ABSTRACT
This paper maps developments in skateboarding in Jamaica in terms of commoning a postcapitalist future. It begins by conceptualising Jamaica’s colonial and postcolonial development as ‘catastrophic capitalism’ by matching structural adjustment programmes of the Washington Consensus to Isabelle Stengers’ notion of catastrophe. Emerging trends in skateboarding are viewed within an Afrofuturist lens arguing the co-option of skateboarding as a symbol of modernity contests Western dominated homologies of sports, technology and race. These themes are explored relative to the construction of The Gully DIY conceptualised as an urban common. Utilising postcapitalist methodologies embedded within DIY practice, The Gully is seen as a site that prefigured skateboarding as a potent social tool in Jamaica. The Freedom Skatepark is then examined as an assemblage of cross-cultural collaborators between Jamaican skateboarding community and international NGOs in Flipping Youth and Concrete Jungle Foundation. Participatory development is conceptualised as community-commoning whereby notions of cosmopolitics offer insights into postcapitalist futures underpinned by transnational solidarity and collectives. The paper contributes to understandings of skateboarding and commoning within postcolonial thought whilst outlining the possibilities and shortcomings of community-commoning as postcapitalist practice.
