Anthony Bogues - Empire of Liberty

BOTH THIS BOOK of essays and a platform to think and reflect aloud would not have been possible without the enormous generosity of Donald Pease. For a number of years we have been in dialogue about America. We have not agreed all the time, but Dons extraordinary insights always stimulate me to think again, even when I return to my original positions. Additionally, Dons broad and deep generosity, securely anchored in a rich conception of the life of the mind, has been a model in an academy driven by the marketization and banal professionalization of scholarship. Thank you, Don. Many ideas in these essays gestated in conversations with colleagues in the boundary 2 collective, particularly Ronald Judy, Paul Bov, Joe Buttigieg, and Hortense Spillers. Each of these colleagues has argued, agreed, or made objections known in different forums. For this I want to thank them. The other members of the boundary 2 collective have been an important intellectual source of criticism and support as I have stumbled through my efforts to understand America. The undergraduate students in my senior seminar class Race, Empire, and Modernity, in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University, have quizzed, pushed back, and opened new lines of inquiry. I thank all the students who have taken this seminar. Brown University is a special place for undergraduate education, and the participation of these students in the seminar added immensely to the lectures and subsequent essays. When the lectures were revised, I had a series of conversations with the novelist John Edgar Wideman, who teaches at Brown. Those conversations found their way into the final revisions. Every lecturer needs an audience, and I could not have found a better one than those brave souls who came to hear all four of these lectures in the spring of 2007. Their questions and comments pushed me to reformulate many of my ideas, lecture after lecture, so that the four lectures became a single conversation with the audience over the course of time. It was a most stimulating intellectual experience, and my warmest thanks go to all those who attended these four talks. I also express much appreciation to Geri Augusto, who commented critically on some of the ideas in this book. Thanks as well to Dawn Jackson, who, when the manuscript was finally revised, did the work necessary to make sure that it arrived at the publisher on time. I want to thank Richard Pult and Amanda Dupuis of UPNE for the care and professionalism with which they managed the production of this book. Appreciation also to David Chu for fine copyediting.

The person who inspired me to think afresh and to ask questions anew was my grandmother Imogene Tulloch. As a child I had spent a great deal of time with her in rural Jamaica. Born two generations after slavery, she taught me with unmatched love, generosity, and sensitivity that there was nothing more important in the world than freedom and that, if one understood this, the world would be a better place. Her influence remains at the core of my life in many ways. I cannot repay my debt to her for the lessons she taught with love and care. In the end, I am responsible for the final content of this book, but I dedicate it to her. This book is also dedicated to my granddaughter Malia, who was born as I completed the final revisions to these lectures.

Anthony Bogues
Providence
August 2009