Mariners, Renegades and Castaways

A new edition of a major work of literary and cultural criticism restores C. L. R. James’s reflections about Moby Dick and political persecution.    Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist, and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901–89) was a brilliant polymath who was described by Edward Said as “a centrally important twentieth-century figure.” Through such landmark works as The Black Jacobins, Beyond a Boundary, and American Civilization, James’s thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a variety of fields.   In this complete edition of his seminal work of literary and cultural criticism, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, James anticipated many of the concerns and ideas that have shaped the contemporary fields of American and postcolonial studies. In this provocative study of Moby Dick in which he challenged the prevailing Americanist interpretation that opposed a “totalitarian” Ahab and a “democratic, American” Ishmael, James offers instead a vision of a factory-like Pequod whose “captain of industry” leads the crew to their doom. In addition to demonstrating how such an interpretation supported the United States’ emerging national security state, he also related the narrative of Moby Dick to his own persecuted position at the height of McCarthyism. It is precisely this personal, deeply original material that was excised from the first edition of this book.   With a new foreword by Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein—theoretical physicist, advocate for a just science, and James’s granddaughter—and an introduction by Professor Donald E. Pease at Dartmouth College that places the work in its critical and cultural context, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways is once again available in a new edition.

C. L. R. James was born in Trinidad in 1901 and moved to England in 1932. He was a leading Marxist theorist, a founder of the Pan-African movement, a cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, and the author of numerous books, including the influential history of the Haitian slave rebellion, The Black Jacobins. From 1938 to 1953 he lived in the United States, where he wrote, lectured, and organized for the Socialist Worker’s Party and cofounded the Johnson-Forest Tendency, a Marxist group. Arrested for “passport violations,” James was confined on Ellis Island, where he wrote Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways. Deported from the United States, he spent the rest of his life in England and Trinidad.