Podcast appearances and mentions of gary wilder

Listen in as I speak to Gary Wilder on his generation of scholars and their disavowal of class analysis.   Gary Wilder is a Professor in the Ph.D. Program of Anthropology, with cross-appointments in History and French, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is also Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. Wilder's work on the French empire, Francophone West Africa and the Caribbean, and Black Atlantic social thought is located at the intersection of historical anthropology, intellectual history, and critical theory (with special emphasis on Marxism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism).

Connect with Dr. Wilder: http://www.directionalmoments.com/ Buy Courses at https://bit.ly/firsttriptoAfrica --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/diversifiedgame/message

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How did the Cold War shape culture and political power in decolonizing countries and give rise to authoritarian regimes in the so-called free world? Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization (Fordham UP, 2021) tells a new story about the Cold War and the global shift from colonialism to independent nation-states. Assembling a body of transpacific cultural works that speak to this historical conjuncture, Jini Kim Watson reveals autocracy to be not a deficient form of liberal democracy, but rather the result of Cold War entanglements with decolonization. Focusing on East and Southeast Asia, the book scrutinizes cultural texts ranging from dissident poetry, fiction, and writers' conference proceedings of the Cold War period, to more recent literature, graphic novels, and films that retrospectively look back to these decades with a critical eye. Paying particular attention to anti-communist repression and state infrastructures of violence, the book provides a richaccount of several U.S.–allied Cold War regimes in the Asia Pacific, including the South Korean military dictatorship, Marcos' rule in the Philippines, illiberal Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, and Suharto's Indonesia. Watson's book argues that the cultural forms and narrative techniques that emerged from the Cold War-decolonizing matrix offer new ways of comprehending these histories and connecting them to our present. The book advances our understanding of the global reverberations of the Cold War and its enduring influence on cultural and political formations in the Asia Pacific. Cold War Reckonings earned Honorable Mention for the 2022 René Wellek Prize. Jini Kim Watson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of The New Asian City: Three-dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form and editor, with Gary Wilder, of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present. Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/korean-studies

Kim speaks with Jini Kim Watson about decolonization. In the episode she quotes John Kelly and Martha Kaplan's book Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization, University of Chicago Press, 2001. She also references Odd Arne Westad's book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge UP: 2005; Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Culture, Currey, 1986; Lorenzo Veracini's work on settler colonialism and decolonization; and Patrick Wolfe's argument that invasion and colonialism is not an event, but a structure. To learn more about the “opening” at the moment of decolonization after WW2; she suggests you consult Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, Duke UP, 2015. Jini teaches in the English Department at NYU. Her book on decolonization in the Cold War, Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization is forthcoming from Fordham University Press. This week's image is a 1942 proposed map for a New World Order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Kim speaks with Jini Kim Watson about decolonization. In the episode she quotes John Kelly and Martha Kaplan's book Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization, University of Chicago Press, 2001. She also references Odd Arne Westad's book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge UP: 2005; Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Culture, Currey, 1986; Lorenzo Veracini's work on settler colonialism and decolonization; and Patrick Wolfe's argument that invasion and colonialism is not an event, but a structure. To learn more about the “opening” at the moment of decolonization after WW2; she suggests you consult Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, Duke UP, 2015. Jini teaches in the English Department at NYU. Her book on decolonization in the Cold War, Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization is forthcoming from Fordham University Press. This week's image is a 1942 proposed map for a New World Order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim speaks with Jini Kim Watson about decolonization. In the episode she quotes John Kelly and Martha Kaplan's book Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization, University of Chicago Press, 2001. She also references Odd Arne Westad's book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge UP: 2005; Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Culture, Currey, 1986; Lorenzo Veracini's work on settler colonialism and decolonization; and Patrick Wolfe's argument that invasion and colonialism is not an event, but a structure. To learn more about the “opening” at the moment of decolonization after WW2; she suggests you consult Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, Duke UP, 2015. Jini teaches in the English Department at NYU. Her book on decolonization in the Cold War, Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization is forthcoming from Fordham University Press. This week's image is a 1942 proposed map for a New World Order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Kim speaks with Jini Kim Watson about decolonization. In the episode she quotes John Kelly and Martha Kaplan's book Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization, University of Chicago Press, 2001. She also references Odd Arne Westad's book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge UP: 2005; Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Culture, Currey, 1986; Lorenzo Veracini's work on settler colonialism and decolonization; and Patrick Wolfe's argument that invasion and colonialism is not an event, but a structure. To learn more about the “opening” at the moment of decolonization after WW2; she suggests you consult Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, Duke UP, 2015. Jini teaches in the English Department at NYU. Her book on decolonization in the Cold War, Cold War Reckonings: Authoritarianism and the Genres of Decolonization is forthcoming from Fordham University Press. This week's image is a 1942 proposed map for a New World Order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

Disha Karnad Jani interviews Ethan Kleinberg, Joan Wallach Scott, and Gary Wilder about their Theses on Theory and History.

Introduced by Oz Frankel, Joan Wallach Scott and Gary Wilder discuss “Theses on Theory and History" at the New School on October 8, 2018.

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Wilder‘s new book, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) builds upon the work he began in The French Imperial Nation State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Freedom Time considers the politics and poetics of Aimee Casaire and Leopold Senghor during the period 1945-1960, “thinking with” and “working through” the ways these figures anticipated a post-imperial world. The book explores notions of liberation and temporality, considering the alternatives to nationalism and the nation-state that these thinkers imagined as they looked forward to a more democratic, autonomous future on the other side of colonialism. While The French Imperial Nation State asked readers to “rethink France,” the project here is, in the author’s own words, to “unthink France”. Indeed, France, decolonization, and even liberation itself, are all interrogated in this work, as they were by the authors who are at the center of the project. Freedom Time is a book that takes seriously the futures envisioned by Casaire and Senghor, situating their projects historically and intellectually within contexts French and global, and considering the implications of their thought for a contemporary world still troubled by profound inequalities. It is an important book for those interested in the most urgent political questions, and in the problems and promises of freedoms past, present, and future. At the beginning of our interview, Gary mentions a video link I sent him before we spoke. It is a video of Lauryn Hill performing “Freedom Time,” a wonderful song that I was reminded of by this wonderful book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices