The overall objective of the book is to foreground feminist perspectives within the African decolonization debate, exposing the intersectional dynamic between forces such as racialism, capitalism and patriarchy. Power and resistance are the main themes of the volume. The prefix "de-" in the term "decolonization" connotes an active action of undoing or reversal. For Africa, the concept is heavily burdened with deep and complex histories, many of whose consequences are irreversible. The book speaks to the dismantling of the several layers of entrenched colonial structures, ideologies, narratives, identities and practices that pervade every aspect of our lives. And yet, Africa must think beyond de-construction; after all, the term itself forces us back, time and again, into the arms of the colonial. Ultimately, the African agenda for decolonization must involve re-constructions, re-clamations and re-assertions.Chapter One establishes the backdrop against which the rest of the book is built, followed by Chapter Two which elaborates on the decolonization processes. Chapter Three introduces African feminisms within the context of coloniality, exploring the landscape of women and gender studies on the continent before zeroing-in on the concept of intersectionality and its link to decolonization. The chapter closes with a discussion of a particular form of intersectionality which exposes the nature of human oppression within patriarchy and its connection to the exploitation of the natural environment. Here, Africa''s traditional relationship with nature is linked to the concept of Afro-ecofeminism. In Chapter Four I challenge the coloniality of the normative concepts of sex, gender and sexuality, empitomized in the case of South African Olympic Athlete, Caster Semenya. Through a juxtaposition of Semenya''s story with that of another Olympian, Michael Phelps, the chapter analyzes the colonial power dynamics at play in reinforcing dualistic gender norms and heteronormativity. Chapter Five of the book tackles the issue of legal pluralism, as understood and applied on the continent. Issues relating to customary law, popular justice and religious relativism are critically analyzed within the context of coloniality. Unpacking the concept of human rights is the main goal of the sixth chapter, particularly its relevance to gender justice, critiquing the very concept of "gender equality," rings hollow to the lived experiences of most African women. The African concept of Ubuntu is flagged as one possible alternative for women''s social justice. In Chapter Seven, the work turns to the subject matter of decolonizing the African Academy. What role do these institutions-whose roots and discourse are deeply embedded in colonial history-play in lifting the continent out of underdevelopment? After a brief discussion of internalized colonization, the chapter suggests five different ways that the African Academy can liberate itself from the yoke of colonialism. The penultimate chapter discusses the institution of the family in Africa using Uganda as a case study. It examines the role of the family in perpetuating hetero-patriarchal capitalism and discusses the efficacy of public interest litigation as a strategy for gender justice. The final chapter investigates the Pan-Africanist movement from a feminist point of view, with the goal of surfacing the work and ideas of women which have been invisibilized within this historical movement. An epilogue at the end of the book charts out Africa''s challenges in the age of big data and the new digital colonialism.
Morocco, 1359. The people of Fes are living in deprivation under the rule of an unjust sultan. Zakaria is a young Muslim scholar trying to sustain his family while committing to a rigid moral code. To provide for his sickly daughter, he sacrifices his principles and seeks a job at the palace, where he gradually becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, his conscience tormented by serving the sultan. In the hope of fleeing from the constraints of his world, he joins the quest of Muhammad ibn Yusuf, the exiled king of Granada, and his enchanting sister, Aisha, to reclaim their throne. Together, they set out to Andalusia on a journey that will call into question all of Zakaria'sbeliefs and change the history of the Iberian Peninsula for decades to come. Then He Sent Prophets is a novel for our moment. Set around the political struggles of fourteenth-century Granada, it is a deeply sympathetic and passionately human look at how one might make-or fail to make-moral, decent choices when living in a violent, indecent world. - Marcia Lynx Qualey, founding editor of ArabLitCircumstances present Zakaria with a position at the palace. [...] Can someone critical of the sultan and conscious of his corruption maintain integrity while serving at the palace? And what's the line between complete innocence and partial complicity? These are the questions at the crux of his ethical dilemma. [...] It's easy to make connections between Zakaria's inner dilemmas and those many of us grapple with today. - Hafsa Lodi in The New Arab
The book is a literary project with extra-literary objectives and implications. The texts combine various original writing styles to provoke the reader's creative imagination and makeauratic social space attainable. For realizing its main goal, through its creative aesthetics, the book debases normalized forms of social violence, exclusionism, and tribalism. While the book is inspired by a philosophical theory that emphasizes the significance of negativity in the face of unspoken social rules of exclusionism, it is meant to be universally relatable by an average reader regardless of her perceived and proclaimed identities. The philosophy I am referring to is postnihilism, which is theorized in a book published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2022 and listed above. "Auratic space" is a concept advanced in my other works, including a book published by the State University of New York Press in 2019 and one published by De Gruyter in 2024 (both are listed above). If more information is needed, I would be happy to submit a more detailed response in a separate document.
