Preface

I vividly remember arriving at Sylvia Wynter's (then) home in Palo Alto, California, on the morning of 19 November 1999 (almost exactly sixteen years ago to the day I write this) to conduct my planned interview with her. 1 She greeted me at the door with an embracing smile of incalculable width and warmth and ushered me in to the living room where we would speak over the course of the next two days. It seemed to me such a familiar space, this living room-familiar in the elegant statement of its decor and furnishing, in its formal and subdued gaiety. There was a just-so character to it, as though everything had been carefully, deliberately chosen and arranged and now resided exactly where it had always belonged. And though we had never met before, Sylvia, too, was immediately recognizable to me, in her mannered sense of poise and propriety and solidity and decorum, mixed with an undercurrent of mischief and irreverence and an altogether wicked sense of humor. She projected a no-nonsense personality and a formidable intellectual presence that gave you to understand that the time you were now spending with her was of no trifling significance and should not be wasted. It is an experience of sheer intellectual adventure I will not soon forget. In every way, I have always thought, Sylvia Wynter is entirely-and precisely-what Rex Nettleford would have called (with all its Jamaican resonances and inflections) a "lady of quality."

Aggression · Agonistic behaviour · Art · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Latin American and Latino Studies · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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