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Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral (NEw & Expanded edtion)
“Never has it been more certain that our victory depends principally on our own actions. Tell no lies, claim no easy victories . . .” —Amílcar Cabral On the centennial of Amílcar Cabral’s birth, and fifty years after his passing, Claim No Easy Victories brings to life the resonance of his thought for today’s freedom movements. World-renowned revolutionary, poet, liberation philosopher, and leader of the anticolonial independence movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Amílcar Cabral’s legacy stretches well beyond the shores of West Africa. His profound influence on the pan-Africanist movement and the Black liberation movement in the United States and the English-speaking world spans the ages—and is only growing in an era of renewed anti-imperialist internationalist struggle. In this unique collection of essays, radical thinkers from across Africa, the United States, and internationally commemorate Cabral’s life and legacy and his relevance to contemporary struggles for self-determination and emancipation. Claim No Easy Victories serves equally as an introduction or reintroduction to a figure and militant history that the rulers and beneficiaries of global racial capitalism would rather see forgotten. Understanding Cabral then and now sheds light on the necessity of grounding radical change in the creation of theory based on the actual conditions within which movements develop. The depth and dimension of Cabral’s theoretical ideas and revolutionary practice of building popular movements for liberation are assessed by each of the authors and critically reanimated for a new generation of freedom fighters. The book features contributions by: Kali Akuno, Samir Amin, David Austin, Jesse Benjamin, Angela Davis, Bill Fletcher Jr, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Lewis Gordon, Firoze Manji, Asha Rodney, Patricia Rodney, Olúfémi Táíwò—and others.
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Les héros de la révolution africaine
Nous avons réalisé ce livre de coloriage afin d’exposer les enfants africains à leur histoire authentique. Malcolm X nous a dit il y a plusieurs décennies que nous devrons être responsable de l’éducation de nos enfants. Il avait compris que notre peuple est intentionnellement dépossédé de sa véritable histoire. Nous ne pouvons plus compter sur les institutions pour éduquer nos enfants et nous devrons prendre sur nous la responsabilité de leur transmettre la vérité afin qu’ils puissent apporter une contribution positive à la lutte de notre peuple pour la justice et la liberté. Ce livre met en lumière quelques-unes des figures clés de la lutte pour le panafricanisme, c’est-à-dire la libération et l’unification totales de l’Afrique. Toutes les femmes et tous les hommes courageux présents dans ce livre étaient des panafricanistes. Ils ont compris que les personnes descendantes africaines du monde entier étaient confrontées aux mêmes problèmes et qu’elles devaient donc s’unir pour les surmonter. Nous espérons que ce livre inspirera la prochaine génération d’enfants africains à devenir des panafricanistes et à se joindre à la lutte pour la libération et l’unification de l’Afrique.
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Beyond the Internet: Radical Voices of Dissent
The title of our book is open to multiple interpretations, and purposely so, with the deliberate insertion of ‘beyond.’
For example, on a philosophical level, the word beyond means to examine the metaphysical character of the relationship between the Internet and dissenting voices. This isn’t abstract, because metaphysics is based on searching for the nature of reality, identity, of understanding causality, theorizing time and space.
So, the ‘nature of reality’ is to examine the relationship between the Internet and Dissent, which then allows us to understand ‘causality’. ‘Identity’ speaks for itself, and ‘time and space’, for example, is central to many indigenous peoples’ thinking in Latin America with regards to ancestral issues, colonialism, and relations with nature.
It also includes issues concerning potentialities (dissent and activism), which connects to our central question: What is the relationship between the Internet and dissent?
On a concrete level, we know that the relationship between technology and resistance differs according to the context of each struggle. Many resistance groups and individual dissenting voices embrace the Internet, whilst others do not, and this is what we are seeking to explore and understand.
The perfect dream of technolibertarians or cyberlibertarians that the Internet would enhance freedoms, free from state authority, is over, if ever it had begun.
In many cases, the Internet has become a form of State surveillance over the activities and thoughts of political activists forcing groups to move ‘offline’, or to use old fashioned terminology, ‘take to the streets.’
But conversely, many dissenting voices embrace the Internet and social media, and it’s our purpose to explore the uses the Internet may or may not have in specific contexts.
Thus, our aim is to listen to the voices of those at the sharp end of resistance, and to inquire what role, the Internet plays, in their respective forms of resistance.
