Today we explored the question of the question, to conduct a study of the Caribbean, where must we begin? This episode is a summary of Lecture 3 which was a five-hour long lecture. This the condensed version of Conceptualizing the course, Caribbean Thought. We ask, when we study the Caribbean Thought, including diverse currents that have shaped its present that speaks to a future, how far must we go back? Where must we start? The answer is a complex one because we stated in class that the Caribbean is an invention of the past which must now reinvent itself in the future if we are to surpass the challenges of the present. We say the Caribbean is uncompetitive stemming from a violent past that continues today through neoliberal Globalization. We did not explore neoliberal globalization but provided an understanding of Neoliberalism, Neo-capitalism &Capitalism. We explain Neoliberalism as a form of liberalism used within economics by capitalists to liberalize economies so as to penetrate thereby ensuring profit. We said that we will explore Neoliberalism in more detail later in relation to its effects on the Caribbean when we watch "Life and Debt" by Stephanie Black based on a book "A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid - a book about Antigua whose experience of structural adjustment and fight for prosperity resembles Jamaica's so that the film could take from the book and talk about Jamaica. This speaks to the symbiotic relation between the West Indies. We examined the processes of Colonization from the perspective of Fanon who defines colonization as involving a violence of depersonalization - stripping away the individual. We provided an academic answer/response to the question: Are "White-Collar in Jamaica a Crimes a result of Colonization"? And Why are crime rates so high in places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica? We suggested a Marxist materialist reply - "Relative Deprivation". What is Relative deprivation? We defined it as the correlation between high crime & high poverty and income inequality. Jamaica and the Caribbean suffers from high poverty and inequality correlated with the highest crime rates in the Caribbean. This is commensurate with what is happening is black and brown communities all over the world - hence supporting the conclusion/analysis of "relative deprivation". We pointed out that to study Caribbean Thought is to do philosophical inquiry which involves logic & Descartes phenomenology, who coined "cogito ergo sum" - I think therefore I am. He recognized the subjectivity of reality outside of objective verification. Further, we pushed the exploration of knowledge by discussing Kant who says that history is a result of human nature and circumstances, and questions Newtonian Physics which formed the basis of western civilization's understanding of reality. The Caribbean as part of a reality of western civilization is influenced by that bent. We reviewed the economic history of western society and capitalism stating that it is within a system that has impoverished or weakened the Caribbean States. We revisited Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations & Weber's Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism regarding the justification and economic principle behind Capitalism. However, we challenged the wealth of nations by invoking Karl Marx who critically re-examines Adam Smith's Accumulation of Capital idea, saying that it was not one in hard work but theft and violence. This then led us to consider the socio-economic/political interests of the Caribbean such as Michael Manley and Fidel Castro who were Nationalists influenced by Marxists critique of capitalism and his idea of Communism. Caribbean Political and literary thinkers were off-center and regarded as Democratic Socialists which had threatened American domination and penetration in the region to what they had believed had given way to socialist ideology. Read on at www.theneoliberal.com.
