Gary Wilder's work delves into the complexities of the French imperial nation-state, exploring the intertwined concepts of Negritude and colonial humanism between the two World Wars. His writing offers a critical examination of how national identities were constructed within colonial frameworks. Wilder's anthropological perspective provides deep insights into the intellectual currents shaping both the colonizers and the colonized. His scholarship is recognized for its rigorous analysis and thoughtful exploration of historical power dynamics.
Through a critique of Left realism, culturalism, and pessimism from the standpoint of heterodox Marxism and Black radicalism, Gary Wilder insists that we place questions of solidarity and temporality at the center of Left political thinking. He makes a bold case for embracing a concrete utopian politics of the possible-impossible adequate to current planetary crises.
Providing a reading of Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor as political thinkers, Gary Wilder explains how these eminent anti-colonial thinkers, poets and political leaders sought to remake France by advocating for colonial self- determination and fuller racial and cultural integration within the French empire.
France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of fierce public debate. This book focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics - colonial humanism, led by administrative reformers in West Africa, and the Paris-based Negritude project.