Left Alone brings together 15 authors and seven visual artists from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America to individually and collectively reflect – in words and images – on an urgent psycho-political issue that has not yet been explicitly addressed through a left-political lens, that is, Left Loneliness. Combining academic and more personal-political texts, including an interview, poetry, rap and a powerful short story, the book explores the contributors’ personally and/or vicariously lived experiences of Left Loneliness from a variety of genres and left political currents: Marxist, Feminist, Anti-/De-Colonial, Anti-Racist, Queer, Post-Soviet, Anarchist, Anti-Ableist and others. Says Feminist writer Sara Ahmed: “Loneliness might be what we are threatened with if we persist in being or doing what we are being or doing.” In this sense, Left Loneliness is neither a metaphor nor a secondary contradiction and definitely not a type of petty bourgeois ‘personalism.’ Rather, it might be considered one of the rank-and-file psycho-affective elements that both shapes and results from our myriad, intersecting, unremitting, yet always fragile and potentially shattering political attempts to revolutionise our inner and outer worlds. Given its (growing?) existence in our everyday left subjectivities, the book argues that Left Loneliness and related states of solitude, isolation and alienation, among others, have both debilitating and productive (epistemic) dimensions, with very concrete psycho-somatic repercussions for Left Mental and Physical Health and hence our capacity to persist and build on “being or doing what we are being or doing.” Given that continuing and deepening our multiple ongoing struggles for liberation will depend on our constant ability to (re-)create, sustain and care for both our individual selves and the communities that we are a part of, the aim of Left Alone is to contribute to the strengthening of these personal collectivities in action in-against-and-beyond capitalism, colonialism and heteropatriarchy by inviting comrade-readers into what we hope will be a deeply stimulating and enabling personal-political engagement with texts and images hailing from Argentina, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey/Kurdistan, Jamaica, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, Germany and the USA. In short, in the words of one of the book’s authors, Lena Grace Anyuolo from Kenya, “My sisters and brothers, Come, Let us gather, To lay the structures for a joyous existence.” Yes, let’s.
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn is a German-Bolivian theatre maker, compulsive reader – printed books only – and reluctant writer. Since 2010, he has been feeling at ease in the post-Soviet space, particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. After much ideological soul-searching, he…
Edited by Hjalmar Joffre-Eichhorn and Patrick Anderson
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn is a German-Bolivian Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, compulsive reader – printed books only – and reluctant writer. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to publishing activist books and in spite of his ever-deepening Left Loneliness he is still toying with the idea/desire of opening a leftist bookstore-cum-dancehall in the not too distant future. As a result, he has been obsessively hunting red kitsch, aka Communist memorabilia, to eventually be exhibited and worshipped in the store. So, if anyone wants to get rid of their Lenin busts, Angela Davis posters or Che Guevara beret, please do get in touch.
Patrick Anderson is a lifelong student of language and people, conflict and harmony, relationship and solitude. He has an admiration bordering on reverence for words, written and spoken, and the profound, at times circuitous yet always unbroken, lines of revelation and meaning they preserve. Cryptic crosswords and etymological databases unsurprisingly number among his chief sources of pleasure. Having lived, worked and studied in five continents, and with an MA in Conflict Resolution, his professional life largely consists in supporting individuals, organisations and diverse communities to navigate the world with courage, purpose and levity.
Patrick Anderson is a lifelong student of language and people, conflict and harmony, relationship and solitude. He has an admiration bordering on reverence for words, written and spoken, and the profound, at times circuitous yet always unbroken, lines of revelation and meaning they preserve. Cryptic crosswords and etymological databases unsurprisingly number among his chief sources of pleasure. Having lived, worked and studied in five continents, and with an MA in Conflict Resolution, his professional life largely consists in supporting individuals, organizations and diverse communities to navigate the world with courage, purpose and levity.
Lena Grace Anyuolo is a writer and poet. She is the author of the poetry collection Rage and Bloom. Her work regularly appears in Jalada Magazine, Writers’ Space Africa, Ukombozi Review, Review of African Political Economy, Africa is a Country, and Gemini Spice Magazine.
Nina Bagdasarova has a PhD in Educational Psychology and works as a professor at the Psychological Department of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Her areas of research are education, equality and inclusion, while her political position and activism take place from within a leftist spectrum close to the approach of queer communism. She has authored a number of academic papers and recently published a book dedicated to exploring the idea of left happiness (together with Mohira Suyarkulova and Georgy Mamedov).