CONTENTS
When Radicalism Becomes Dissent (David Berry)
The Internet & Dissent (David Berry)
The Cheran Insurrection: Peoples’ Grassroots Democracy (Victor Alfonzo Zerthuche Cobos)
Kurdish Resistance & Homeland (Name Pending)
New Weapons of Resistance in the Amazon (Sue Branford & Mauricio Torres)
Burmese Guerilla Warfare, Technology & Identity (Maran Ja Yi Ma)
Struggles for Nationhood: Comparing the Mapuche of Chile & the Welsh (Franco Ramos Guiterez & David Berry)
In Conversation with Caoimhghin O’ Croidheain: Radical Irish Artist (Iglika Gerganova)
An Interview with Iranian Artist Roshi Rouzbehani (David Berry)
Defenders of the Land: The Colombian Minga (Valentina Murillo)
Grassroots Journalism in India: the story behind Khabar Lahariya (Rosa Sylvia Parks)When Radicalism Becomes Dissent (David Berry)
The Internet & Dissent (David Berry)
The Cheran Insurrection: Peoples’ Grassroots Democracy (Victor Alfonzo Zerthuche Cobos)
Kurdish Resistance & Homeland (Name Pending)
New Weapons of Resistance in the Amazon (Sue Branford & Mauricio Torres)
Burmese Guerilla Warfare, Technology & Identity (Maran Ja Yi Ma)
Struggles for Nationhood: Comparing the Mapuche of Chile & the Welsh (Franco Ramos Guiterez & David Berry)
In Conversation with Caoimhghin O’ Croidheain: Radical Irish Artist (Iglika Gerganova)
An Interview with Iranian Artist Roshi Rouzbehani (David Berry)
Defenders of the Land: The Colombian Minga (Valentina Murillo)
Grassroots Journalism in India: the story behind Khabar Lahariya (Rosa Sylvia Parks) -
Lines of Fire: Poetry of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Movement
“It is unclear when ‘Lotus’, a literary magazine of progressive Afro-Asian writers largely funded by the USSR, published its last issue after a successful run spanning two decades (1968-1991); but it was certainly a voice of the Palestinian people.
Professor Tariq Mehmood Ali teaches English at the American University of Beirut and is an award-winning novelist and a documentary filmmaker. A few years ago, he launched a project to restore the magazine’s legacy. The project involves curating, saving, preserving, and digitizing old issues, offering historical depth to the Palestine movement and potentially making the magazine accessible to a new generation of readers from Palestine and the rest of the Global South.
“‘Lotus’ resolutely opposed Zionism, seeing it as a racist tool of imperialism,” says Prof Ali, who has pored over innumerable issues of the magazine. He suggests that Palestinians would not have had such a raw deal if the publication was still in circulation.
‘Lotus’ championed the cause of the Palestinian Liberation Operation (PLO) and even passed a resolution on Palestine at its third Afro-Asian conference held in Beirut (1970-71). These and other details find mention in Prof Ali’s book ‘Afro-Asian Poetry that Changed the World’, scheduled for a spring 2024 release.
‘Lotus’ was a trilingual quarterly magazine published in Arabic, English and French – and then translated into numerous languages of formerly colonized countries.
“The writers of ‘Lotus’ as well as the journal itself had a huge cultural impact at the time, affecting tens of millions of people. This was the first time writers of Africa and Asia were able to talk to each other, across their vast continents, outside the prism of their colonial and imperial usurpers,” says Prof Ali, who is currently busy digitizing and archiving the magazine. …
Some of the prominent writers who contributed to ‘Lotus’ included Youssef El Sebai, Abdel Aziz Sadek, Edward El Kharrat (Egypt), Mouloud Mammeri (Algeria), Mulk Raj Anand (India), Hiroshi Noma, (Japan), Dr Soheil Idriss (Lebanon), Sononym Udval (Mongolia), Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Pakistan), Mario De Andrade (Portuguese Colonies), Mohamed Soleinian (Sudan), Alex La Guma (South Africa), Anatoly Sofronov (USSR), Adonis (Lebanon) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine).
The magazine instituted the Lotus Prize and among its recipients were Pakistan’s Faiz Ahmed Faiz and India’s Harivansh Rai Bachchan (whose son Amitabh is a well-known actor). Translation bureaus were launched in many countries of the two continents – so that people could read each other’s works.
By Lamat Hasan, an independent journalist based in Delhi.
