Episode 1 with david scott
In this episode
Caroline Fowler engages former RAP fellow David Scott in a reflective conversation on generational consciousness, intellectual inheritance, and the shifting horizons of political and artistic imagination. What begins as an observation of a quiet rupture between senior scholars and emerging voices unfolds into a rich dialogue about the languages we inherit—and the ones we fail to share. Drawing on Scott’s formative experiences in post-independence Jamaica and his work founding the Caribbean journal of criticism Small Axe, the episode probes how different generations inhabit distinct temporalities shaped by hope, disillusionment, and the afterlives of historical transformation. This conversation invites listeners to reconsider what it means to belong to a generation, to inherit a past, and to imagine futures that remain, however tenuously, within reach.
David Scott is the Ruth and William Lubic Professor in the department of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of a number of books, including Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (2017) and Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History (2024). The founding editor of Small Axe, Scott is director of the Small Axe Project. In 2022, he was the lead curator of Pressure, the Kingston Biennial. He is currently at work on two book projects—the first is a biography of Stuart Hall; and the second is a reconsideration of the question of reparation and revolution through the work of Walter Rodney.