Ismail Beşikçi is a Turkish sociologist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara University in 1962. In 1964 he began to work at Atatürk University’s Faculty of Science and Literature as a research assistant. In 1968, he was dismissed from the same university after the publication of his book Eastern Anatolian Order: Socio-Economic Fundamentals (Doğu Anadolu’nun Düzeni: Sosyo-Ekonomik Temeller). In 1971, he was arrested by the Diyarbakır Martial Law Court on the charge of being a supporter of the Kurdish people and an advocate for a separate Kurdish state. He was subsequently sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for the book Eastern Anatolian Order and eight months for lectures he had given. Amnestied on 14 July 1974, he was imprisoned again several times in the following years, for instance, in March 1991 due to a message he sent to the Night of Solidarity with the Kurds held in Germany in October 1990. Beşikçi has written dozens of books, most of which were banned, and has been imprisoned eight times, so far spending 17 years in incarceration.
Derefe Kimarley Chevannes is a native from Jamaica. He holds a PhD in Political Science. Chevannes primarily specializes in political theory and is also trained in the field of public law. His research focuses, broadly, on Africana political theory, with an emphasis on Black liberatory politics. His research project lies at the intersection of Africana Studies, Deaf Studies, and Modernity Studies.
Kimberly Chiimba is a young black British-Zimbabwean portrait painter based in London, UK. Best known for her bright, natural and hyperrealistic paintings of contemporary Black subjects, she enjoys capturing and drawing inspiration directly from her family and external surroundings.
alejandra ciriza is a feisty feminist activist and human rights defender. She is the mother of Andrés, Valentín and Martina and the abuela of Amparo and Emiliano. She looks after plants and enjoys dancing. She is a researcher at CONICET and a professor of philosophy and feminist theories in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at UNCuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. Her research is situated at the intersection of feminist political philosophy and the history of women and feminist ideas, based on a perspective that recognizes class, radicalization and corporalidad. ale has written, edited and published scientific articles, book chapters and books in her realm of expertise. She currently leads the master’s program in feminist studies at UNCuyo, supporting the emergence of new researchers in this field.
Sevgi Doğan gained her doctorate degree from Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. She is currently a precarious post-doctoral researcher at the same university, where she also collaborates with the Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) – Italy. Her doctoral thesis, Marx and Hegel: On the Dialectic of the Individual and the Social, was published by Lexington Books (2018). Her fields of research are modern and contemporary political philosophy, (Italian) Marxism, Hegelianism, German and Ital- ian idealism, Rosa Luxemburg, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, gender and feminist studies, the social and political modernisation of Turkey, and academic freedom. She has translated Gramsci’s Letters from Prison from Italian into Turkish and submitted it to Alfa publishing house. Her most recent book La grande malattia dell’Europa, about HR violations in contemporary Turkey and with texts by Gustaw Her- ling, will be published by Rubbettino in 2023.
Richard Gilman-Opalsky is Professor of political theory and philosophy in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He is the author of many articles and book chapters and six books, including The Communism of Love, Specters of Revolt, Precarious Communism and Spectacular Capitalism. He has lectured widely throughout the world and his work has been translated and published in Greek, Spanish, French, and German editions. In 20182019, Dr. GilmanOpalsky was named University Scholar, the highest award for the scholarship granted at all three campuses of University of Illinois. Dr. GilmanOpalsky’s work explores the powers of everyday people, particularly those typically regarded as powerless. He challenges the idea that politics is the private property of the ruling political class, and aims to highlight how impoverished and marginalized people participate in the radical transformation of the world.
Jane Anna Gordon is Professor of Political Science with affiliations in American Studies, El Instituto, Global Affairs, Philosophy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is, most recently, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement (Routledge 2020) and Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Frantz Fanon (Fordham University Press 2014) and coeditor (with Drucilla Cornell) of Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg (Rowman and Littlefield 2021). President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) from 20142016, she continues to direct the CPA Summer School and to coedit the Creolizing the Canon and Global Critical Caribbean Thought book series. With Lewis R. Gordon, she edits the new, open access journal, Philosophy and Global Affairs.
Sula Gordon is a multimedia artist. Through her art she creates the world she sees and the world she wants to see. Gordon focuses on healing rather than pain since it seems like the only time Black people are depicted it must be surrounded by suffering. It would give the impression that being Black is nothing but turmoil when she loves being Black. Through her paints, prints, and whatever else she can get her hands on, Gordon writes love letters to herself, her family, and her community, telling them their beauty is not unseen.
Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn is a German-Bolivian Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, compulsive reader – printed books only – and reluctant writer. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to publish- ing a couple of activist books, and in spite of his ever-deepening Left Loneliness, he is still toying with the idea/desire of opening a leftist bookstore-cum-dancehall in the not-too-distant future. As a result, he has been obsessively hunting red kitsch, aka Communist memorabilia, to be exhibited and worshipped in the store eventually. So, if anyone wants to get rid of their Lenin busts, Angela Davis posters or Che Guevara beret, please do get in touch.
Giulia Longoni is a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of Pisa. Her research interests focus on the concepts of gender, class and ‘race’ as theorized by the philosophical current of Marxist feminism, with particular attention to Rosa Luxemburg’s work. Giulia’s research aims to identify some of Luxemburg’s main concepts and use them as critical lenses in order to critique the connections between mainstream feminism and the capitalistic system. Her interests include feminist philosophy, social justice, postcolonial and decolonial studies and class struggle. She is a feminist activist and co-founder of CONTRA/DIZIONI, a group which aims to introduce feminist philosophies to the Academic world.
Georgy Mamedov is a curator, artist and activist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Georgy has coauthored and coedited several publications, including A Book on Happiness for Young (and not so) and LGBT (and not only) People (Bishkek 2020), the pioneering Russian language collection of feminist and queer science fiction, Utterly Other (Bishkek 2018); Queer Communism is Ethics (Moscow 2016); and Bishkek Utopian (Bishkek 2015). His most recent artistic projects include the experimental montage TikTok: A Blue Blouse Edit (2020); a collaboration with Werker Collective on the project A Gestural History of the Young Worker (2019); and the lecture-performance Delirious Blues: A Philosophy Letter from the Low Life during the Parliament of Bodies at the Bergen Assembly (2019). Georgy teaches history and theory of modern and contemporary art at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. In 2015, Georgy became a chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters.
James Martel teaches political theory in the department of political science at San Francisco State University. He works on anarchist politics, political theology, comparative literature, postcolonial theory and legal theory. He is the author, most recently, of Anarchist Prophets: Disappointment and the Power of Collective Sight (Duke 2022). He is currently working on a new book entitled Material Rights: a New Law For the Living. Previous books include Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and the Authority of the Dead (Amherst 2017), The Misinterpellated Subject (Duke 2017), Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin and the Eschatology of Sovereignty (Routledge 2011), Textual Conspiracies: Walter Benjamin, Idolatry and Political Theory (Michigan 2011), and Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat (Columbia 2007).
I am Tate Quesada, a visual artist born in Mendoza, Argentina. I studied in private painting workshops from a very early age. In 2005 I entered the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, where I completed a Bachelor’s in Visual Arts and Teaching and specialized in engraving. After experimenting with painting, my work turned towards the graphic arts, through which characters and stories emerge that allow me to express my way of seeing the world. Since 2014 I have been giving screen printing workshops in my private studio. I also work as a teacher at the Escuela Provincial de Bellas Artes, as a member of a group of artist-teachers. I am in constant search of creative expression.
Lena Stoehrfaktor is a Berlin-based rap and hip-hop artist. Some of her most recent releases include “Die Angst vor den Gedanken ver- lieren” (2012), “Blei” (2018) and “Essenz“ (2022). Lena not only walks through the streets of Berlin, she literally scratches its surface to reveal the dirt. In this sense, she doesn’t just talk about the underground, she is the underground. DIY-mentality instead of economic interest, skills and flow instead of interchangeable blah blah. Lena is ready to confront anyone unwilling to act in solidarity with others. Compromise on this is out of the question.
Mohira Suyarkulova is a queer communist and feminist activist scholar living and working in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. She holds a PhD in International Relations from St Andrews University. Mohira is an “undisciplined scholar,” who has been hosted by departments of political science, social anthropology, sociology and, now, psychology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of politics, art and activism. Most recently, she led a participatory action study of the sexual lives of LGBTQ people in Bishkek with the aim of creating a queer sex education curriculum. Currently she is working on a Leftist manual on happiness alongside her colleagues and comrades Nina Bagdasarova and Georgy Mamedov.
Leo Zeilig is a writer and researcher. He has written extensively on African politics and history, including books on the working-class struggle and the development of revolutionary movements, and biographies of some of Africa’s most important political thinkers and activists. Leo is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy – the radical African-studies journal founded by activists and scholars in 1974 – and an Honorary Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Leo’s critically acclaimed novel Eddie the Kid was published by Zero Books in 2013. It was praised in The Guardian: “This passionate, sad and welltold book offers a compelling portrait of a flawed young radical.” Eddie the Kid won the 2014 Creative Work prize at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. In 2017 Leo’s second novel, An Ounce of Practice, was published by Hoperoad, praised in The Conversation as “a brilliant work of literary imagination that takes the reader to new realities in an engaging, moving read, hilariously humorous at times.” Leo has recently published The World Turned Upside Down through Nigerian publisher Books Farm House & Publishers.
