Groundings in Cuba

Abstract

This brief essay places Rodney in the context of the development of trans-Atlantic African Diaspora consciousness and culture, and the development of non-Western contingent Marxist theories from dependency to his underdevelopment thesis. Rodney’s biography and intellectual development are contextualized in their Caribbean, Latin American and Diasporic Black contexts, and in the context of Rodney’s engagement with people, pedagogy and political processes in Jamaica, Tanzania, London and Guyana. Specifics of his Cuban sojourns and evolving conceptions of the revolution, his work on a book while there, and his placement within Cuban research and broader Caribbean and Latin American tendencies are examined.