Ex-colonial intellectuals shaped the New Left and Cultural Studies from its origins

Evidence

Therefore, the first waves of African New World revolts were governed not by a critique of Western society but rather a total rejection of the experience of enslavement and racism. More intent on preserving a past than transforming Western society or overthrowing capitalism, they created maroon settlements, ran away, became outliers, and tried to find a way home, even if it meant death. However, with the advent of formal colonialism and the incorporation of Black labor into a more fully governed social structure, a more direct critique of the West and colonialism emerged—a revolt set on transforming social relations and revolutionizing Western society rather then reproducing African social life. The contradictions of colonialism produced the native bourgeoisie, more intimate with European life and thought, whose assigned task was to help rule. Trained to be junior partners in the colonial state, members of this bourgeoisie experienced both racism from Europeans and a deep sense of alienation from their native lives and cultures. Their contradictory role as victims of racial domination and tools in the empire, as Western educated elites feeling like aliens among the dominant society as well as among the masses, compelled some of these men and women to revolt, thus producing the radical Black intelligentsia. It is no accident that many of these radicals and scholars emerged both during the First World War, when they recognized the vulnerability of Western civilization, and the second world crisis—the international depression and the rise of fascism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 21 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The early New Left united postcolonial intellectuals with provincial British outsiders; Cultural Studies began as New Left politics sheltered inside the university — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 973; The New Left’s founders missed that black migration was a conjunctural break in Britain (+10 more)

Related

• Colonialism itself generated the radical intelligentsia that opposed it (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial contradictions produced the radical Black intelligentsia from the native bourgeoisie (similarity 0.86)
• Black radical historiography was founded by Western-educated Black petit-bourgeois intellectuals (similarity 0.86)
• Anticolonial struggles birthed a Black radical intelligentsia that critiqued and relocated socialist theory (similarity 0.82)
• Many colonial-period intellectuals stood outside the Western tradition. (similarity 0.81)
• Cultural Studies began as New Left politics sheltered inside the university (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial rule itself generated the nationalist intelligentsia that overthrew it (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial-era nationalists already turned European critical methods against their tutors (similarity 0.80)
• The new republic faced colonial dualism, illiteracy, and an unprepared elite (similarity 0.80)
• For displaced colonial intellectuals, the Left functioned as a substitute home (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial rule’s native strata produced a renegade nationalist intelligentsia #expands (0.80)
• Colonial contradictions produced the radical Black intelligentsia from the native bourgeoisie #expands (0.78) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 21
• Empire-created bilingual elites became the vanguard of colonial nationalism #expands (0.78)
• Bilingualism gave colonial intelligentsias access to modular models of nationalism #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 452
• Postcolonial thinkers had to deconstruct Eurocentric prejudices within Marxism itself #expands (0.75)
• Marxism shaped Cultural Studies by posing central questions even as practitioners worked against it #expands (0.74)
• Benignly invited feminism exposed unadmitted patriarchal power inside Cultural Studies #expands (0.72)