Prologue 1: Spelling Out Left Loneliness – Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn
Prologue 2: An Etymological Uprising – Patrick Anderson
Introduction: Alone Together – The Singing Veins of Left Loneliness – Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn
How the world works – Lena Grace Anyuolo
The Practicality of Utopianism: Capitalist and Communist Forms of Life and Loneliness – Richard Gilman Opalsky
A Red Rooster Does Not Give Up – Subjectivity and Politics. Notes on Defeat – alejandra ciriza
A Reasonable Doubt – Should I Stay Alone? – Nina Bagdasarova
“Solitude is Freedom (Yalnızlık özgürlüktür)”: An Interview with İsmail Beşikçi – Sevgi Doğan
Anarchists should not be lonely (but they are) – James Martel
It is going to be alright – Lena Grace Anyuolo
“A Lonely Warrior”: Left-wing Isolation in the Early Adult Life of Ida B. Wells – Jane Anna Gordon
The Problem of Pathology: Meditation on Race, Disability & Loneliness – Derefe Kimarley Chevannes
Bridging the Gaps – Lena Stoehrfaktor
A diabolo, qui est simia dei – Georgy Mamedov
Left Loneliness and Feminist Love – Giulia Longoni
2084 – Leo Zeilig
Bloom – Lena Grace Anyuolo
In Praise of Really Existing Comradeship: Gratitudes
The Left Loneliness Collective
Index
| Book Format | Print Book, PDF |
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The industrial food system is a major driver of climate change. Food sovereignty is critical to any lasting and just solution. The Great Climate Robbery shows readers how the industrial food system causes climate change, how food and agribusiness corporations are getting away with it and what can be done to turn things around.
Richard Pithouse’s extraordinary overview of the what is means to be human after 1492:
… On 9 August 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The movement that grew out of the rebellion that followed inaugurated a new sequence in the struggle against racism in the United States. As with previous sequences in that struggle it quickly acquired an international dimension, including here in South Africa. One aspect of this international moment has been an urgent confrontation with the reality that what Césaire called ‘abstract equality’ does not, on its own, mark an end to the racialization of life.
In the United States, and elsewhere, there is a sense that history is as present as it is past. Just over a decade ago, Baucom observed that “what-has-been is, cannot be undone, cannot cease to alter all the future-presents that flow out of it. Time does not pass or progress, it accumulates”. It is the sense that time accumulates into the present that has often led to the invocation of William Faulkner’s famous line from Requiem for a Nun in discussions about race: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The past does not merely haunt or shape the present via the enduring power of deep and impersonal structural forces. Across Europe, and in settler societies like Australia, Brazil and the United States, racism is an increasingly explicit and menacing presence at the centre of political and social life. White revanchism has rallied, often under demagogic leadership, to secure the racial order that emerged from the event of 1492. It has already resulted in Brexit in England, the impeachment of an elected President in Brazil and the election of a figure as grotesque as Trump in the United States.
We will not be able to transcend the epoch that began in 1492 without a politics that can confront and defeat this revanchism. And we will not have transcended this epoch until “things, in the most materialistic meaning of the word” are, as Fanon insists, “restored to their proper places”. But the catastrophe from which we are all derived is not solely a matter of material dispossession and accumulation. As Michael Monahan argues, in conversation with Wynter, “the history of colonialism is also the history of the emergence of the idea of Europe and of Europeans, and . . . it is such ideas and cultural practices that inevitably shape our consciousness, conditioning what counts as normal and, ultimately, as rational”.
By chronicling rural people’s struggles across diverse contexts, this collection gives us some signposts of emancipatory politics in the African countryside. Accessible and theoretically grounded, this exciting collection by leading African scholar-activists chronicles rural people’s struggles, from resistance to alternatives. Activists and scholars engaged with rural struggles need to read this book. —Ruth Hall, professor, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
A remarkable, well-argued and theoretically diverse collection of essays on the land question in Southern Africa, a topic as old as colonialism and as new as the newest impositions of global capitalism. Land struggles and resistance in a new and powerful light.
— Boaventura de Sousa Santos, author of The End of the Cognitive Empire, 2018
This book makes a powerful contribution to the existing and growing literature on land and agrarian questions in southern Africa. Empirically rich… the book is essential reading for scholars, intellectuals, students and activists involved in the everyday struggles and responses of those communities who are directly affected by neoliberal policies. Highly recommended. —Lungisile Ntsebeza, Emeritus Professor in African Studies and Sociology in the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town.
