Is there anything such as “Caribbean Thought”? Thought is not “dinosaur-ish” or static, as it is dynamic and critical. Therefore, we are looking at diverse currents in the Caribbean including its diaspora that has shaped the present Caribbean experience and consider a future. Hence what of Caribbean thinking and minds. What have Caribbean thinkers contributed to this world order and what are they saying now especially in this neoliberal world that has been penetrated by Trumpism, populism and this renewed sense of indifference and revival of fascism.

Jamaica Theological Seminary

The special lectures in Caribbean and Pan-African Thought is delivered by Rev. Renaldo McKenzie (Prof.). The Lectures lead to an examination the students will have to sit to pass. The course and Lectures also aims to develop a Caribbean Thought Academic Journal. 

 

Image Excerpt Showing Students from the Jamaica Theological Seminary, Copied from www.jts.edu.jm

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This course will benefit the text book: “Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance and Neoliberal Globalization Reconsidered”. We will delve into the socio-political economy of the Caribbean and explore opportunities for development and growth, such as the advancements in science, digital technology and social media.

What are your thoughts on the idea of “Caribbean thinking” and how effective and #influencial is this thinking in shaping not just Caribbean life but life in the diaspora? What #contributions or #impact have thinkers of Caribbean thought impressed on past and current affairs on the #globalstage and will it bear any relevance for tomorrow given this regions level of #economicdependence. The course will be taught online via Ring Central/Zoom. You may Email the Professor, Rev. Renaldo C. McKenzie for a link invitation to view live lectures and recorded videos and Lecture materials. 

 

About the Lecturer

Rev. Renaldo C. McKenzie, was born in Jamaica and graduated from Jamaica Theological Seminary, ordained to the Ministry of Sacrament and Word in the United Church, and after Studying Philosophy briefly at the University of the West Indies, went on to the University of Pennsylvania. where he graduated with a Master of Arts and a Master of Philosophy. He is currently a US Citizen, residing in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and is Author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance an academic text which was number one on Amazon in Deconstructivist History and Critical Philosophy. The book was reviewed as an erudite analysis of Jamaica’s economic history by Kirkus Reviews. Renaldo’s second academic book, Neoliberal Globalization will be released February 2023 which features contributions from Professor Emeritus, Martin Oppenheimer, Ph.D. of University of Penn and Rutgers University and author of several ground-breaking books. Renaldo is a Doctoral Candidate at Georgetown University and Creator/Host of The Neoliberal Round Podcast, a global podcast in News Commentary that is top five worldwide in News Commentary. Renaldo is also President of The Neoliberal Corporation a think tank and Digital Media company

 
 

Latest Lecture:

A Special Lecture Marking Black History Month: Lecture 6: The Caribbean as Part of Black Americas History: From Arawak to Africans.

 

Caribbean and Pan African Thought Lecture Series by Prof. Renaldo McKenzie

 
Description: Lectures and Resources in Caribbean and Pan African Thought by Prof. Renaldo McKenzie, Professor at Jamaica Theological Seminary in Caribbean Thought and Theology, Author of Neoliberalism books 1 and 2. When we hear of Jamaica and the Caribbean, we think of beautiful islands of paradise with sun, sea, sand, and cannabis, and Irie people like Usain Bolt and Bob Marley living their best dreams, desires, and lives. But this course, like the book Neoliberalism, challenges this motif. Caribbean Thought is a 2200-level course offered at Jamaica Theological Seminary via the online platform. The course explores diverse currents that have come to define or shape the Caribbean. Further, we will consider Pan-African thought as part of the Caribbean experience, given the black position in the world. This forum is very academic and provides a critical analysis of history and philosophy.
 
 

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Here’s some Past Lectures:

 
 
  • Lecture Three, January 27, 2023: Caribbean Thought Week 3: Conceptualizing Caribbean Thought – when we study and reflect on Caribbean Thought, including diverse currents that have shaped its present that speaks to a future, how far must we go back? Where must we start?
 

 
Summary: Today we explored the question of the Caribbean in light of the conceptualization of the course, Caribbean Thought. We ask, when we study and reflect on Caribbean Thought, including diverse currents that have shaped its present that speaks to a future, how far must we go back? Where must we start? The answer is a complex one because we stated in class that the Caribbean is an invention of the past which must now reinvent itself in the future if we are to surpass the challenges of the present. We say the Caribbean is uncompetitive stemming from a violent past that continues today through neoliberal Globalization. We did not explore neoliberal globalization but provided an understanding of Neoliberalism, Neo-capitalism and Capitalism. We explain Neoliberalism as a form of liberalism used within economics by capitalists to liberalize economies so as to penetrate thereby ensuring profit. We said that we will explore Neoliberalism in more detail later in relation to its effects on the Caribbean when we watch “Life and Debt” by Stephanie Black based on a book “A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid – a book about Antigua whose experience of structural adjustment and fight for prosperity resembles Jamaica’s so that the film could take from the book and talk about Jamaica. This speaks to the symbiotic relation between the West Indies.

