Black Livingness After Disaster: The Caribbean’s Struggle Against Ecological Imperialism

Keston Perry
African American Studies
UC Los Angeles

“Black Livingness After Disaster” addresses the question: What does it mean to be human in the context of intersecting ecological, economic, and political disasters in the Caribbean? It presents a vision of radical humanism and Black livingness beyond the plantation system, its oppressive structures, ongoing ruinations, and manifestations that have bedeviled Caribbean communities. It stresses how communities resist current forms of unfreedom, dependence, and inhumanity perpetrated by unequal postwar global governance structures, development interventions, and climate finance solutions. These mechanisms together constitute what I call a crisis of ecological imperialism. The manuscript analyzes political, economic, and ecological crises facing these places which maintain racial and political hierarchies that contribute to uneven vulnerabilities. In addition, the manuscript critically scrutinizes current reparations proposals put forward by Caribbean governments, assesses global climate solutions, and considers the specific implications of intersecting disasters for radical humanism. This study employs Black livingness to center the cultural, ecological, and political struggles, practices, formations, and resistance of Caribbean communities. It provides novel analysis of reparations beyond simple forms of compensation and development projects to consider the relational and reparative practices of communities that fill important voids left by postcolonial development, postwar global governance structures, and international finance.