Rationality and Afro-Caribbean Maroon Temporality Against Modern-Colonial Catastrophe and Annihilation

Abstract

Building on the research project that I have been developing around the ideas that ‘the future is already gone’ [el future ya fue] and ‘futurism’ a concept and movement that I borrowed from the Mayan peoples of Mesoamerica and the Canadian native peoples, respectively, this article returns to the question of alternative temporalities and rationalities vis-à-vis European modernity, specifically those of the diasporic African peoples of the Caribbean. Following Antonio Benítez Rojo (2019), I argue that the Caribbean is not an apocalyptic territory and that an aesthetic of pleasure defines us. My aim is to engage with the tradition of Caribbean thought to interpret and propose new readings of the practices and modes of life of local communities [comunidades populares] and descendants of maroonage in the eastern part of the island of Haití, commonly known as the Dominican Republic. From a perspective attentive to the interstices, fractures, and interruptions generated by the living memory of the ancestors and the worlds they contributed to shaping, I put forward an analysis centred on Black agency and its multiple forms of resistance to the attempt to negate both the subject who embodies it and the communities it sustains.