C.L.R. James and the Genealogies of Socially Transformative Aesthetics

This essay analyses C.L.R. James’s thoughts on aesthetics as a valid source for a redefinition of the genealogies of socially transformative creative practices in the Americas. It argues that despite being highly relevant for the debates taking place in the context of the United States around the central decades of the twentieth century, James’s thoughts on aesthetics have been largely silenced, misinterpreted and relegated to the specific coordinates of the anticolonial moment. Without ignoring the context-sensitive origin of Jamesian thought, this essay positions the Trinidadian author’s writings on aesthetics as a powerful site for a radical redefinition of the possibilities and transformation of socially committed, collaborative aesthetics.