Frigidity an Intellectual History

A cultural and intellectual balance-sheet of the twentieth century's age of revolutions

The first intellectual history of the Caribbean written by a top Caribbean studies scholar, this book examines both writings penned by natives of the region as well as a body of texts interpretive of the region produced by Western authors. Stressing the experiential and cultural particularity of the Caribbean, the study considers four major questions: What art, literature or thought can come from the minds of people who have undergone a catastrophic history? What makes the conceptual paradigms fashioned by the Western intellectual industry capable of illuminating the distinct experience of Antilleans, but not vice versa? Do Antilleans lack the intellectual history required for the interpretation of culture, whether in their region or elsewhere in the world? Why is the specificity of Caribbean humanity such that it cannot be used as a paradigm for humanity as a whole?

The study is an intellectual and comparative history of French, Spanish, and English missions to the native peoples of America in the seventeenth century, c. 1610–1690.

The field of international political economy gained prominence in the early 1970s–when the Arab oil embargo and other crises ended the postwar era of virtually unhindered economic growth in the United States and Europe–and today is an essential part of both political science and economics.