Aaron Kamugisha is Professor of Caribbean and Africana Thought at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus The tradition of Caribbean intelligentsia insists on a grounding with the masses against the elites. What then are the responsibilities of Caribbean intellectuals? I draw my definition/sense of the intellectual here from figures as diverse as Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, Claudia Jones and Audre Lorde. For the purposes of this essay I am twinning the thought of George Lamming and Walter Rodney – specifically Lamming’s succinct description of an intellectual as someone whose fundamental orientation is a life of the mind, . . .
organic intellecuals
Joe Biden and the ‘Passive Revolution’
Though it appears that Biden has pulled off a revival of centrism amid an ‘organic crisis’, his honeymoon period will be short-lived as there is a crisis of legitimacy of the ideas, institutions, and coalitions that undergird U.S. neoliberal capitalism. During moments like this, the ruling class may attempt what Gramsci called a ‘passive revolution’ – implementing symbolic or limited change from above without fundamentally transforming social relations – to restore its hegemony and stave off challenges to its position within society. Key parts of this process include the co-optation of demands from below, new political coalitions, paying lip service . . .