Co-publisher: Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies
In recent years southern Africa has aroused the interest of domestic and foreign investors targeting several sectors. The agrarian and extractive capital has been the most penetrating in the countryside, causing land conflicts, displacement of local peasant communities and in worse cases, deaths. Being mostly neoliberally oriented, SADC states have positioned themselves in favour of capital. This collusion results in State measures that are hostile to the peasantry of their countries. The measures taken by the States, both in policies and in repressive actions, are endorsed by of high-level government officials, Ministers, Presidents, Kings and traditional Chiefs. As far as traditional chiefs are concerned, even in situations where the presence of capital is dangerous, ‘feudal’-type power relations prevail, oppressing mainly young people and women.
The peasantry and rural people in general have not, however, been passive in this process. Alone or in alliance with non-governmental organizations and activists, they have positioned themselves strongly against such dynamics and have raised their voices questioning developmentalist logics that are imposed on them, but that take away their means of production and violate their rights. In fact, resistance movements to capital are taking place throughout the region, even if the response to this has been repression by the states.
This book, which takes a scholar-activist stance, is written by authors, men and women, who critically study the dynamics of agrarian and extractive capital in southern Africa. In their academic and activist work, they seek to bring useful theoretical, conceptual and practical contributions to the struggles of agrarian and rural movements that represent the ‘subalternised’ rural and urban people. The book brings contributions in forms of chapters from DRC, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, eSwatini (Swaziland), Mozambique, and Madagascar.
This captivating volume dives into the complexities of racism and White Saviorism in North/South relations. With contributions from 19 experts across the Global South, this book examines its prevalence within Western initiatives for international development. Through a blend of theoretical topics, testimonies, stories and personal experiences these contributors shed light on implicit as well as explicit forms of White Saviorism – all with sensitivity to broaden an understanding through multi-dimensional approaches that truly transcend borders.
Edited by: Themrise Khan, Kanakulya Dickson, Maïka Sondarjee
Combining praxis-informed theorization and accounts grounded in authors’ own experiences in the White Savior Industrial Complex, these succinct and accessible chapters bring the realities of racial capitalism in international development to life. I was both educated and enraged! — Alana Lentin, author of Why Race Still Matters
This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand how many people contribute to upholding an oppressive White supremacist global system. — Amiera Sawas, Researcher and Advocate
This is a terrific work of deep unmasking and engagement with the proverbial but the always invisible elephant in the room of international development, that of the White gaze—correctly rendered here as the “industrial-colonial-patriarchal-White savior complex.” Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization
White Saviorism in International Development unveils the hypocrisies undergirding development projects led by the Global South for the Global South. … It examines the intimate linkages between coloniality, development, and White Saviorism.— Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, Texas Tech University
White Saviorism in International Development is an important and timely book that should be read by all international development students and practitioners. — Dylan Mathews, CEO Peace Direct, Chairperson CIVICUS Alliance
Africa Matters: Cultural politics, political economies, & grammars of protest provides a sampling of insightful articles from the first five issues of Nokoko, journal of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. It brings together pieces that the journal’s editorial board felt were particularly perspicacious in their analysis and resonant in their crafting. Uniting them in this book permits a new dialogue to emerge around the key themes of cultural politics, political economies and grammars of protest. Their intersection here sheds light on important issues for Africans in the twenty-first century.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On the matter of African matters—Blair Rutherford and Pius Adesanmi
Two cities: Guangzhou / Lagos—Wendy Thompson Taiwo
Catherine Acholonu (1951- 2014): The female writer as a goddess—Nduka Otiono
Filming home, plurality of identity, belonging and homing in transnational African cinema—Suvi Lensu
‘Spare Tires’, ‘Second Fiddle’ and ‘Prostitutes’? Interrogating discourses about women and politics in
Nigeria—Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin
The South African Reserve Bank and the telling of monetary stories—Elizabeth Cobbett
The neoliberal turn in the SADC: Regional integration and disintegration—Jessica Evans
Indian hair, the after-temple-life: Class, gender and 137 race representations of the African American woman in the human hair industry—Nadège Compaore
The role of radio and mobile phones in conflict situations: The case of the 2008 Zimbabwe elections and xenophobic attacks in Cape Town—Wallace Chuma
The story of Cape Town’s two marches: Personal reflections on going home—Stephanie Urdang
Beyond an epistemology of bread, butter, culture and power: Mapping the African feminist movement—Sinmi Akin-Aina
Setting the agenda for our leaders from under a tree: The People’s Parliament in Nairobi—Wangui Kimari and Jacob Rasmussen
Politics across boundaries: Pan-Africanism: Seeds for African unity—Gacheke Gachihi
Afterword: Incorporeal words: The tragic passing of Pius Adesanmi—Blair Rutherford
About the contributors
About the Institute of African Studies
Nokoko podcasts
Critically engaging Ato Sekyi-Otu’s notion of partisan universalism, this timely volume of essays speaks directly to the onto-metaphysical issues that will give Africana thought the new foundations that will enable it to move beyond the lin- guistic turn, brush aside the ashes of Afro-pessimism, engage Badiou’s new mathematical universalism, and to launch new projects of liberation on decolonized grounds of greater epistemic independence. A must read for all concerned with the future of Africana theory and praxis. — Paget Henry, author of Caliban’s Reason.