In the remnants of a fractured UK, England is on the brink of collapse where far-right militias rise to power. As Islamophobia and English nationalism ignite brutal violence, 19-year-old Marah Sultana is thrust into a fight for survival. Hunted by forces seeking control, she carries a secret powerful enough to change the course of the war-and the future of the world. In a world in which America's reign as a superpower has crumbled, its mercenaries now rule in its shadow,In The Second Coming, Tariq Mehmood delivers a searing, unflinching narrative that mirrors his own lifelong struggle for justice. This novel is not just fiction-it's a reflection of real-world battles. Mehmood's powerful storytelling compels readers to confront uncomfortable truths while offering a gripping, emotional journey of resistance and survival.A dystopian, desi mash-up of The Handmaid's Tale, Clockwork Orange, and V for Vendetta. The Second Coming warns of the dangers of right-wing nationalism and white supremacy and imagines where such hate could take England if it is not, somehow, nipped in the bud. -Paul Cochrane, journalist, Middle East EyeA must-read dystopian fantasy about race, religion, and love. Unmissable - Melvin Burgess, novelist, winner of the Carnegie Medal and the LA prize for Teenage FictionAn unforgettable novel, both vivid and nightmarishly plausible. - Peter Kalu, novelist, storyteller, playwright and poet.
Palestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani - educator, activist and social worker - was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem at gunpoint some eighty years ago. As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA's blind support of Israel's genocide of Palestinians. InPalestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics, Judaism is not Zionism, and to criticize the immoral, illegal actions of Israel is not antisemitism - especially since, as an Arab, Lababidi is a Semite himself. Using both poetry and prose, Lababidi reflects on how we are neither our corrupt governments nor our compromised media. Rather, we are partners in humanity, members of one human family. Not in Our Name will the unholy massacres of innocent Palestinians be committed (two-thirds of whom are women and children) nor in the false name of 'self-defense'. In turn, Lababidi reminds us that starvation as a weapon of war is both cruel and criminal, as is collective punishment. Palestine Wailinvites us to bear witness to this historical humanitarian crisis unfolding in real-time while not allowing ourselves to be deceived, intimidated or silenced. We are made aware of the basic human truths that no lasting peace can be founded upon profound injustice and that the jailor is never Free...
Two talented girls, who are best friends, have resolved to eat bananas every day. Together with their devotion to the truth and idealistic spirit, this addiction slowly propels them far into the lands of ideas and action. From reserved science students, they evolve to be steadfast activists for justice, and ultimately fi¬nd themselves behind bars, convicted of terrorism related charges. This action packed novel traces that evolution through a wide cast of characters that range from schoolmates, teachers, family members, street vendors to state officials and businessmen, both national and international It is a story based in Africa, of true friendship and the struggle for a decent human existence in the face of powerful adversaries. Though entirely fictional, it derives from existent and historical realities. Interspersed within its pages, you will find enticing entities from the plant kingdom as well as songs, photos and mathematical ideas relating to bananas. The supplementary material at the end provides an introduction to the factual basis of the story.
