An unformed map geographies of belonging between Africa and the Caribbean

"In An Unformed Map, Philip Janzen centers the complex and fragmented experiences of Black Caribbean colonial administrators who went to work in West and Central Africa and how their experiences there forced them to rethink their roles as individuals and as representatives of their homes and their relationships to the British and French colonial systems. As this study unfolds, Janzen also engages with the forms of colonial archives and the challenges of writing history across imperial boundaries. Unlike similar studies that center London and Paris as sites of cosmopolitan exchange and political germination, An Unformed Map looks past the colony-metropole hierarchy to consider diasporic exchanges, and in doing so, confronts the limitations that colonial archives impose on these forms of research. Thus, to engage with these figures who span Caribbean and African colonies without reproducing the logics of empire, the book takes inspiration from the fragmented islands of the Caribbean to experiment with a wide range of methods and narrative forms"--