Responding to the invitation ‘to re-member severed but shareable things’, these lovers of truth, freedom, and dignity celebrate the searing intellect, generosity, wit, and compassion of the person and the scholar Ato Sekyi-Otu. … Combined with Sekyi-Otu’s autobiographical reflections of learning to be Black in the United States and insistence that Afropessimism turns the perverse ontology of the antiblack world into a Black ontology, this is a precious contribution. Not to be missed! —Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement and co-editor (with Drucilla Cornell) of Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg
Ato Sekyi-Otu’s thought is one of the most important and exciting in Africa today. The texts compiled in this volume celebrate and engage with the work of Sekyi-Otu … They bear eloquent witness to Sekyi-Otu’s stature as a thinker and to his consistent commitment to the universalization of humanity in both theory and practice. Deeply anchored in African cultures and modes of life, Sekyi-Otu has shown how ideas of human universality are ingrained in African popular sayings and proverbs and are regularly reflected in artistic creations. — Michael Neocosmos, Emeritus Professor in the Humanities, Rhodes University, South Africa
This anthology in honour of Ato Sekyi-Otu is indispensable for those concerned with Frantz Fanon’s ideas of ‘ false’ and ‘ true ‘ decolonisation and about social humanist critique of post-structuralism’ s truncated version of anti-colonialism. Sekyi-Otu accomplishes precisely such a critique in his Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience and in Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays. The essays here are exemplars of such a critique which, together with Fanon and Sekyi -Otu, build a legacy for envisioning a post-imperialist world. The authors of this volume rescue post-colonial studies from a stale and unfruitful post-structuralist reading of anti-colonialism by positing an apparent paradox of ‘left ‘ or ‘ partisan’ universalism which can then be dialectically resolved. Intellectually and politically active at once, this anthology shows how Sekyi-Otu and his co- authors can help the reader to move beyond a binary and solipsistic stance towards a project of a real emancipation, a ‘ true ‘ decolonisation. In this neither the living experience individual nor the collectivity implied in the notion of the human lose their specificity and universality. — Himani Bannerji, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Department of Sociology, York University
This collection of essays celebrates the work of Ato Sekyi-Otu as a scholar, teacher and friend, marking his extraordinary contribution to the philosophy, politics and praxis of liberation. As Ato Sekyi-Otu has argued in his most recent book, Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (Routlege 2019), universalism is an ‘inescapable presupposition of ethical judgment in general and critique in particular, especially indispensable for radical criticism of conditions of existence in postcolonial society and for vindicating visions of social regeneration’. Universalism must and can only be partisan. Edited by Gamal Abdel-Shehid and Sofia Noori, the collection includes essays by Stefan Kipfler, Patrick Taylor, Sophie Mcall, Gamal Abdel-Shehid, Jeremy M. Glick, Nigel C. Gibson, Jeff Noonan, Esteve Morera, Tyler Gasteiger, Olúfeṃ́i Táíẃò, Susan Dianne Brophy, Nergis Canefe, Chistoher Balcom, Lewis Gordon, and by Ato Sekyi-Otu himself.
CONTENTS
The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher is a riveting account of the bumpy first decade of the work life of Karim F Hirji, a retired Professor of Medical Statistics. Filled with a distinctive variety of eye-opening episodes, it covers lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, the life of a political exile in a remote rural area and the challenges of setting up from scratch a one-of-a-kind educational institute in Africa. With a style that seamlessly combines the personal with the general, Hirji provides an illuminating description of different aspects of the Tanzanian political, educational, economic and rural landscape during the 1970s. Starting with a commentary on teacher training, he concludes with a critical comparison of modern university education in the nation with that of the earlier era.
