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SphĂšres politiques et contrĂŽle Ă©tatique : Les structures politiques de âšlâĂ©tat nĂ©ocolonial en Afrique
Il sâagit dâune brĂšve tentative dâorienter lâĂ©tude de lâĂtat nĂ©ocolonial en Afrique Ă travers une Ă©valuation de la maniĂšre dont il gouverne son peuple. On soutient que lâĂtat produit diffĂ©rents modes de contrĂŽle Ă©tatique en dĂ©ployant diffĂ©rentes politiques sur diffĂ©rentes parties de la population. De cette maniĂšre, il peut combiner une rĂšgle vĂ©ritablement dĂ©mocratique Ă lâimage de lâOccident sur certains tout en soumettant la majoritĂ© Ă des formes coloniales de domination. Les subjectivitĂ©s politiques importĂ©es de lâOccident et son obsession du discours sur les droits de lâhomme sont largement rĂ©servĂ©es Ă une sphĂšre de la sociĂ©tĂ© civile dans laquelle le droit dâavoir des droits est confĂ©rĂ© aux citoyens. Dans les domaines de la sociĂ©tĂ© incivile et de la sociĂ©tĂ© « traditionnelle », le droit aux droits nâest pas respectĂ© par lâĂtat, de sorte que diffĂ©rentes subjectivitĂ©s, y compris rĂ©guliĂšrement la violence, rĂ©gissent la maniĂšre dont les problĂšmes politiques et leurs solutions sont abordĂ©s Ă la fois par lâĂtat et par le peuple. En consĂ©quence, des subjectivitĂ©s politiques distinctes prĂ©valent dans la conceptualisation de la rĂ©sistance populaire dans chacun des trois domaines, et il devient difficile de rallier des prĂ©occupations et des conceptions aussi diffĂ©rentes au sein dâune lutte anticoloniale nationale.
“Une dissection concise, dense et Ă©clairante des rouages ââde l’Ătat africain post-indĂ©pendance qui trace Ă©galement une voie vers l’imagination et le travail pour une vĂ©ritable politique de libĂ©ration.” â Ndongo Samba Sylla, chercheur principal, Fondation Rosa Luxembourg.
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Limits of the Black Radical Tradition and the Valueform
Shemon Salam
Limits of the Black Radical Tradition and the Value-form develops an immanent critique of the Black Radical Tradition to show the boundaries of its own categories, history, and epistemologies. Limits argues that the Black Radical Tradition developed in the national context of completing Reconstruction and the international context of colonialism-decolonization resulting in a particular form and content of the tradition. This process constituted the tradition, and subsequently the tradition is still working with the older set of tools that struggle to grapple with Afro-Pessimism, Indigeneity, racial capitalism, and even the George Floyd Uprising. Limits carefully reformulates the tradition so it can once again play a leading role in revolutionary struggles.
Limits offers a critique of value-form theory, while still arguing that value-form theory is the direction that Black Marxism must head if it is to stay relevant to revolutionary struggles, decolonization, and the fight against anti-Blackness. The Black Radical Tradition demonstrates that value-form theory has a narrow understanding of class politics, reduces history to the struggle of factory workers, and is ultimately Euro-centric. The Black Radical Tradition can re-orient value-form theory to account for race, geo-politics, and other forms of oppression which are not reducible to an economic accounting.
Concurrently value-form theory addresses shortcomings in Black Marxismâs analysis of Capital, value theory, and more concrete analysis of capitalism. Value-form theory removes the priority of labor, progress, and stages of development from Marxism. Paradoxically, this move on the part of value-form theory recovers a hidden history of Black revolutionaries dealing with the value-form. This recovery shows that the Black Radical Tradition was working towards its own analysis of the value-form as well.
This double maneuver of recovery and critique of the Black Radical Tradition and value-form theory follows Cedric Robinsonâs last words in Black Marxism, the traditions of Marxism and Black Radicalism must come together if they are going to overthrow racial capitalism. Limits follows in Robinsonâs footsteps.