This book consists of an attempt to clarify the character of an emancipatory politics as what might be called a ''displaced exception'' in Africa both in political theory and in political practice, whereas state (political) subjectivities, by their very nature, reproduce given social placement. Already in 1961, in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon exhorts us (his posthumous comrades) to abandon Eurocentric thinking and to reconnect with dialectical thought in order as he puts it to ''work out new concepts'' and he insists that ''if we want humanity to advance a step farther ... then we must invent and we must make discoveries'' (Fanon, The Wretched p.254).
Two talented high school girls, who are also best friends, have resolved to eat bananas everyday. Together with their devotion to the truth and idealistic spirit, this addiction slowly propels them far into the lands of ideas and action. From reserved science students, they evolve to be steadfast fighters for justice, and ultimately find themselves behind bars, convicted of terrorism related charges. This action packed novel traces that evolution through a wide cast of characters that range from school mates, teachers, family members, street vendors to state officials and businessmen, both national and international. It is a story, based in Africa, of true friendship and the struggle for a decent human existence in the face of powerful adversaries. Though otherwise entirely fictional, it derives from existent and historical realities. Interspersed within its pages, you will find enticing entities from the plant kingdom as well as song, photos and mathematical ideas relating to bananas
The key lessons we drew in the two earlier books in this series, Religion, Politics and Society (RPS 2022) and Religion, Eugenics, Science and Mathematics (RESM 2023), were: Historically, religions have supported and opposed injustice. No religion is more holy than any other. Conflict between religions is driven more by social, political and economic factors than scriptural differences. Morality can exist without religious belief, but science or secularism does not guarantee morality. The basic philosophy and approach of religion and science differ, yet they need not be socially antagonistic forces. Religion and secularism can coexist peacefully. Religions, secularism, and science can cooperate to counter the damage wrought on our planet by profit- driven neoliberal capitalism and hyper-consumerism. RPS (2022) also presents a schema to promote joint, morally ennobling engagement between the varied faith traditions and between religions and secular forces. Its tenets are:Declaration of spiritual equality, demarcation of common ethical principles, separation of religion and state, demarcation of the roles of religion and science in education, freedom of dress, fostering principled tolerance, acceptance of faith-based conversions, promotion of gender equality, non-discrimination over sexual preference, and regular joint celebrations and interfaith prayers. (RPS 2022).These tenets were augmented in RESM (2023) by asserting the fundamental right of religions and science to exist and freely propagate themselves. Yet, at the same time, I suggested that scientists should be free to criticize religion and that people of faith should be free to criticize science. Religion should not intrude into public policy and education. Scientific and Aa. People of science, religion, and secularism should abide by the highest standards of morality to promote human flourishing and planetary welfare. Only the combined force of common people, religious and secular, stretching across nations and firmly committed to social and economic justice, promises the hope of attaining a humane, tolerant social order. (RESM 2023). The coronavirus pandemic dramatically transformed people-to-people interactions in families, communities, work, and educational places. Public social gatherings were curtailed, relatives did not visit one another, teachers kept a distance from their students, classes were held online, employees worked from home, recreational travel plummeted, supermarkets opened on a restricted entry basis, and so on. Washing hands, social distancing, and mask-wearing became the norm in public venues. International relationships and religious practices were affected drastically as well.The main objective of this book is to examine how religions and people of faith were affected by the coronavirus pandemic and how their reactions altered its course. We also assess the validity of the above-noted conclusions drawn in RPS (2022) and RESM (2023) for the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, we ponder on the following queries:Question 1: How did the coronavirus pandemic evolve in selected nations? Question 2: Was religious belief an obstacle or a positive factor in understanding the scientific basis of the coronavirus pandemic? Question 3: Did religious institutions, leaders and laity facilitate or block the implementation of the official pandemic control measures? Question 4:Was the role played by religion in the coronavirus pandemic affected by historical, social, economic, and political factors? Question 5: How did secularism operate in the coronavirus pandemic? Question 6: Did the coronavirus pandemic enhance or undermine religiosity? We explore these queries in relation to the four major faiths (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), some minor religions, and secularism.
