Welcome, everyone, to the 2025 series of lectures in Caribbean Thought at the Jamaica Theological Seminary! Today, we embark on a critical journey, asking: Is there a paradigm to the study of Caribbean Thought or Caribbean Studies. Should there be one, akin to the Afrocentric Paradigm championed by scholars like Dr. Molefi Asante and Dr. Ama Mazama?These are not mere theoretical questions; they challenge the very core of how we understand ourselves as Caribbean people, our place in the world, and our trajectory for the future. While the answers may not be fully realized today, we will begin to explore them as we contend with the idea of a Caribbean that is unique to its people and place, yet constantly shaped by external forces adjudicating its future.The Origins of Caribbean ThoughtWhen the study of Caribbean Thought was first conceived, its aim was largely historical—tracing a trajectory from colonialism to the early 2000s. This timeline often emphasized resistance to imperial domination, the hybridization of culture, and the formation of Caribbean identity. But as our tools of critical analysis and historical understanding have developed, we've uncovered something unsettling:• Our history, as we know it, is limited—if not corrupted.• Much of what we think we know about Africa, the Caribbean, and even religion is a distortion.• The Caribbean itself, as an idea, is an invention—born from colonial economic imperatives, geopolitical interests, and a sociopolitical framework dictated by external powers.In this light, the Caribbean emerges as a hybrid creation, one shaped by the forces of colonialism, globalization, and a lingering supremacist mold. This mold continues to affect the fortunes of Caribbean nations and their people, as evidenced in contemporary global politics—the U.S.-China tensions over Jamaica or Russia’s actions in Eastern Europe. These dynamics highlight the persistent vulnerabilities of small nations in a world dominated by superpowers.The Invention of the CaribbeanIf the Caribbean is an invention, then we must interrogate the narratives handed down to us:• What is the Caribbean?• Is it merely a product of colonial extraction and hybridity?• Can it reclaim its agency by articulating its own paradigms of identity and thought?The answer lies in examining our cultural, historical, and spiritual foundations. Too often, the Caribbean has been defined against Africa, adopting European paradigms that denounce African spirituality and philosophies in favor of Eurocentric frameworks. These same frameworks perpetuated ideas of Africa—and by extension, Blackness—that are steeped in oppression, degradation, and dehumanization.To be Black in this logic is to be othered, associated with negativity, and subjected to oppression. But must we begin the history of the Caribbean from colonial trauma?Rethinking Caribbean ThoughtBorrowing from Afrocentrism, perhaps the solution is to begin, as Frantz Fanon suggested, with a tabula rasa—a blank slate. Yet, even as we acknowledge the damage wrought by colonialism, we must recognize that our history is not solely one of victimhood. It is also a history of triumph and resilience, stretching back to the civilizations of Kamit (ancient Egypt) and beyond.While the Afrocentric Paradigm centers Africa in the study of African peoples and their place in the world, Caribbean Thought must grapple with its own complex hybridity. It cannot simply adopt Afrocentricity wholesale but must instead forge its own epistemology and axiology—one that:• Recognizes the intersections of African, European, Asian, and Indigenous influences in the Caribbean experience.• Centers the Caribbean people's agency, starting not from oppression but from resistance and victory.• Seeks to reclaim a sense of identity that is neither derivative of Africa nor Europe but un...
