Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation : Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair

Deborah A. Thomas uses the 2010 military and police incursion into the Kingston, Jamaica, Tivoli Gardens neighborhood as a point of departure for theorizing the roots of contemporary state violence in Jamaica and other post-plantation societies. In 2010, Jamaican police and military forces entered the West Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens to apprehend Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who had been ordered for extradition to the United States on gun and drug-running charges. By the time Coke was detained, somewhere between seventy-five and two hundred civilians had been killed. In Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation, Deborah A. Thomas uses the incursion as a point of departure for theorizing the roots of contemporary state violence in Jamaica and in post-plantation societies in general. Drawing on visual, oral historical, and colonial archives, Thomas traces the long-term legacies of the plantation system and how its governing logics continue to shape and replicate forms of violence. She places affect at the center of sovereignty to destabilize disembodied narratives of liberalism and progress and to raise questions about recognition, repair, and accountability. In tying theories of politics, colonialism, race, and affect together with Jamaica's history, Thomas presents a robust framework for understanding what it means to be human in the plantation's wake. "Political life in the wake of the plantation bears witness to the affective dimensions of post-plantation sovereignty at three moments in Jamaican history, culminating in the army invasion of the Tivoli Garden housing complex in 2010. Deborah Thomas, who has also produced a film interviewing witnesses to the events, describes how the succession of colonialism and liberalism in Jamaica have produced widespread paranoia and doubt, leaving a huge gap between the neoliberal state and its citizens. With a focus on the sensory, Thomas tracks the relationship between sovereignty and violence over time, advocating the development of new kinds of archives that can show how opposition moments are generated. Thomas's archives suggest new possibilities for understanding the centrality of affect to historical and material events."--Provided by publisher. Doubt Interlude I: Interrogating imperialism Expectancy Interlude II: Naming names Paranoia Coda: The end of the world as we know it.