| Abstract: | This paper presents Rastafari Experience in Jamaica as one of the first cultural studies projects. This cultural studies project is located as originating in the 1930s in Kingston and in 1960 within the University College of the West Indies. It is argued that the Rastafari approach was demonstrative of a faculty of cultural studies at work – its members being drawn from a folk scholastic tradition originating from before the Haitian Revolution in 1791. It views the emergence of the Movement in Jamaica, as drawing on a multidisciplinary/trans-disciplinary approach towards the work of engagement and social re-interpretation of Jamaican ‘colonized society’. Poverty (lab) Oratory is thus a reading of the historical framework of the indigenous cultural studies project tracing the ‘process of institutionalization’ in the way Mato views this as the net effect of the English speaking intellectual cultural studies project. It concludes by examining what can be rightfully considered the ‘University’ in light of the role and place of the critical scholastic tradition brought by the folk leadership, in particular, Rastafari. |
