TRACING THE PROPHET OF SELF-EMANCIPATION: A life-geography of Walter Rodney's Marxist thought and activism (1942-1980)

我的论文将研究马克思主义对非洲裔圭亚那历史学家沃尔特·罗德尼（1942-1980）的政治思想和行动主义的影响。它将修改以前对他的生活的解释，这些解释低估了他的马克思主义思想，有利于他的泛非主义和黑人民族主义。这样做，它将质疑一些后殖民学者将马克思主义视为欧洲中心主义意识形态的倾向，这种意识形态植根于殖民偏见，只与欧洲有关。我对罗德尼生平的重建将为传记作为一种历史地理学方法开辟道路。罗德尼去世后，学者们对他的贡献做出了支离破碎的评估。佩恩（Payne，1983）在1968年将罗德尼作为牙买加黑人力量的发言人进行了研究。布莱（Bly，1985年）着重于他对尼雷尔非洲社会主义的回应，而吉本斯（Gibbons，2012年）则分析了他在1970年代在圭亚那的反独裁活动。学者们把罗德尼在一个地方持有的观点称为泛非主义者或黑人民族主义者。然而，他们忽略了罗德尼在他生命的最后几年把自己描述成一个“马克思列宁主义者”（Kwayana，1988）。我的研究将是自刘易斯的传记（1998年）以来第一次结合罗德尼在非洲和美洲的整个实践，其中强调了他对泛非主义的贡献。正如刘易斯在他的工作中所做的那样，我将研究罗德尼的著作及其影响。然而，我将以罗德尼的方式来考察他是如何通过与马克思主义的接触来塑造自己的政治的。我还将使用更广泛的档案来源和半结构化的采访，以占空间，运动和网络时，分析罗德尼的政治发展。我计划在亚特兰大的伍德拉夫图书馆、伦敦大都会档案馆以及达累斯萨拉姆和乔治敦的国家图书馆查阅有关罗德尼的资料。我将按时间顺序整理资料，以绘制罗德尼的旅程，并选择他发展马克思主义实践的地方。我将采访在非洲、欧洲和美洲认识罗德尼的人，记录他们对罗德尼思想和行动主义的记忆。我的论文将提供对马克思主义与殖民地经历之间关系的重要见解，以及关于马克思主义在全球南方应用的持续辩论：（1）工人阶级和知识分子的身份和作用，（2）自上而下的社会主义之争，（3）种族与阶级的关系。最后，它将鼓励积极分子在运动中去殖民化学术界和黑人生活的问题，以参与罗德尼的想法时，讨论种族和阶级。

My thesis will examine the influence of Marxism on the political thought and activism of the Afro-Guyanese historian Walter Rodney (1942-1980). It will revise prior interpretations of his life, which have understated his Marxist ideas to favour his Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism. In so doing, it will question a tendency among some scholars of the postcolonial to consider Marxism as a Eurocentric ideology, entrenched in colonial prejudices and relevant only to Europe. My reconstruction of Rodney's life will open avenues for biographies as a historical geographical methodology.After Rodney died, scholars produced fragmented assessments of his contributions. Payne (1983) examined Rodney as the spokesperson for Jamaican Black Power in 1968. Bly (1985) focused on his responses to Nyerere's African socialism, while Gibbons (2012) analysed his anti-dictatorial activism in Guyana in the 1970s. Privileging the ideas Rodney held in one location over another, scholars labelled him a Pan-Africanist or a Black Nationalist. However, they overlooked that Rodney described himself as a "Marxist-Leninist" in his final years (Kwayana, 1988). My research will be the first to bind Rodney's entire praxis in Africa and the Americas since Lewis' biography (1998), which emphasised his contributions to Pan-Africanism.As Lewis did in his work, I will study Rodney's writings and the influences therein. However, I will take Rodney on his terms to examine how he shaped his politics through his engagement with Marxism. I will also use broader archival sources and semi-structured interviews to account for space, movement and networks when analysing Rodney's political development. I plan to consult sources on Rodney in Atlanta's Woodruff Library, the London Metropolitan Archives and the national libraries of Dar es-Salaam and Georgetown. I will organise sources chronologically to map Rodney's journey and select the places where he developed his Marxist praxis. I will interview the people who knew Rodney in Africa, Europe and the Americas to record their memories of his thoughts and activism.My thesis will provide significant insight into the relationship between Marxism and the experience of colonised subjects, and on-going debates on the application of Marxism in the Global South: (1) the identity and role of the working class and the intelligentsia, (2) the debate of socialism from above versus from below, and (3) the relationship between race and class. Finally, it will encourage activists in the movement to decolonise academia and Black Lives Matter to engage with Rodney's ideas when discussing race and class.