A clearly written, excellently illustrated, valuable and absorbing reflection upon a rich lifetime in teaching that deserves an international audience. Richard Pring, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Education, and Emeritus Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford.
The remarkable life of a principled Tanzanian educator told with emotion and humor. Peter Lawrence, Professor Emeritus of Development Economics, Keele University UK and Lecturer in Economics, University of Dar es Salaam, 1970-72.
Karim Hirji’s account of four decades of teaching in post-colonial Tanzania is a timely call on teachers to: “educate in ways that will promote equality and social justice”. Dr Anne Harley, Paulo Freire Project, Centre for Adult Education, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o with Rosa Hirji, holding a copy of The Travails of a Tanzania Teacher i.
A piercing historical explanation of poverty and inequality in African societies today and the social impact of resource-driven growth, Extracting Profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. Rising global prices in oil and minerals have produced a scramble for Africa’s natural resources, led by investment from U.S., European and Chinese companies, and joined by emerging economies from around the globe. African economies have reached new heights, even outpacing rates of growth seen in much of the rest of the world. Examined through the lens of case studies of the oil fields of the Niger River Delta, the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline and the East African infrastructure boom, this period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs, but has instead fueled the extraction of natural resources, profits accruing to global capital, and an increasingly wealthy African ruling class.
Extracting Profit argues that the roots of today’s social and economic conditions lie in the historical legacies of colonialism and the imposition of so-called “reforms” by global financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The chokehold of debt and austerity of the late twentieth century paved the way for severe assaults on African working classes through neoliberal privatization and deregulation. And while the scramble for Africa’s resources has heightened the pace of ecological devastation, examples from Somalia and the West African Ebola outbreak reveal a frightening surge of militarization on the part of China and the U.S.
Yet this “new scramble” has not gone unchallenged. With accounts of platinum workers’ struggles in South Africa, Nigerian labor organizing and pro-democracy upheavals in Uganda and Burkina Faso, Extracting Profit offers several narratives of grassroots organizing and protest, pointing to the potential for resistance to global capital and fundamental change, in Africa and beyond.
And in an updated Preface, the author analyses the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic and escalating climate emergency, as both the crises and resistance to extraction accelerate across the continent.
“Lee Wengraf’s Extracting Profit – Imperialism, Neoliberalism and The New Scramble for Africa is at once historical and contemporary. It unpacks ongoing resource crimes by analytically exposing its historical roots and pointing to ways by which the oppressed can cut off the bonds that lock in their subjugation.” —Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation
“Lee Wengraf provides an important reminder that Africa’s position within the world economy is heavily determined by its unequal insertion into the global capitalist system and ongoing manifestations of imperialism.” –James Chamberlain, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute
“Lee Wengraf’s Extracting Profit provides a breathtakingly detailed account and analysis of some of the major socioeconomic ills that have been plaguing Africa for centuries. Amongst the host of issues she tackles, arguably the most consequential are mass poverty in African societies, their indefensible economic inequalities and the steady plundering of the continent’s resources, starting from the slave-trade era up till the present-day.” –Remi Adekoya, Review of African Political Economy
“Extracting Profit offers several narratives of grassroots organizing and protest, pointing to the potential for resistance to global capital and fundamental change, in Africa and beyond.” –Developing Economics
“Evidently, this book is well-researched and it contributes to the expansion of the frontiers of Marxist scholarship on Africa’s development dilemma within the global capitalist order. This book lends credence to the pioneering works of such notable radical scholars as Andre Gunder Frank, Walter Rodney, and Samir Amin among several others. It should be read by students and teachers of political economy, development studies, Marxism and philosophy.” –Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
“Extracting Profit provides a great arch of scutiny from the earliest carve-up of the African continent, through colonialism, war, imperialism, to the recent neoliberal takeover. The book demonstrates the continued importance of Marxist analysis on the continent, asserting the centrality of class analysis and a project of revolutionary change. Wengraf provides us with a major contribution, that highlights contemporary developments and the role of China on the African continent that has perplexed and baffled scholars. An indispensable volume.” —Leo Zeilig, author of Frantz Fanon: The Militant Philosopher of Third World Revolution