In recent years, the apology has become an important feature of politics. States are asking their own citizens or the citizens of other countries for forgiveness. ''Oh, sorry that we rounded up people in West Africa, shipped them across the Atlantic and sold them as slaves''. ''Oh, sorry that we convicted homosexuals as criminals.'' ''Oh, sorry that we burnt so many women as witches.'' Sometimes the issue arises as a demand for an apology. Thus, Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president, has asked the Spanish government to apologise for the conquista. The zapatistas, on the other hand, said of their recent trip to Spain that they were not going to ask for an apology. How do we understand the rise of the public apology and how do we relate to it politically? In a moment of severe social crisis, the institutional acts of apology and forgiveness could be theorised as a specific type of ritual which aims to respond to public anger and to reestablish social cohesion. In doing so, the state legitimise
Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War brings together ten years of writing published on Warscapes magazine through the lens of gender and advances a new paradigm of war writing. War is always, ultimately, fought upon the backs of women, often under the pretense of saving them. Yet, along the way, the brutalities unleashed on women during wartime remain relentless. In this collection, insurgency emerges in the raw and meticulous language of witnessing, and in the desire to render the space of conflict in radically different ways. There are no paeans to courageous soldiers here, nor pat nationalist rhetoric, nor bravado about saving lives. These perspectives on war come out of regions and positions that defy stereotypical war reportage or the expected war story. They disobey the rules of war writing and do not subordinate themselves to the usual themes and tropes that we have become so used to reading. Instead, Insurgent Feminisms advances a new paradigm of war writing. These perspectives on war come out of regions and positions that defy stereotypical war reportage or the expected war story. Insurgent Feminisms comprises reportage, fiction, memoir, poetry and conversations from over sixty writers and includes contributions by Nathalie, Handal, Anne Nivat, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Suchitra Vijayan, Chika Unigwe, Bélen Fernández, Uzma Falak, Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek, Gaiutra Bahadur, Robtel Neajai Pailey, Sumana Roy and Lina Mounzer, among several others.
The Portuguese translation of ''Not Bad for a N-, No?'' / ''Pas mal pour un N-, n''est-ce pas?''. Written during the seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations of the publication of Frantz Fanon''s Peau noir, masques blancs (''Black Skin, White Masks''), Not Bad for a N-, No? offers reflections on the circumstances of the publication of this classic work with Fanon''s insights on what he called the attempted ''murder of man'' and the urgent need for humanity to become ''actional.''
The Weaving Our Stories: Return To Belonging Anthology includes poetry, essays, visual art, and narratives penned by authors and artists identifying as Black, Indigenous, and people of color from Hawai¿i and beyond. While our contributors span a diverse spectrum of experiences and identities, they all share a common commitment to individual and collective well-being. Our contributors astutely showcase how their expressions of resistance and liberation, whether through visual art or written text, align with one or more of the central themes of Weaving Our Stories: resistance through cultural memory, accountability, resisting false binaries, and countering Hegemony. In tandem with the community collection of stories that revolve around resistance, this anthology also highlights the remarkable achievements of our six accomplished Black youth organizers. These young individuals dedicated a year to the Weaving Our Stories Youth Series during the pandemic, delving into the power and relevance of storytelling in our journey of resistance and liberation. Each of the six youth activists overviews their Community Impact Design Projects by proposing interventions that harness our resistance themes and our three Pillars of Liberation-namely, the institutions, structures/methodology, and people who can