 

We examined the processes of Colonization from the perspective of Fanon who defines colonization as involving a violence of depersonalization – stripping away the individual. 

We provided an academic answer/response to the question: Are “White-Collar in Jamaica a Crimes a result of Colonization”? And why are crime rates so high in places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica? We suggested a Marxist materialist reply – “Relative Deprivation”. What is Relative deprivation? We defined it as the correlation between high crime and high poverty and income inequality. Jamaica and the Caribbean suffers from high poverty and inequality correlated with the highest crime rates in the Caribbean. This is commensurate with what is happening is black and brown communities all over the world – hence supporting the conclusion/analysis of “relative deprivation”. 

We pointed out that to study Caribbean Thought is to do philosophical inquiry which involves logic and reason and an understanding of Descartes phenomenology, who coined “cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am. He recognized the subjectivity of reality outside of objective verification. Further, we pushed the exploration of knowledge by discussing Kant who says that history is a result of human nature and circumstances, and questions Newtonian Physics which formed the basis of western civilization’s understanding of reality. The Caribbean as part of a reality of western civilization is influenced by that bent.

We reviewed the economic history of western society and capitalism stating that it is within a system that has impoverished or weakened the Caribbean States. We revisited Adam Smith Wealth of Nations and Max Weber Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism regarding the justification and economic principle behind Capitalism. However, we challenged the wealth of nations by invoking Karl Marx who critically re-examines Adam Smith’s Accumulation of Capital idea, saying that it was not one in hard work but theft and violence. This then led us to consider the socio-economic and political interests of the Caribbean such as Michael Manley and Fidel Castro who were Nationalists influenced by Marxists critique of capitalism and his idea of Communism.  Caribbean Political and literary thinkers were off-center and regarded as Democratic Socialists which had threatened American domination and penetration in the region to what they had believed was given way to socialist ideology. 

However, there are those who sided with the former masters who opposed the local socialists’ nationalists, such as Edward Seaga, regarded as the promoter of Reaganomics in the Caribbean. This tension between Michael Manley and Edward Seaga represented one of the most defining periods in Jamaica’s history, much like other countries in the Caribbean that suffered the same violent political fate, where Seaga, American Capitalism and Manley, Democratic Socialist, embodied the global tensions between the East and West. This has helped to exacerbate Jamaica’s problems of gang violence. Political corruption and the debt burden has deepened Jamaica’s economic outlook and globalization has not guaranteed any prosperity but left Jamaica and the Caribbean vulnerable. 

Yet we asked, is there a father of modern Caribbean economics?

Further, we explored solutions to the black position that is characteristic of the Caribbean peoples experienced, dense with a population of African descent, whatever that means. By looking at “Critical Race Theory” and what Black scholars such as Dana Berry White to re-invent and re-imagine the black and brown man. Moving from a Victim and defeatist approach to a hero approach, looking for the hero within the slave. Moreover, we challenged Edith Clarke and Rex Nettleford’s analysis of the Organizational Dynamics in some Jamaica rural communities. In “My mother who fathered me,” tried to explain their concubinage and illegitimacy as coming from an African heritage as if they know that Africans did not have family, a sense of monogamy and a structure. They provided an analysis learned from traditional sociology and functionalism that suggested that slaves were primitive and backward and that the behaviors of the Caribbean resemble and come from that. Yet the connections between cultures were disrupted and the idea of the individual became a dormant memory.  

We concluded by discussing the reading assignment:“The #negro is not. Any more than the #whiteman,” Frantz Fanon, in “Black Skin White Masks,” #psychoanalysis of the “colonized” (systematically controlled) man/woman, he removes the dominant view within comparisons, striving for the empowered self. According to Homi Bhabha, here the familiar alignment of colonial [controlled] subjects is disturbed by a break, a pause from the usual to reveal a truly authentic self. Homi Bhabha [1], The Location of Culture on Fanon. In addition, his use of the period after not proceeding the capitalized A represents an interruption and a break in standards of language. Fanon is deliberate when he uses language that deviates from center, where the subject does not agree with verbs and punctuations are misplaced as a violent attack and rebellion against the status quo. That was one way he promoted violence, in his literary genius.