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Política e cultura no pensamento emancipatório africano
A atual ausência de uma visão emancipatória para a África está no centro dos nossos problemas políticos relacionados à opressão racial capitalista e colonial. Qualquer tentativa de repensar a emancipação política no continente africano deve ser capaz de localizar uma concepção universal de liberdade no interior das experiências culturais singulares que as pessoas vivem. Quando esteve baseada nas tradições populares, a política emancipatória exibiu tais traços dialéticos, independentemente da maneira específica na qual cada luta pela liberdade foi pensada em diferentes contextos históricos. No entanto, apenas alguns intelectuais militantes compreenderam a importância dessa dialética no pensamento. O presente volume esboça e discute dois pontos de vista particularmente importantes sobre o papel e a relevância da cultura popular na política emancipatória em África. Cada um deles resulta de formas distintas de exploração capitalista e colonialista: o primeiro viu a luz do dia em um contexto colonial, enquanto o segundo é diretamente confrontado pelo estado neocolonial. Todas as políticas emancipatórias são desenvolvidas em confronto com o poder estatal, e todas começam com um processo de discussão e debate através do qual um sujeito coletivo começa a se formar. No continente africano, a construção de tal sujeito político coletivo tem sido informada, de maneira fundamental, pelas culturas populares. Os dois autores cujos ensaios estão aqui incluídos entenderam isso e colocaram a cultura popular no centro de suas políticas. O primeiro, Amílcar Cabral, aborda o papel central da cultura popular na luta pela independência da Guiné-Bissau nos anos 1970; o segundo, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, aborda a centralidade da cultura popular africana para uma política emancipatória endereçada à atual República Democrática do Congo. Apesar das décadas que os separam, tanto Cabral como Wamba-dia-Wamba desenvolvem, no centro de sua política, uma dialética que ativa os universais da cultura no presente. É essa característica que confere às suas visões uma importância central para o pensamento emancipatório contemporâneo.
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Politique et culture dans la pensée émancipatrice Africaine
Au cœur de nos problèmes politiques issus d’un capitalisme racial et d’une oppression (néo)coloniale en Afrique aujourd’hui se trouve l’absence de toute vision émancipatrice véritable. Toute tentative de repenser une politique émancipatrice en Afrique doit pouvoir situer une vision universaliste de la liberté parmi les expériences culturelles singulières que les gens vivent. Les politiques émancipatrices quand elles existaient, bien que pensées dans les luttes pour la liberté ayant lieu dans des contextes historiques particuliers, mettaient toujours en vue une dialectique de ce genre quand elles étaient vraiment basées parmi les traditions populaires. Cependant, seulement une minorité de dirigeants intellectuels et militants comprenait l’importance d’une telle dialectique pour la pensée et l’action.
Ce petit livre trace le contour et discute de deux points de vue très importants sur le rôle de la culture populaire dans la politique émancipatrice en Afrique. Chacun d’entre eux émane de formes d’exploitation capitalistes coloniales distinctes : le premier a vu le jour dans un contexte colonial classique tandis que le second est directement issu d’un contexte étatique néocolonial. Toute politique émancipatrice est développée vis-à-vis le pouvoir d’état et toutes commencent avec un processus de discussion ou est formé un sujet collectif. Un tel sujet politique doit être fondamentalement informé par et conçu en relation avec les cultures populaires.
Les deux auteurs ci-inclus ont compris ce principe et mettent la culture populaire au centre de leur pensées politiques. Le premier, Amílcar Cabral se réfère au rôle principal de la culture dans la lutte contre le colonialisme au Guinée Bissau dans les années 1970 ; le second, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba insiste sur le rôle central de la culture populaire pour une politique émancipatrice dans la République Démocratique du Congo aujourd’hui. Malgré la distance temporelle qui les sépare, tous les deux développent au centre de leurs politiques distinctes, une pensée dialectique qui déclenche des pensées universalistes depuis la culture populaire dans le présent. C’est pour cela que leurs points de vue sont d’une importance capitale pour la pensée de la politique émancipatrice en Afrique aujourd’hui.