The collection has a dose of meditative poems and others that reflect on the colonial and neoliberal foundations that permit willful disconnect from nature and allow rapacious extractivism. They also speak to the criminalization of environmental defenders and burdening of victims with survival struggles with no life boughs. These are poems that call for action.Truth be told, I never thought I would write another volume of poetry after the last, I will not Dance to Your Beat (2011). The reason was that my previous volumes were reactive to circumstances of the times. Patriots and Cockroaches (1992) was a reaction to the socio-political corruption that had engulfed Africa and dimmed the enthusiasm that had been built by the years of struggle for independence. Whereas we thought we were stepping into a post colonial era, what we stepped into was a vicious neo colonial times. The next collection, Poems on the Run (1995) was a reaction to military autocracy and the repression that followed. The volume was literally written underground. This was followed by Intercepted (1998) all written while detained at Kalakuta Republic of Alagbon Close. We Thought it was Oil But it was Blood (2002) responded to two things primarily - extractivism and the accompanying human and environmental rights abuses in the Niger Delta and elsewhere. The massive erosion of biodiversity and attacks on food sovereignty through the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our agricultural system inspired I Will not Dance to your Beat.What you have in your hands, or on your screens, is a compilation that is largely more meditative than the previous collections. There are moments of reflection on the colonial and neoliberal foundations that permit a willful disconnection from nature and the resultant destructive extractivism.Some of the poems came through conversations and poetry writing sessions with Peter Molnar, Maryam al-Khawaja - Rafto Human Rights laureates and Salil Tripathi, a member of the board of PEN International, in August 2017. The sessions held at a beautifully rustic location in Celleno, Italy, were documented on celluloid by the duo of Maria Galliana Dyrvik and Anita Jonsterhaug Vedå of SMAU, a multimedia firm in Norway. Poetic relationship with Maria and Anita has continued over the years and their work continues to inspire more and more poems.We have also had time to ponder on the criminalization of environmental defenders and burdening of vic
We made this coloring book in order to expose African children to their authentic history. Malcolm X told us decades ago that we had to take responsibility for our children's education because he understood that our people had been intentionally robbed of their true history. We can no longer rely on institutions to educate our children and must take it upon ourselves to equip our children with the truth so that they can bring a positive contribution to our people's struggle for justice and freedom. This book highlights some of the key figures within the struggle to achieve Pan-Africanism which is the total liberation and unification of Africa. All of the brave women and men featured in this book were Pan-Africanists. They understood that people of African descent throughout the world faced the same issues and therefore had to unite in order to overcome those issues. We hope this book can inspire the next generation of African children to become Pan-Africanists and to join the struggle to liberate and unite Africa.
This work consists of 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 that 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. 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 nation
For the past 10 years, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) has been on the front line of the struggle for environmental justice, climate justice and food sovereignty in Africa and the globe. It has been a decade of non-stop probing of the exploitation of resources, peoples and nations, which has given rise to numerous environmental and climate injustices. HOMEF has had a decade of witnessing and standing against the injustice, the powers and structures (industries and policies) suffocating the rights of the people to a healthy environment and standing with the neglected to take charge of their once self-managed food and agricultural systems. The struggle has necessitated the reawakening of communities' consciousness to the injustices that besiege them and to their 'people power' - power to be utilized in seeking the desired change.mPolitics of Turbulent Waters is a compendium of selected articles in the 36 issues of the Eco-instigator published from 2013 to 2022. The Eco-instigator is yet another tool used by HOMEF to pull together thoughts and reports of activities that advance environmental justice and food sovereignty. Issue by issue, these thoughts and reports flow from within HOMEF and other environmental/climate justice and food sovereignty advocates from across Africa and the globe.They form this rich assemblage (Politics of turbulent waters) to commemorate HOMEF's 10th anniversary. The title of the book is one of Nnimmo Bassey's (the director of HOMEF) numerous articles that have graced some pages of the different issues of the Eco-instigator. The article cum title encapsulates the messages that the book intends to convey to you, the reader. It crystallizes the dire condition of Africa and its waters and the power imbalance together with the spatial disposition that plunged the continent into the calamitous environmental situation it faces. It speaks of the politics of economic development and market fundamentalism that avows to maintain the status quo in terms of destructive exploitation of Africa's marine and other natural resources.