When we hear of Jamaica or the Caribbean, we think of beautiful islands of paradise with sun, sea and sand, reggae music, cannabis, and “irie” people like Usain Bolt- people who are living out their best dreams, desires, and lives. But this book analyzes this motif, given the historical and current economic and political situation in Jamaica and the Caribbean and the “Global South.” In an attempt to escape the adverse realities of poverty, inequality, and injustice, the people of the Global South find themselves in north metropolises with very little agency and minimal change to their lives. In fact, except for the use of cleaning neoliberal waste, the immigrant is usually portrayed as an alien with three heads and big sharp teeth seeking to steal and destroy the profit and disrupt society. As such we will discuss Black, brown, and Pan-African struggles for economic prosperity, justice, and freedom and consider efforts, abilities, or inabilities to chart their own futures since decolonization and realize real political independence and economic prosperity. Perhaps, they are charting their own course by the few corrupt members of the status quo who are benefiting from partnerships with the neoliberal regime of the “Washington Consensus,” advocates of the “bureaucratic phenomenon,” while the masses are left behind…” Neoliberalism…Renaldo McKenzie

[1] Homi Bhabha has an affinity in and was influenced by critical thinkers who were off-center and epic or revolutionary in their thinking which had left these literatures on the fringes of academia. But Homi Bhabha has placed them front and center revealing their epic prose and positions. In fact, it was V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidadian Novelist who fascinated him the most with his way of bringing to the front of his novels as main characters, those who never usually occupy such spotlight in Literature. But in Naipaul’s world, they do and such is the Caribbean, “little but talawa” an indubitable set of people who creatively shape what life they have in heroic fashion. This was the genius and iconoclasts of Naipaul who I have come to admire through the reading of Bhabha.

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We developed three more questions from our reflections in light of our discussions today:

  1. How do you describe the socio-political economy of Jamaica and the Caribbean today?
  2. What apology can you provide to those who are pessimistic of change and hope believing that that’s the way it is.
  3. If the fallen can perceive anything better, what will upend violence?

Additional Resources and Activities for Personal Reflection.

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Weekly Assignment:

  1. Meet in your groups, identify a question from the question sheet that you’d like to reflect on at class. (See Lecture Notes with the sheet on page 2) Answer the question using critical thinking skills: What is Critical Thinking? – The NeoLiberal Corporation

2, Identify an issue in the news and provide an academic reply using academic jargon and language or prose. Situate it within the understanding of Critical Thinking and skepticism. Read this article to help you: (74) Privilege, Power, Position and the Need for Critical Thinking | LinkedIn

  1. Read Chapter One of: Norman Girvan. Reinterpreting the Caribbean, in New Caribbean Thought – Google Books University of The West indies. 2001. Chapter 3, Pp. 3 -23.

[1] What will end #violence, if the human mind can conceive of anything better. Yet, the violence done to the controlled mind doubting any reality beyond a fallen state, incapacitates his drive for utopia so that we’re fated to our doom negative #eschatology. What will End Violence? Boys Need for Positive Influences And The Monterey Park Massacre – The NeoLiberal Corporation

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Lecture Two, January 20Th, 2023: REFLECTIONS AND RESPONSE TO A QUESTION FROM A STUDENT IN CARIBBEAN THOUGHT ON CURRENT BEHAVIOR AND COLONIAL

