The Paradox of Freedom

The Paradox of Freedom is an exploration of the life and work of Orlando Patterson, probing the relationship between the circumstances of his life from their beginnings in rural Jamaica to the present and the complex development of his intellectual work. A novelist and historical sociologist with an orientation toward public engagement, Patterson exemplifies one way of being a Jamaican and Black Atlantic intellectual.

At the generative center of Patterson’s work has been a fundamental inquiry into the internal dynamics of slavery as a mode of social and existential domination. What is most provocatively significant in his work on slavery is the way it yields a paradoxical insight into the problem of freedom – namely, that freedom was born existentially and historically from the degradation and parasitic inhumanity of slavery and was as much the creation of the enslaved as of their enslavers.

The Paradox of Freedom elucidates the pathways by which Patterson has both uncovered the relationship between domination and freedom and engaged intellectually and publicly with the struggles for equality and decolonization among descendants of the enslaved. It will be of great interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences and to anyone interested in the work of one of the most important public intellectuals of our time.

INTRODUCTION: ORLANDO PATTERSON AND THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM’S BIRTH FROM SLAVERY

The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom

The Existential Birth of Freedom from Slavery

The Historical Birth of Freedom from Slavery

Dialogical Generations, Intellectual Traditions, and Problem-Spaces

Notes

THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM

A Mother’s Project

Years of Decolonization

Kingston College

University College of the West Indies

The Repairer of the Breach

The Rise of the Social Sciences

The London School of Economics

West Indian Fiction

The Children of Sisyphus

The Sociology of Slavery

The Caribbean Artists Movement

An Absence of Ruins

Returning Home

Not Much of a Joiner

Die the Long Day

Arrival at Harvard

Engaging Black America

Making Public Policy in Socialist Jamaica

Slavery and Social Death

The Paradox of Freedom

The Ordeal of Integration

Rituals of Blood

The Confounding Island

The Perspective of an Historical Sociologist

Notes

INDEX

"The Paradox of Freedom retraces the unique odyssey of the world's most eminent scholar of slavery and race in history, at the unlikely crossroads of Jamaica, literature, New Left politics, and sociology at Harvard. Read it: you will be swept along, thrilled, and educated all at once."
—Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley

"Forged in a crucible of life experience as a Jamaican, Orlando Patterson's lifelong exploration of the dialectical tension between freedom and slavery is brilliantly elucidated through dialogic conversation with David Scott, who traces the trajectory of a remarkable and still unfolding intellectual and artistic journey."
—John Bodel, Brown University

David Scott is Ruth and William Lubic Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.