This book looks at the anti-capitalist economy and the organization of social relations in the context of the revolution and autonomy of Rojava (Kurdistan-Syria). It questions both the limitations and the historical problems of the phenomenon of revolution, and the conflicts and contradictions that emerge in this process. It also draws from the conflicts and contradictions the author has consistently felt as a "political subject" who wants to change the world, especially through her experience in the Kurdish struggle and the Kurdish Movement. For this reason, every question she raises and attempts to answer in this book-about the Kurds, Rojava, and the world in general, involves what she says is her own subjectivity. The idea and dreams of revolution have existed since humans created systems of domination. Indeed, revolution, meaning the liberation from systems of domination, has undoubtedly been one of the most discussed subjects in history. There have been moments when the possibility of revolution has been clearer, and there have also been certain agreements on what it is and how to get there, but it has never been something completely definable. This continues to be true today. This book does not intend to define this great phenomenon, rather it looks at the revolutionary practices that create emancipating realities and embraces revolution as an undefined, contradictory and dynamic process. Although the rulers have traditionally written history, the history of social struggles has been and is still being created by many revolutionary and transformational processes. The future is being shaped based on desired revolutions and the struggles that, in turn, transform their actors, the people. Therefore, the desire and quest of the Kurdish people for liberation from the colonial rule of the nation-states of the Middle East-the subject of this book-has always been directly linked to the phenomenon of revolution.
This exploration of the usefulness and threat of the Internet is unique in academic research into political communication. Mainstream research has tended to address and capitalize on the political and economic power of mass media conglomerates rather than address the possibilities of political resistance and justice. This research is centred on political justice rather than so-called balanced academic discourse. The book bridges the gap between academic research and radical grassroots activism by providing a theoretical introduction and conclusion and by creating a medium that encourages researchers and activists to engage with one another and to be both critical and creative. The contributors have been encouraged to produce political essays, creative, in-depth feature writing, narrative or literary journalism or reportage rather than academic articles - thereby engaging the minds, hearts, and imaginations of their readers. The book uses a unique method of bringing all these minds an
Members of the Organic Intellectuals Network are active organizers in the struggle to achieve social justice. They have experienced the contradictions of the NGO discourse and, just like others before them, have found themselves in the struggle versus survival dilemma. To get a clear picture of our contemporary struggles and the despair of NGOs operating in the proletarian movement, comrades decided to reflect, study, and analyze Prof. Issa Shivji's book Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa. For the authors, these analyses and reflections are based on personal experiences in their day-to-day organizing. In summarizing the authors' observations regarding the impacts of NGOs in organizing, this book calls into question the fundamental question, 'why do NGOs exist?' To answer this question, the authors provide a historical chronology of the resistance in Kenya, Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa, relating those to the subjective factors in existence at every period. Through this, a scientific relationship can be drawn between social movements and NGOs in our current epoch. From their experiences with NGOs, the authors, representing grassroots social movements, highlight the dangers associated with donor funding. Often, donor funding ends abruptly after making people dependent on them, creating severe strain on grassroots organizations. The more one engages with NGOs, the softer one becomes to critique NGOs, particularly in highlighting their relationship to imperialism. Further, NGOs usually help in driving reforms. However, they play no part in revolutionary work. As a result, they merely preserve the present order and help exacerbate the frustrations arising from massive inequality in our society. In the long run, NGOs play a critical role in stifling the development and independence of grassroots social movements. This publication also includes two previously published essays by Prof Issa G Shivji, Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa, &, Reflections on NGOs in Tanzania: What We Are, What We Are Not and What We Ought To Be.
Left Alone brings together 13 authors and 6 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, a 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, 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 shaping and at the same time resulting 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 capacities 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 the comrade-readers into what will ideally be a deeply stimulating and enabling personal-political engagement with the texts and images hailing from countries such as Argentina, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Guinea-Bissau/Portugal, Turkey/Kurdistan, Jamaica, Italy, the UK, Germany and the USA. As Lena Grace Anyuolo from Kenya puts it, "My sisters and brothers, Come, Let us gather, To lay the structures for a joyous existence."
