Greg A. Graham - Democratic Political Tragedy in the Postcolony: The Tragedy of Postcoloniality in Michael Manleys Jamaica and Nelson Mandelas South Africa

In this tightly argued and fascinating study, Greg Graham seeks to explore and comprehend a certain narrative of disappointing outcomes and dreams deferred that has been the overwhelming pattern among newly independent countries of the South, or what Achille Mbembe appropriately terms the postcolony. Abandoning linear notions of progress which run counter to lived experiences, Graham instead draws significantly on left Hegelian dialectics, David Scotts reflections and Frantz Fanons notion of national consciousness to center tragedy as a critical conceptual tool with which to grasp these histories. His interlocutors are Michael Manley of the period of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica (19721980) and Nelson Mandela and his leadership in post-Apartheid South Africa. Both Manley and Mandela are situated as charismatic leaders who played central roles in processes of popular uplift and national regeneration, but who ultimately failed to fulfill their promises. The concurrent triumph of neo-liberalism is seen as both the failure of these leaders to sustain policies built on democratic foundations of marronage and national consciousness, as well as the effect of powerful international forces arrayed against them. Greg Graham, however, doesnt end his conversation at the moment of tragedy, but suggests that despite the overwhelming weight of the neo-liberal ascendancy, the experience of tragedy and its effects is, in dialectical fashion, a teaching moment, leading to fresh attempts at thinking through new projects based on freedom and democracy and scaling the parapets of seemingly unassailable power.

Brian Meeks, Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University

Greg Grahams Democratic Political Tragedy in the Postcolony is a brilliant and heartfelt attempt at theorizing, in terms of tragedy, the collapse of the epic aspirations of the mid-20th century anti-colonial movements as most were rolled over by the counter-revolutionary neoliberal strategies of global capitalism. It is a work that effectively poeticizes these historic struggles and historicizes their poetic foundations. A must read for postcolonial scholars and, particularly, those of Jamaica and South Africa.

Paget Henry, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Brown University

A virtue of this remarkable book is that it actually offers a theory, grounded in rich historical evidence, through which to understand the now clichd conclusion seemingly inevitable failure of former colonies of the global south. Provocatively creolizing the political thought of Hegel on tragedy through an examination of recent Africana political philosophical reflections on the same, Greg Graham materializes these ideas in this detailed study of two recent giants of resistance from the Caribbean and Southern AfricaMichael Manley and Nelson Mandelawho were ultimately constrained by neoliberal impositions, investments, and military force. The result is a powerfully written profound treatise not only of traditional political scientific concerns of leadership, power, and effective administrating but also of relationships between the ethical and the political, the meaning of political action, the shifting symbolic meaning of history, and notions of possibility and potential in social-political phenomenain short, necessary thought as humanity unfortunately continues to struggle through proverbially interesting times.

Lewis Gordon, Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Study and author of What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Study of His Life and Thought