Notes: This episode has been published and can be heard everywhere your podcast is available. I understand from the students in my Caribbean Thought Class at the Jamaica Theological Seminary that twelve million dollars was stolen from Usain Bolt’s account in a Jamaican Financial Institution; a case of the White-Collar Crimes. (Usain Bolt is the Jamaican-sprinting sensation who is a two-time world record holder at 100m and 200m distances/UsainBolt.com) A student from the class asked if the white-collar crimes occurring in Jamaica a result of colonization since we are studying Caribbean history, past present and exploring opportunities for the future. Therefore, as a class we reflected on this challenge in Jamaica and many Caribbean Countries in light of the broader issue colonization and the challenge of the Caribbean since decolonization and the presence of neoliberal globalization promoting neo-capitalistic attitudes of greed, nepotism and corruption. Below is a brief outline of the discussions which is part of a wider lecture on Conceptualizing the Caribbean Towards Developing a Caribbean Thought Academic Journal. REFLECTIONS AND RESPONSE TO A QUESTION FROM A STUDENT IN CARIBBEAN THOUGHT ON CURRENT BEHAVIOR AND COLONIAL PAST: Is the “White-Collar Crimes” [1] occurring in Jamaica where the rich are having their monies in banks stolen as a result of colonization? Many wealthy Jamaicans have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars leave their bank accounts, Usain Bolt lost $10, 000,000.00. Law Enforcement on the island is investigating but no one has been held responsible. This may seem to stem from a culture of corruption [2]. Yet, a student raised the issue in Caribbean Thought Class and asked, “does the behavior stem from Colonization?” Colonization meaning, the periods in the world’s history where Europe and the created privileged White Race engineered and successfully completed a systematic take-over, domination and control of the parts of the world and peoples – in Africa and the Americas. This involved what Fanon had called the depersonalization of the colonized (systematically controlled) man and woman so as to project all things within a European or Anglo-Saxon white supremacist milieu. The question is provocative and provides for a deeper reflection within academic thought that considers human nature, practices and the ultimate. We continue this on the podcast today which is available in video and audio. The entire article is available in The Neoliberal Journals at The Neoliberal Corporation’s Magazine at www.theneoliberal.com. Renaldo is a Lecturer at the Jamaica Theological Seminary, and author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance. Subscribe for free on any channel or stream and donate to us so that we can continue to provide this show at no cost – https://anchor.fm/theneoliberal.
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Weekly Assignment/s:
 
No assignment due at this time. However, please read a story and come prepared to talk about it academically.
I will send an update on assignments shortly.
 
For now, Read:
 
1.  “Wretched of the Earth” by Franz Fanon translated by Richard Philcox.
Read the section by Homi Bhaba:
 
2. Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance
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Lecture One, January 13th, 2023: Towards Developing A Caribbean Thought Academic Audio Journal: Caribbean Thought Lecture Series Part 1

Description: This begins the Lecture Series at the Jamaica Theological Seminary on Caribbean Thought: Towards Developing a Caribbean Thought Academic Audio Journal. This is a video episode uploaded from the class Zoom Recording as I am teaching the course via an online face-to-face module while here in Philadelphia USA. This course focuses on and explores the diverse currents of Caribbean Thought, which have influenced the development of Caribbean societies from colonialism to independence and beyond. It traces the history of resistance and examines the quest for equality and the challenge of defining Caribbean identity within this post-colonial and neoliberal Globalized world not just within the geographic sense but also in terms of a diasporic sense. It challenges the students to develop and express their own critical thinking as a Caribbean people within a unique way that helps to realize further the hope of a free independent Caribbean that is bursting with hope and opportunity. But the course understands that it requires that students begin to critique and explore their own thinking in deeply esoteric and critical way that deconstructs history and philosophy. At the end they will create their own Caribbean thought leading to a Caribbean Academic Journal of Young academics and future scholars. The Course will make you estranged from self, but it is geared towards getting you out of your bubble and to consider issues that will make you uncomfortable. The WES explored ways that we can prepare students for the global world. That means moving from the local and turning to the global as we are global citizens. The course surveys the history and philosophy of the Caribbean, the ways in which the Caribbean has emerged as a society in the shadow of colonialism and emergence of neoliberal Globalization. It examines the central ideological currents of twentieth century political thought in the region and covers broad topics such as Colonialism, Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Socialism, Marxism, Feminism, Democratic Socialism and Neo-Conservatism, Neoliberalism, Globalization and Deconstructivism, Critical Race Theory, Strategy and the Foundations of Knowledge and the Hegemony of Faith, Economic Inequality and Poverty. Among the thinkers that will be considered throughout the course are Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Franz Fanon, Homi Bhaba, Walter Rodney, Fidel Castro, Michael Manley, Edward Seaga, Bob Marley Kamau Brathwaite, Edouard Glissant and the Negritude movement generally, Homi Bhaba, Mike Davis, Nelson and Novella Keith, Stephanie Black and Jamaica KinCaid, Garrnett Roper, Rex Nettleford etc. Themes will be drawn from a selection of contemporary newspaper columnists, talk‐show hosts and the ideas behind the major international agencies and institutions, which have shaped post-independence policies. The selection of thinkers and social movements to be examined will vary with each semester. This is Part 1. 1. Introductions and Reflection on Life, Society and the Caribbean Within 2. (32) Privilege, Power, Position and the Need for Critical Thinking 3. Caribbean thought, Ideology and Philosophy (Foundations of Knowledge) 4. Orientalism and Occidentalism The class did not complete Part 1 of the Lesson Plan and will therefore continue with Lesson on Part 2.