Gowland, Ben (2021) The decolonial spatial politics of West Indian black power: praxis, theory and transnational exchange. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/82297/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Decolonial Spatial Politics of West Indian Black Power: Praxis, Theory and Transnational Exchange Ben Gowland Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) School of Geographical and Earth Sciences College of Science and Engineering University of Glasgow Abstract The 1960s and 1970s were tumultuous decades in the West Indies. In this period, many of the islands of this former British colony attained formal independence and with this national identity, international alignment, state and economic structure and national trajectory become objects of political contestation for the first time in fully free and democratic nation-states. It was in this field of social, political and cultural upheaval that a significant Black Power movement and ideology emerged in the later years of the 1960s. Emergent from growing popular dissatisfaction with the trajectories and construction of these newly independent states and rooted in longstanding and powerful currents of subaltern race consciousness and anti-colonial and anti-imperial resistance the West Indian Black Power movement represented a serious challenge to the region’s post-colonial states and governments. Black Power groups and actors across the Caribbean world would articulate a politics and vision radically divergent to that of the islands’ nationalist governments and the (neo)colonial powers that still held significant influence. Built upon extensive archival research in Britain and the Caribbean this thesis makes a series of significant theoretical claims. Firstly, utilising a theoretical framework that combines political geographical theory with the thought of Caribbean scholars I understand the period of my study as an historical problem- space constituted by and reflective of the multiple trajectories active at this time. Secondly, that West Indian Black Power represented a radical, decolonial historical-political trajectory divergent to that of the anti-colonial nationalisms of regional governments and the continued trajectory of (neo)colonialism. The West Indian Black Power movement thus inaugurated a spatial-politics in their present pre-figurative a desired decolonial vision for the region and its peoples. Finally, the geographies and regimes of repression deployed in opposition to the West Indian Black Power movement might be thought of as renewals of plantation spatialities and logics rooted in colonial racial ontologies and fears of independent, Black political organisation. i Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................... i Table of Contents .......................................................................... ii List of Figures ................................................................................ v Acknowledgements ......................................................................... vi Author’s Declaration ..................................................................... viii Abbreviations and Acronyms .............................................................. ix Chapter 1 Introduction: The West Indian Black Power Movement ................. 10 1.1 Setting the Stage: Black Power and Contested Visions of Independence .. 11 1.2 Previous Research .................................................................. 15 1.3 Thesis Outline ...................................................................... 21 Chapter 2 Multiple Trajectories in West Indian Problem-Space .................... 27 2.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 27 2.2 Narratives of Resistance and Revolutionary Temporality .................... 30 2.3 The Black Atlantic and Transatlantic Articulations of Black Power ........ 39 2.4 Geographies of the Plantation and White Supremacy ........................ 45 2.5 Technopolitics, Mobility and the Material Geographies of Security ........ 50 2.6 Conclusion ........................................................................... 57 Chapter 3 Archive and Counter-Archive: A Transnational Approach to the Study of West Indian Black Power .............................................................. 60 3.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 60 3.2 Considering Positionality .......................................................... 62 3.3 Theoretical Justification .......................................................... 67 3.3.1 The Black and Colonial Archive ............................................. 67 3.3.1.1 Multiple Trajectories in the Archive .................................. 67 3.3.1.2 Counter-Archives ......................................................... 72 3.3.2 Consolidating Propositions ................................................... 74 3.3.3 The Archival Text ............................................................. 77 3.4 Methods .............................................................................. 80 3.4.1 Overview of the Archives .................................................... 80 3.4.2 Methods in Practice and Methodological Contributions ................. 85 3.5 Conclusion ........................................................................... 91 Chapter 4 Black Power’s Opposition to Nationalist West Indian Politics: Antagonisms, Contestations and Alternative Visions of Independence ............ 93 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 93 4.2 Contested Trajectories of West Indian Decolonisation and Independence 94 4.2.1 Independence as a Moment of Rupture .................................... 94 4.2.2 “Briefcase Independence” and Roads not Taken ........................ 102 ii 4.2.3 Key Antagonisms in Black Power’s Opposition to West Indian Nationalist Governments ........................................................... 107 4.3 Creole Nationalism and its Racial Logics ...................................... 110 4.4 The Construction of Black Power as Subversive in the Post-Independence West Indies ............................................................................. 120 4.5 Conclusion .......................................................................... 129 Chapter 5 The Agitational Publication and its Role in West Indian Black Power Political Praxis and Spatial Imaginaries ............................................... 131 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 131 5.2 The Spatial Politics of Black Power Print Publication and Circulation .... 133 5.2.1 The Abeng Newspaper’s Editorial Structure ............................. 133 5.2.2 Domestic Circulation and Distribution .................................... 139 5.2.3 The Transnational Dimensions of a Black Power Print Production and Circulation ........................................................................... 147 5.3 Reading West Indian Black Power Spatial Imaginaries through International Reportage ............................................................................... 154 5.3.1 Caribbean Reporting ......................................................... 154 5.3.2 Reporting on the US ......................................................... 158 5.3.3 Reporting on the Global South ............................................. 165 5.4 Conclusion .......................................................................... 169 Chapter 6 Narratives of Resistance and Decolonial Futures at the First Regional International Black Power Conference, Bermuda 1969 ............................. 173 6.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 173 6.2 Positioning Bermuda in the Black world ....................................... 175 6.2.1 Bermuda’s Black Atlantic Geographies ................................... 176 6.2.2 Forging Decolonial Space ................................................... 179 6.3 A Spatial Politics of Bermudian Black Power .................................. 182 6.3.1 The First Regional International Black Power Conference, Bermuda 1969 ................................................................................... 182 6.3.2 Decolonial Futures ........................................................... 189 6.4 Conclusion .......................................................................... 193 Chapter 7 The Transnational Repression of Black Power in the Caribbean World .............................................................................................. 195 7.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 195 7.2 Technopolitics, Mobility and the Material Geographies of Security