Walter Rodney and the Restatement of Pan-Africanism in Theory and Practice

This chapter examines the pan-African thought of Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney. Rodney came of age politically during a period of ferment in the Caribbean, amid the search for an alternative to the emergent neocolonial order. He found this alternative in a pan-African revolutionary thought and consciousness, grounded in rigorous Marxist analysis, which he viewed as tool of political, economic, cultural, and psychological liberation from the grip of dependency. Out of his original commitment to the people if the Caribbean, he first became aware of Africa and became a participant in its struggle for liberation. And out of his commitment to the struggle of the Guyanese people, he discovered a new basis for the continuing relationship between the Caribbean and African struggles. Moving through successive stages of pan-African consciousness, Walter Rodney etched out through his life and thought a living legacy of the theory and practice of Africanism in his time.