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Politics and Culture in African Emancipatory Thought
The current absence of any emancipatory vision for Africa lies at the heart of our political problems of racial capitalist and colonial oppression. Any attempt to rethink political emancipation on the African continent must be able to locate a universal conception of freedom within singular cultural experiences where people live. Irrespective of the specific manner in which such struggles for freedom were thought within different historical contexts, emancipatory politics always exhibited such a dialectic when it was based within popular traditions. Yet only some militant intellectual leaders understood the importance of this dialectic in thought.
The present volume outlines and discusses two particularly important views concerning the role and importance of popular culture in emancipatory politics in Africa. Each is the product of distinct forms of colonial capitalist exploitation: the former saw the light of day within a colonial context while the latter is directly confronted by the neocolonial state. All emancipatory politics are developed in confrontation with state power, and all begin with a process of discussion and debate whereby a collective subject begins to be formed. The formation of such a collective political subject has been fundamentally informed by popular cultures on the African continent.
The two authors whose essays are included here understood this and posit popular culture at the centre of their politics. The first, AmĂlcar Cabral, addresses the central role of popular culture in the independence struggle of Guinea Bissau in the 1970s; the second, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, addresses the centrality of African popular culture in an emancipatory politics for the current Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the distance in time that separates them, both Cabral and Wamba-dia-Wamba develop a dialectics at the core of their politics which activates the universals of culture in the present. It is this that makes their views of central importance to emancipatory thought today.
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Racism, Capitalism, and COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting nonwhite racialized workers in the core and periphery. Yet, many social scientific analyses of the global political economy, at least in the pre-COVID era, are race neutral or willfully indifferent to the persistent racial pattern of global inequalities. This piece seeks to understand how the unremitting super-exploitation of Black and other nonwhite racialized labor in the core and the periphery persisted throughout the COVID-19 crisis through the lens of Black radical scholarship on racism and capitalism. It historicizes the pandemic within the long arc of racist capitalist labor super-exploitation at the birth of capitalism and in its subsequent unfolding. It also shows the mechanisms by which COVID-19 has exacerbated the already existing, structural racial and colonial inequalities that undergird the global economy. White capital and European and North American states have deemed Black and other nonwhite racialized labor âessentialâ to maintaining profits and called upon these workers both within North America and Europe and in the global periphery to ensure continued production and profits in almost every realm. These workers were seen as essential but expendable; compelling them to continue laboring during the deadly pandemic increased the precarity and danger they faced and exacerbated racial and economic inequalities both within and between countries. At the same time, neoliberal racist states are further marginalizing these very workers by excluding them from much needed social protections to cope with the impacts of COVID-19 on their health, income, and overall well-being. The piece also illuminates why, despite the dire social and economic conditions threatening the lives and livelihoods of workers writ large, white workers continue to refuse to join a multiracial antiracist movement for liberation from imperial and racial capitalist exploitation. The author ends by reflecting on what it means to âreturn to normalâ within the architecture of racial capitalism and the pursuit of a different path to justice and freedom.
See also our interview with Zophia Edwards and David Austin.
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Transforming ourselves, Transforming the World: An open conspiracy for social change – Second Edition
You can watch / listen to a conversation between the author, Brian K Murphy, and David Austin here.
This is a new edition of the book originally published by Zed Books in 1999. The book includes an Introduction written by David Austin and an Afterword from the author, Brian Murphy.
This book is for all those â community workers, adult educators, social activists of every kind â who want to overcome pessimism and play a part in changing society in the direction of peace, justice and dignity for all human beings. As author Brian Murphyâ the independent analyst, organizer, educator and writer, and former staff member of the social justice organization, Inter Paresâpoints out, many of us are pessimistic about our ability to change the world when confronted by destructive political and corporative forces and the destruction they wreak. Murphy reveals the social and personal dilemmas which hold people back from social engagement, and argues that the various constraints we face can be overcome.
