“Anyone who desires black and Indigenous freedoms in the Americas must read <i>Beyond Constraint</i>. Shona N. Jackson’s deep regard for the black radical tradition results in a stunning reading practice that transforms the conceits of cherished radicalisms anchored in work into openings for a shared history of Indigenous and black labours to build futures outside of the time of capital and coloniality. Taking the reader through multiple middle/passages, spaces of relation, and processes of conversion, Jackson rigorously reconnects black and Indigenous labour in the Caribbean. I have been waiting a long time for this brilliant contribution that moves us closer to a horizon beyond work and its entrapments.” - Tiffany Lethabo King, author of (The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies) “<i>Beyond Constraint</i> is brilliant. In profound ways, Shona N. Jackson resolves the impasse that is often framed between black and Indigenous experiences of slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism, genocide, and elimination. She undoes and then reforms the conversation, repositioning and recuperating it where others in Afropessimism have announced a dead end. It is now impossible to think anything about blackness, Indigeneity, work, and labour without this book.” - Jodi A. Byrd, author of (The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism)
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxiii
Introduction 1
Part I: Labor, Work, and Middle/Passages
1. Conversion 41
2. Toward a Middle/Passage Methodology 83
Part II: Natively Rethinking the Caribbean Radical Tradition
3. Left Limits and Black Possibilities 125
4. Against the Grain 159
5. “Marxian and Not Marxian”: Centering Sylvia Wynter in the Radical Tradition 191
Part III: Rights and Representations
6. Work as Metaphor, Labor as Metonymy 235
Coda: The Ark of Black and Indigenous Labor 271
Notes 297
Bibliography 339
Index 357