“The history of resource frontiers everywhere is always one of lethal violence, militarism, empire amidst the forcing house of capital accumulation. Lee Wengraf in Extracting Profit powerfully reveals the contours of Africa’s 21st century version of this history. The scramble for resources, markets, and investments have congealed into a frightening militarization across the continent, creating and fueling the conditions for further political instability. Wengraf documents how expanded American, but also Chinese, presence coupled with the War on Terror, point to both the enduring rivalry among global superpowers across the continent and a perfect storm of resource exploitation. Wengraf offers up a magisterial synopsis of the challenges confronting contemporary Africa.” —Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley
“One of the most well-known stylized facts of Africa’s recent growth experience is that it has been inequality-inducing in ways that previous growth spurts were not. Lee Wengraf, in her new book Extracting Profit , expertly utilises the machinery of Marxian class analysis in making sense of this stylized fact. Along the way we learn much about Africa’s historical relationship with imperialism and its contemporary manifestations. This book should be required reading for all those who care about Africa and its future.” —Grieve Chelwa, Contributing Editor, Africa Is A Country
“In recent years countries in the African continent have experienced an economic boom—but not all have benefited equally. Extracting Profit is a brilliant and timely analysis that explodes the myth of “Africa Rising,” showing how neoliberal reforms have made the rich richer, while leaving tens of millions of poor and working class people behind. Lee Wengraf tells this story within the context of an imperial rivalry between the United States and China, two global superpowers that have expanded their economic and military presence across the continent. Extracting Profit is incisive, powerful, and necessary: If you read one book about the modern scramble for Africa, and what it means for all of us, make it this one.” —Anand Gopal, author, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes
“Thorough and thoughtful, Wengraf’s book has a radical depth that underscores its significance. It’s definitely a must-read for anyone who cherishes an advanced knowledge on the exploitation of Africa as well as the politics that undermines Africa’s class freedom.” —Kunle Wizeman Ajayi, Convener, Youths Against Austerity and General Secretary of the United Action for Democracy, Nigeria
“Extracting Profit is a very important book for understanding why the immense majority of the African population remain pauperised, despite impressive growth rates of mineral-rich countries on the continent. It continues the project of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. And in several ways, it also goes beyond it, capturing the changing dynamics of global capitalism 45 years after Rodney’s magnus opus.
In this book, Lee Wengraf debunks the myth of “Africa Rising” and the supposed expansion of an entrepreneurial middle-class, revealing “reforms” imposed by international financial institutions as mechanisms for fostering imperialism in an era of sharpening contradictions of the global capitalist economy. The adverse social, economic, political and environmental impact of these are elaborated on as a systemic whole, through the book’s examination of the sinews of capital’s expansion in the region: the extractive industries.
But, Wengraf does not stop at interrogating the underdevelopment of Africa. Her book identifies a major reason for the failures of national liberation projects: while the working masses were mobilised to fight against colonial domination, the leadership of these movements lay in the hands of aspiring capitalists, and intellectuals. The urgency of the need for a strategy for workers’ power internationally, she stresses correctly, cannot be overemphasized.
Reading Extracting Profit would be exceedingly beneficial for any change-seeking activist in the labour movement within and beyond Africa.” —Baba Aye, editor, Socialist Worker (Nigeria)
Stevphen Shukaitis
This is a wonderful and timely book, exploring issues around solitude, solidarity, and loneliness that are not as much discussed as they should be. Reading it reminds me of a wonderful Emma Goldman quote where she says the problem ‘that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.’ Goldman was wresting this over one hundred years ago, and that’s still very much the issue. Thankfully with this book we get some ways to thinking through that very question.—Stephen Shukaitis
Yusuf Serunkuma
Daraja Press’ recent publication, Left Alone: On Solitude and Loneliness amid Collective Struggle covers commendable ground on this discussion of the subject of loneliness and solitude in struggles supposedly meant to be engaged in collectively. The book is a massive collection of fairly short pieces, but heartfelt, mostly personalised contributions by writers and activists from across the world: Kenya, Argentina, Italy, the UK, the United States, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Germany and several others. The contributors are from different backgrounds ranging from poets, theatre, academia (with topics such as Marxist political thought, communism, racial discrimination), and general activism. They capture struggles in the academia and public intellectualism, in the trenches of authoritarianism, on the streets of the capitalist world or all of them together at once. The book playfully but powerfully incorporates several genres of literary expression, ranging from poetry, painting to prose writing.—Yusuf Serunkuma, Review of African Political Economy: https://roape.net/2023/07/25/you-are-not-alone-the-quest-for-solidarity/
Daraja Press
“The book raises an important question about what we are living through now, even if the contributors do not all answer it, and in some cases, I feel, avoid the question, wanting perhaps to talk about successes instead of dwelling on failures. This is, however, a good beginning. It is worth reading and connecting with some of the initiatives that help us to see distress and health as matters that are political and personal.” From book review in Asylum: Magazine for Radical Mental Healt and in Anti-Capitalist Resistance.