On the Impossibility of All Possibility in Caribbean Theory

Silvio Torres-Saillant’s passionate defense of Caribbean intellectual traditions is far from being “an intellectual history of the Caribbean.” Nevertheless, this is an indispensable book, both for what it says and for the Antillean passion that drives the author’s argument, as well as for its silences, errors, and innumerable paths of deviation and reflection that it opens. The work is a truly Caribbean contraption, combining autobiography, philosophical argumentation, certain features of the political manifesto, and various modalities of criticism with a good deal of historical narrative and discursive inventiveness.