Creolizing Marcuse

(Hardback)

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Creolizing Marcuse bridges the gap between traditional interpretations of Herbert Marcuse and Caribbean/Africana theory. It challenges the rigid boundaries often found in Marcusean scholarship, especially those shaped by ideas of purity and scarcity, both historically and in current debates. Rather than simplifying Marcuses theory, this book embraces its complexity to offer new insights into contemporary discussions on freedom, reciprocity, liberation, oppression, repression, and object relations theory. Creolizing Marcuse moves beyond producing static theoretical frameworks, instead urging decolonial, anti-racist, feminist, and queer scholars to actively incorporate Marcuses ideas into evolving, practical approaches to difference and social justice. The book calls for theorists, activists, and scholar-activists alike to engage in ongoing, dynamic practices that resist standing still.

Contributors: Jake Bartholomew, Jina Fast, Stefan Gandler, Craig Leonard, Nicole K. Mayberry, Ricardo J. Millhouse, Yiamar Rivera-Matos, Sid Simpson, Dave Suell, Margath Walker, and Stacey-Ann Wilson.

Reviews

This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the role that critical theory should play in todays world. With a focus on Marcuse, the essays collected here engage the with Global South to radically refigure European critical theory. Creolization, taken as a deliberate and strategic blending of differing systems of thought and practice, is deployed to interrogate the vestiges of racism and coloniality in European critical theory. With incisive analyses offered from Black, feminist, and queer critical theorists and theories, and rooted in the Global South, these essays offer perspectives that put philosophy into concrete, political, public, and lived practices. -- Jacqueline M. Martinez, professor of communication, Arizona State University and president, Caribbean Philosophical Association
Creolizing Marcuse addresses the pressing need for a liberatory critical theory that is responsive to contemporary challenges. The book challenges the academic domestication of critical theory and revitalizes Marcuse, employing creolization as a method to disrupt and reconfigure the Western canona must-read for our times. -- Massimiliano Tomba, professor of the history of consciousness department, University of California, Santa Cruz

Author Bio

Jina Fast is the SHIFT professor of applied ethics and the common good at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

Nicole K. Mayberry is an assistant research professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.

Sid Simpson is assistant professor of politics at Sewanee, the University of the South, where he is also affiliated with Sewanees Integrated Program in the Environment and African and African American Studies Department.