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The escalation of systematic, if random, violence in the contemporary world frames the concerns of the article, which seeks to read Baldwin for the present. It works by a measure of indirection, arriving at Baldwin after a detour which introduces Chinua Achebe. The Baldwin–Achebe relationship is familiar fare. However, here I explore not the shared congruence between their first novels, but rather focus on their later works, in which the reflexes of terror lie close to the surface. I use Achebe’s final novel, Anthills of the Savanah, as a way into Baldwin’s “difficult” last book, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, suggesting that both these works can speak directly to our own historical present. Both Baldwin and Achebe, I argue, chose to assume the role of witness to the evolving manifestations of catastrophe, which they came to believe enveloped the final years of their lives. In order to seek redemption they each determined to craft a prose—the product of a very particular historical conjuncture—which could bring out into the open the prevailing undercurrents of violence and terror.
. ( 1993 ), ‘ Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures) ’, Boundary 2 , 20 : 3 , 65 – 76 . Dussel , E. ( 2008 ), Twenty Theses on Politics ( Durham, NC : Duke University Press ). Grosfoguel , R. and Cervantes-Rodriguez , A. M. ( 2002 ), ‘ Introduction: Unthinking Twentieth-century Eurocentric Mythologies: Universal Knowledge, Decolonization, and Developmentalism ’, in Grosfoguel , R. and Cervantes-Rodriguez , A. M. (eds
Development, 1940s–1960s ’, in Smith , A. W. M. and Jeppesen , C. (eds), Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect ? ( London : UCL Press ) pp. 43 – 61 . Riley , C. L. ( 2019 ), ‘ Labour’s International Development Policy
Macmillan ). Kalter , C. ( 2016 ), The Discovery of the Third World: Decolonization and the Rise of the New Left in France, c.1950–1976 ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press ). Knoch , H. ( 2001 ), Die Tat als Bild: Fotografien des Holocaust in
approaches to democratization in Africa were largely subsumed under the closely interrelated perspectives of modernization and nationalism. The study of democratization arrived in the 1950s and 1960s as an accompaniment of decolonization, and in its most systematic and coherent form drew heavily on American political science. The study 138 AREAS of politics in Africa was discouraged during the colonial era. African peoples were regarded as backward, if not barbaric, and hence unsuited to the pursuit of ‘politics’ – conceived in terms of a civilized liberal ideal
Introduction The term ‘post-colonial’ proliferated rapidly in English and French starting in the 1950s, mirroring the acceleration of processes of decolonization. Down through the 1970s and 1980s, ‘post-colonial’ remained for the most part a relatively straightforward political periodizer. It named whatever institutional order followed the end of formal colonial rule – and by extension, the social and cultural forms that accompanied that institutional order. But starting in the 1980s, a second
In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
Bordering intimacy is a study of how borders and dominant forms of intimacy, such as family, are central to the governance of postcolonial states such as Britain. The book explores the connected history between contemporary border regimes and the policing of family with the role of borders under European and British empires. Building upon postcolonial, decolonial and black feminist theory, the investigation centres on how colonial bordering is remade in contemporary Britain through appeals to protect, sustain and make family life. Not only was family central to the making of colonial racism but claims to family continue to remake, shore up but also hide the organisation of racialised violence in liberal states. Drawing on historical investigations, the book investigates the continuity of colonial rule in numerous areas of contemporary government – family visa regimes, the policing of sham marriages, counterterror strategies, deprivation of citizenship, policing tactics, integration policy. In doing this, the book re-theorises how we think of the connection between liberal government, race, family, borders and empire. In using Britain as a case, this opens up further insights into the international/global circulations of liberal empire and its relationship to violence.
This book examines the relationship between environmental justice and citizen science, focusing on enduring issues and new challenges in a post-truth age. Debates over science, facts, and values have always been pivotal within environmental justice struggles. For decades, environmental justice activists have campaigned against the misuses of science, while at the same time engaging in community-led citizen science. However, post-truth politics has threatened science itself. This book makes the case for the importance of science, knowledge, and data that are produced by and for ordinary people living with environmental risks and hazards. The international, interdisciplinary contributions range from grassroots environmental justice struggles in American hog country and contaminated indigenous communities, to local environmental controversies in Spain and China, to questions about “knowledge justice,” citizenship, participation, and data in citizen science surrounding toxicity. The book features inspiring studies of community-based participatory environmental health and justice research; different ways of sensing, witnessing, and interpreting environmental injustice; political strategies for seeking environmental justice; and ways of expanding the concepts and forms of engagement of citizen science around the world. While the book will be of critical interest to specialists in social and environmental sciences, it will also be accessible to graduate and postgraduate audiences. More broadly, the book will appeal to members of the public interested in social justice issues, as well as community members who are thinking about participating in citizen science and activism. Toxic Truths includes distinguished contributing authors in the field of environmental justice, alongside cutting-edge research from emerging scholars and community activists.
larger effort to understand and use knowledge and its construction and co-construction in ways that are authentically linked to the struggles of everyday people for a better world. The global neo-liberal economic agenda that has produced a kind of market utopia has been supported by a canon of western, largely male, elite knowledge systems and practices. As the failure of the global market to close the gaps between the rich and poor or provide a platform for more democratic citizen engagement becomes clearer every day, we are thinking of ways to decolonize knowledge