Freedom Time

Gary Wilder is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  He is the author of The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars.

"Freedom Time is an important book. It is also exceptionally scholarly and extremely readable. Such qualities rarely inhere in a single text. And they are rarely bundled into an analysis so passionate and timely that excavates past attempts at human emancipation in order to reveal new pathways into modernization."  - Massimiliano Tomba (Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology) "Rich, dense, and meticulously researched, Gary Wilder’s book offers nuanced critical reflections on the alternative landscapes of freedom proposed by AimÉ CÉsaire and LÉopold SÉdar Senghor." - Kaiama L. Glover (French Studies) "There is an important message here ... for a broad audience, and I sincerely hope that it reaches beyond French Studies, postcolonial, or colonial historical studies. Wilder observes that CÉsaire, SÉdar and their contemporaries in black Caribbean and African thought ‘are rarely included in general considerations of interwar philosophy or postwar social theory’ (9). What Freedom Time does most convincingly is to demonstrate that the social theory studied in European universities is weaker for this omission and that serious engagement with these thinkers is long overdue."  - Lucy Mayblin (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "[A] thoughtful and challenging work on the often maligned Negritude thinkers, poets, and politicians AimÉ CÉsaire and LÉopold Senghor."  - Brett A. Berliner (Callaloo) "[A] tremendous achievement in scope and originality. Readers who wish to think about the nation-state from a deeply historical and theoretically sophisticated perspective will be richly rewarded." - Anuja Bose (Africa Today) "Freedom Time is an engaging book that combines cultural anthropology, political theory and postcolonial theory and offers the reader a detailed intellectual history of Leopold Senghor and AimÉ CÉsaire between 1945 and 1960."  - Frank Gerits (European Review of History) "Gary Wilder’s Freedom Time constitutes an exciting and significant contribution to the field of nation and nationalism study in that he challenges the claim that decolonisation and self-determination can, and should, only lead to one form of state sovereignty: the nation-state." - Kristin Hissong (Nations and Nationalism) "Wilder provides us with a provocative retelling of the intellectual and political vision of two luminaries of the 20th century, and he does a great service by recasting our attention to these two authors to provoke reflection on the condition of nationhood and sovereignty in the 21st century. The text is always engaging and at times possesses a lyricism that echoes the poetics of CÉsaire and Senghor.... This book is a welcome addition, providing a substantial contribution to the field of francophone intellectual history." - Michael Lambert (Anthropological Quarterly) "Freedom Time is a dynamic treatise deftly upholding the Fanonian and Wynterian imperatives to navigate ongoing processes of decolonization and becoming Human betwixt and between the allure of emancipations masking as freedom." - Neil Roberts (Theory & Event) "Freedom Time is an impressive, inspiring, necessary work. . . . Wilder's lucid, sensitively textured and impressively well-researched book allows us to rethink the meaning of decolonisation and the conceptual nexus surrounding it." - Deborah Walker-Morrison (Cultural Studies Review) "Wilder’s reading of Senghor and CÉsaire is subtle and engaging, and challenges the idea that they were cynical – or naive." - Musab Younis (London Review of Books)

• Index 373Preface ixAcknowledgments xv1. Unthinking France, Rethinking Decolonization 12. Situating CÉsaire: Antillean Awakening and Global Redemption 173. Situating Senghor: African Hospitality and Human Solidarity 494. Freedom, Time, Territory 745. Departmentalization and the Spirit of Schoelcher 1066. Federalism and the Future of France 1337. Antillean Autonomy and the Legacy of Louverture 1678. African Socialism and the Fate of the World 2069. Decolonization and Postnational Democracy 241Chronology 261Notes 275Works Cited 333