The Promise of Caribbean Intellectual History

Abstract:This essay provides a meditation on the field of Caribbean intellectual history. Commencing with a reflection on the second edition of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta 1976), the essay proceeds to outline the contours of the field through a consideration of eight relatively discrete though overlapping categories. It argues that the study of Caribbean intellectual history gives us more conscious control over the articulation and reproduction of critical ideas about the region over time and space, alerts us to transformations in the conditions of Caribbean intellectual production, and reminds us of the existential crises the region faces in the third decade of the twenty-first century.