CLR James’ American Civilization
Written in the immediate years after WWII but only published in full posthumously in 1993, CLR James’ American Civilization has much to inform us about today’s America, at the cusp of the Trump 2.0 era. From the piercing pen of the Trinidadian critical social theorist, journalist, and cricket expert, American Civilization can help us more deeply understand our current era of rising authoritarianism and waning liberalism and gives us a better grasp of this moment of deep socio-political change in the US and America’s role in the world. Written 100 years after de Tocqueville’s mid-19th century masterpiece, Democracy in America, James offers the reader the same inquisitive spirit but from a Caribbean sensibility and a post-colonial socialist’s perspective. American Civilization gestures towards crucial answers to the question of where America’s contribution to world history and its hopes for human flourishing – its promises of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" – stands today, and where it could be heading. As Homi Bhabha wrote of James: “CLR James provides a postcolonial revision of the ideas of modernity. His is a secular intellectual, practiced in the magic arts of interpretation; a revolutionary thinker who looks to the future and frees the past.”