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Sphères politiques et contrôle étatique : Les structures politiques de l’état néocolonial en Afrique
Il s’agit d’une brève tentative d’orienter l’étude de l’État néocolonial en Afrique à travers une évaluation de la manière dont il gouverne son peuple. On soutient que l’État produit différents modes de contrôle étatique en déployant différentes politiques sur différentes parties de la population. De cette manière, il peut combiner une règle véritablement démocratique à l’image de l’Occident sur certains tout en soumettant la majorité à des formes coloniales de domination. Les subjectivités politiques importées de l’Occident et son obsession du discours sur les droits de l’homme sont largement réservées à une sphère de la société civile dans laquelle le droit d’avoir des droits est conféré aux citoyens. Dans les domaines de la société incivile et de la société « traditionnelle », le droit aux droits n’est pas respecté par l’État, de sorte que différentes subjectivités, y compris régulièrement la violence, régissent la manière dont les problèmes politiques et leurs solutions sont abordés à la fois par l’État et par le peuple. En conséquence, des subjectivités politiques distinctes prévalent dans la conceptualisation de la résistance populaire dans chacun des trois domaines, et il devient difficile de rallier des préoccupations et des conceptions aussi différentes au sein d’une lutte anticoloniale nationale.
“Une dissection concise, dense et éclairante des rouages de l’État africain post-indépendance qui trace également une voie vers l’imagination et le travail pour une véritable politique de libération.” — Ndongo Samba Sylla, chercheur principal, Fondation Rosa Luxembourg.
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Domains of politics and modes of rule : Political structures of the neocolonial state in Africa
“A concise, dense and illuminating dissection of the workings of the post-independence African state that also charts a path towards imagining and working for a true politics of liberation.” — Ndongo Samba Sylla, Senior Researcher, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
This is a brief attempt to orient the study of the neocolonial state in Africa through an assessment of the manner in which it rules its people. It is argued that the state produces different modes of rule by deploying different politics over different parts of the population. In this manner, it can combine a genuinely democratic rule in the image of the West over some while subjecting the majority to colonial forms of domination. Imported political subjectivities from the West and its obsession with human rights discourse are reserved largely for a sphere of civil society in which the right to have rights is conferred upon citizens. In the domains of uncivil society and ‘traditional’ society, the right to rights is not observed by the state so different subjectivities, regularly including violence, govern the manner political problems and solutions are addressed both by the state and by people. In consequence, distinct political subjectivities prevail in the conceptualization of popular resistance in all three domains, and it becomes difficult to rally such different concerns and conceptions within an overall anti-neocolonial struggle.∴ -
Hindutva and its relationship with Zionism
The text of this pamphlet was written in December 2022, based on a lecture given earlier at the invitation of the Institute of Palestine Studies. Since then, the relationship between Israel and India has deepened further. Meanwhile, atrocities have skyrocketed in both countries. On 5 April 2023, Israeli forces stormed Al Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem and attacked worshippers inside. As we go to press (May 2023), Israel is ruthlessly bombing Gaza and targeting Palestinian women and young children while settlers are going on killing sprees in Palestinian villages in the West Bank. At the same time, Israel is facing internal turmoil in a battle between a diverse group, including those who think the current settler colony is a democratic nation and want things to remain as they are, and those who stand even further to the right. Significantly, the BJP, India’s ruling party, supports the latter.
Meanwhile, India, too, has seen a horrific escalation of violence. Not a day passes without Muslims being killed, young children brutally beaten up and humiliated, Mosques being burnt down or attacked, and homes being destroyed. At the same time and on a very different note, Gautam Adani and his Adani Group, which has long bankrolled the Modi regime, have been exposed as perpetrating the biggest fraud in corporate history. Once the third richest man in the world, Gautam Adani’s family fortune has continued to plummet and is currently only 50% of what it once was. However, despite projects falling through, stock and bond prices continuing to fall, and lenders leaving in droves, the one international figure who has continued to stand by him and publicly acclaim him is Netanyahu. The Haifa Port deal … Is going ahead as planned.
The subject of this pamphlet is Zionism, the ideology of the Israeli apartheid state and Hindutva, the ideology which drives the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In this era of rising fascism, these two remarkably similar ideologies are crucially important in cementing the economic and military alliance between two of the world’s most repressive right-wing states – while helping to legitimize them in cultural arenas. Israel is, of course, a settler colonial state, but it is also, like India, a fascist state, not only because of ‘the extremist parties that [are] part of the government’ but also because of ‘their enablers – Netanyahu and his chauvinistic Likud party which long strove for a Jewish state dominating both sides of the Jordan River’. In the words of Marwan Bishara, Netanyahu is ‘the godfather of modern Israeli fascism’. This essay focuses primarily on Hindutva, discussing Zionism mainly to highlight its similarities, links and increasing alliances with Hindutva.