Christian Høgsbjerg, C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain (2014)

http://insurgentnotes.com/2014/05/review-christian-hogsbjerg-c-l-r-james-in-imperial-britain-2014/
Date Written:  2014-05-30
Publisher:  Insurgent Notes
Year Published:  2014
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX16338

Scholarship on CLR James, the Pan African and independent socialist, often takes the tone of a thin cultural studies where political insight is minimal and factual detail rooted in archival sources is negligible. Grasping James’s role in intellectual and social movement history requires resisting the tendency to group him narrowly in the fields of “Marxism” or the “Black radical tradition.” These are invented frameworks, shorthand which obscures a limited knowledge of James’s actual innovation and creativity, in contrast to other representative figures, but also mystification of the reality of elite party politics and the self-directed liberating activity by ordinary people in insurgent movements regardless of color.