What is the opposite of freedom? In Freedom as Marronage, Neil Roberts
answers this question with definitive force: slavery, and from there he
unveils powerful new insights on the human condition as it has been
understood between these poles. Crucial to his investigation is the
concept of marronage--a form of slave escape that was an important
aspect of Caribbean and Latin American slave systems. Examining this
overlooked phenomenon--one of action from slavery and toward freedom--he
deepens our understanding of freedom itself and the origin of our
political ideals.
Roberts examines the liminal and transitional space of slave escape in
order to develop a theory of freedom as marronage, which contends that
freedom is fundamentally located within this space--that it is a form of
perpetual flight. He engages a stunning variety of writers, including
Hannah Arendt, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Frederick Douglass,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the Rastafari, among others, to develop a
compelling lens through which to interpret the quandaries of slavery,
freedom, and politics that still confront us today. The result is a
sophisticated, interdisciplinary work that unsettles the ways we think
about freedom by always casting it in the light of its critical
opposite.