In this new edition, David Austin explains in his Introduction why this book, first published in 1999, is perhaps more relevant to our times than ever, offering insights from his own experiences of engaging critically with the book and with others. (David Austin is author of Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal and the editor of Moving Against the System, The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness.)
And in his new afterword, Brian Murphy reflects on the continued relevance of the original text, emphasizing how our humanity is being corroded and commodified. To reclaim our humanity, he argues, we must transform ourselves to transform the world.
Brian Murphyâs immensely inspiring book,Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World, deeply challenges us to think and rethink everything we knew and thought we knew.âNnimmo Bassey, Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation & Right Livelihood Award Laureate in 2010
We need more conversations like the one in this book, which are rooted in hope while honestly working through a foundational way of seeing and understanding ourselves in the bigger picture.â Christina Warner, Co-Executive Director and Director of Campaigns and Organising, Council of Canadians.
This is one of the coolest, enjoyable and important books I have read in recent years. Written from the heart as well as the head, it is a breathtakingly visionary, unique and insightful take on the life of the ultimate activist.âHope Chigudu, Feminist activist
The republication of Transforming Ourselves, Transforming the World is a gift for our troubled times. All of us who share the drive to change our society will find encouragement and nourishment. This book offers a break from an all-too-common type of âactivismâ that demands harmful suppression of our individual creativity, freedom and health. What we have here is a celebration â and an entirely convincing validation â of a way of changing the world that is always nurturing and open-ended; a process of possibility and becoming, as we build on humanness to realise greater humanness. As Murphy puts it: ââI will act, because it is sane, and healthy, and human to do so. We will act together, because it is sane, and healthy, and human, and more effective to do so. ⊠This is how we can begin to develop an open conspiracyââ. Iâm energised to sign up to this âopen conspiracyâ, and Iâm sure many more readers will be too. â Mark Butler, co-author with Church Land Programme (South Africa) of in, against, beyond, corona
Table of Contents
Introduction to Second Edition: David Austin
Preface and Acknowledgements
The Challenge
1 The Courage to Be
2 The Dilemma of Action and the Psychology of Inertia
3Â Confronting the Dilemmas: Beyond InertiaPossibilities in Process
4 The Missing Link
5 The Individual, the Visionary
6 Challenging the Established Rationality
7 Imperatives for Modern EducationThe Open Conspiracy
8 The Open Conspiracy: Allies for Health and Action
9 Theatres and Strategies: Embracing the Future
10 Education and the Open ConspiracyConclusion
Eclectic Notes on Knowledge and Action
Afterword
Afterword to the Second Edition – Brian Murphy
Related Reading
Further readingIndex
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Fanon and the rationality of revolt
We inhabit extraordinary times: times in which we are acutely aware of the intensity of what revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon called âthe glare of history’s floodlights.â  The velocity and scale at which the revolt against police murder that began in Minnesota after the death of George Floyd on May 25th and moved throughout the US, and then other parts of the world, was astonishing. It was impossible to predict, but then, in retrospect, it is George Floydâs death becomes a nodal point: calling for action as well as rethinking and self-clarification. Thinking about this moment with the world revolutionary Frantz Fanon, we need to be aware of continuities and discontinuities â or, as he puts it, opacities â between the ages, his and ours. Fanon is always speaking to us, but often in ways we cannot hear. We have to work to listen to him and to understand the new contexts and meanings in relative opacity. It is this constant dialogue that helps illuminate the present and enable ongoing fidelity to Fanonâs call in the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth the necessity to work out new concepts to confront one of Fanonâs greatest concerns, the betrayal of the revolutionary movement. In this pamphlet we consider how Fanonâs idea of liberation is connected with âthe rationality of revolt.â The practice of engaging Fanon not only with revolt but with the reason or rationality of revolt connects with Fanonâs idea of how this liberated humanity is a product of a new consciousness of collectivity open to rethink everything.