Towards a Decolonial Caribbean Reparations Movement

This dissertation seeks to establish a decolonial framework for Caribbean reparations that is located in the Black radical tradition. It critically examines the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) reparations campaign and proposes an alternative approach that embodies, explores, and revolves around everyday people—not the ruling elites—as the nucleus of decolonization processes that engage critically with a global and capitalist economic system. I argue that reparatory justice must take place on different levels—that is, internally (the liberation of the formerly enslaved and colonized body) and externally (society’s socioeconomic and political elements). To support this argument, I put Frantz Fanon’s (concept of a “new humanity” and Sylvia Wynter’s notion of “genres of man” in conversation with Robin Kelley’s nine theses of decolonization and Walter Rodney’s decolonial praxis of “groundings.” I propose the theory of Rastafari livity as a cartography to articulate the possibilities of internal and external liberation, which can inform the reparations campaign. Moreover, to illustrate the significance of arts and culture in creating transformative praxes, I explore how Rastafari as a social movement impacted Jamaican society from the 1960s to the 1970s; the project underlines the centrality of reggae in that process by examining the music of Bob Marley. I further extend my argument by addressing the legal framing of the reparations campaign through my application of Third World approaches to international law as a decolonial method. To engage civil society in the discourse of reparations, I argue for the movement to have a robust youth-led component since young people make up more than 50% of the Caribbean population and are the primary producers of contemporary culture in the region.