Celebrating C.L.R. James in Hackney, London

This book celebrates an important symbolic event for anti-racism in Britain - the 1985 renaming of the Dalston Library to the C.L.R. James Library. Behind the decision is an inspiring hidden history of resistance to racism. Features rare interviews and contributions from the activists who made it happen to describe a historic moment when black self-organisation, municipal socialism and anti-racist campaigning came together and won.

This book is accessible at Brixton Library, or you can purchase it from New Beacon Books.

Gaverne Bennett,
Christian Hogsbjerg

2015

We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture: Decolonising Essays 1967-1984

This book is strongly influenced by Marx, together with Black thinkers such as Aimé Césaire, Jean Price-Mars, W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, and with an appreciation of the insights brought by the New Studies of the Sixties (including that of Black feminism), Wynter's work has sought, from its beginnings, to find a comprehensive explanatory system able to integrate these knowledges born of struggle.

The book is accessible at the following libraries in London: The British Library in St. Pancras, the University of London Senate House Library, and Brixton Library.

Sylvia Wynter

2022

The Black Triangle: The People of the African Diaspora

The faces and setting in these powerful, and compelling photos exemplify both the different experiences and underlying unity of the black people whom colonisation and slavery distributed across the African diaspora.

This book is accessible at the following libraries in London: Plumstead Library and The British Library, St. Pancras.

Armet Francis

1985

The Hills of Hebron

The Hills of Hebron is the story of what happens to the New Believers after the death of their Black Messiah, Moses, who created the community in his own image. The Elder, Obadiah Brown, is denounced by Miss Gatha, widow of Prophet Moses. Obadiah has taken a vow to refrain from sleeping with his wife for a year and a month: now his beautiful young wife is pregnant. From the pulp he denies his guilt and calls upon the adulterer to confess, out of the crises that ensue Obadiah emerges with a new self-know-ledge and a belief that salvation lies in creative labour rather than the worship of an abstract God.

This book is accessible at the following libraries in London: Brixton Library and The British Library, St Pancras.

Sylvia Wynter

1984

⁠Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time

This book examines how Western photographic practice has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes, and demands that we recognise and disrupt the ingrained racist ideologies that have tainted photography since its inception in 1839. Decolonising the Camera trains Mark Sealy's sharp critical eye on the racial politics at work within photography, in the context of heated discussions around race and representation, the legacies of colonialism, and the importance of decolonising the university. Sealy analyses a series of images within and against the violent political reality of Western imperialism, and aims to extract new meanings and develop new ways of seeing that bring the Other into focus.

The book is accessible at the Stuart Hall Library, John Islip Street, London.

Mark Sealy

2019

Plot Work as an Artistic Praxis in Today's Cityscapes: An Introduction to the Lectorate Art & Spatial Praxis/The City

The thematic focus of Art & Spatial Praxis builds on Sylvia Wynter’s rich notion of the plot. With her conception of the plot, Wynter connects the historical enclosures of the plantation to today’s cityscapes. The plot stands for other possibilities that are always present. It represents possibilities rooted in different values and different social orders. This is to say, cityscapes and public spaces are relational, contingent and always contested. The plot challenges the forces of domination, appropriation, exploitation, commodification, gentrification, segregation, digitisation, and quantification.

Patricia de Vries

2023

WOMEN ON AEROPLANES Inflight Magazine #2

Women on Aeroplanes: Inflight Magazine #2 is a journey through the intricate and often hidden histories of women who shaped African and diasporic narratives. With a commitment to uncovering stories that traditional archives often overlook, this issue navigates the complexities of research itself. It explores how, in the search for untold histories, one can “get lost in accumulated information, stories, details, in between perspectives that all fall apart.”

This magazine is available in both physical and digital form via The Showroom, a not-for-profit contemporary art organisation in North-West London.

Annett Busch,
Marie-Hélène Gutberlet (Eds.)

2018