought. It is argued here that central to Robinson's development of these ideas is the setting out of the different historical geographies of capitalism and Black people's resistance to oppression. This argument is pursued through a detailed reading of the historical geographical imagination central to Black Marxism that shows how Robinson deploys different historical geographies, and to what effect. The case is made that Robinson uses historical geographical analysis to effect shifts in ways of seeing race, capitalism and politics which work to decentre capitalism as the focus of analysis and, correspondingly, direct attention to the continuities and connections within Black political cultures of opposition to oppression. The conclusion draws out the implications of this for historical and geographical work on racial capitalism and resistance.