There was one partition of the land in 1947. Harsh Mander believes that another partition is underway in our hearts and minds.How much of this culpability lies with ordinary people? What are the responsibilities of a secular government, of a civil society, and of a progressive majority? In Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India, human rights and peace worker Harsh Mander takes stock of whether the republic has upheld the values it set out to achieve and offers painful, unsparing insight into the contours of hate violence. Through vivid stories from his own work, Mander shows that hate speech, communal propaganda and vigilante violence are mounting a fearsome climate of dread, that targeted crime is systematically fracturing our community, and that the damage to the country's social fabric may be irreparable. At the same time, he argues that hate can indeed be fought, but only with solidarity, reconciliation and love, and when all of these are founded on fairness.Ultimately, this meticulously researched social critique is a rallying cry for public compassion, conscience and justice, and a paean to the resilience of humanity.
This is a collection of observations and meditations by Professor Emeritus (York University, Toronto) and philosopher Ato Sekyi-Otu on events, issues, people and ideas culled from recent history and the world, from the US and Canada to Ghana. If there is a persistent thread in these entries, it is this: Virtually all of them testify to the ironic truth of the saying that there is no place like home, no place, that is to say, which looks like the lodestar called home or comes close to approximating its promise of being a just space of human flourishing. Most of the entries are, therefore, harsh, particularly those on the USA. That is because that nation, in his view, has, in recent history, made a major contribution to rendering the world and every homestead we inhabit unhomely and sabotaging attempts to better it. But no one or place is spared, certainly not the author's native land, Ghana. Canada appears intermittently in these pages in rather fragmentary and contrastive observations. That paucity of comments may be taken to be the complement the author pays to Canada as a place of relative civility and glimmers of decency in a mad and cruel world. It is a short work of predominantly gloomy pictures. But there are a few countervailing images and invocations of hope here and there. There are 166 entries of unequal lengths arranged around 14 headings. These epigrams are contrapuntal variations on the philosopher's searing imprecation and visionary invocation: unfinished ode, resounding with intermittent fury, to the dawn of human existence set free from all tyrannizing enclosures.
In his introduction to this new edition of From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain, Mahmood Mamdani reminds us that long before 1972, most Ugandan 'Asians' had already been disenfranchised by law, both Ugandan and British. Despite a global industry that insists otherwise, Uganda Asians are a poor fit as victims: there was no large-scale loss of life during the expulsion, nor were there massacres of Asians, only of 'indigenous' peoples. Asians in Uganda, as in East or Southern Africa, he argues, were immigrants, not settlers: immigrants are prepared to be a part of the political community, whereas settlers 'create their own political community, a colony, more precisely, settler colonialism.' Mamdani insists that there is no single Asian legacy. there are several and they are contradictory. The Asian question in Uganda remains, but it is no longer the original Asian question. But it does allow us to think more broadly. Just as US law recognizes African Americans as Americans of African descent, so too must those of Asian origin in Africa consider themselves, and be considered, Asian Africans. It is in his bittersweet and touching book on the Asian expulsion from Uganda that one can trace the beginnings of author and intellectual Mahmood Mamdani's world-view.. ... In From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain Mamdani offers portraits of people reduced to a vegetative existence in refugee camps, feeling the burden of not being fluent in English and struggling with the uncomfortably cold weather. Not surprisingly, these few months played a pivotal role in shaping Mamdani's theoretical and political leanings, and it is here that one can locate his preoccupation with the formation of racial, ethnic and class identities during the colonial era and his overarching concern with issues of citizenship.
Cultural Resistance in India has a rich and long history - right from the days in which the British ruled over the country. Protest music occupies a central position in the organizational fabric of contemporary Indian progressive and revolutionary politics. Cultural organizations such as Indian People's Theatre Association and JANAM, have been crucial parts of the progressive movement in the country, along with martyrs such as Safdar Hashmi who was killed by the hooligans appointed by the then-ruling party in 1989 while attempting to put up a theatrical resistance to the dominant ideological paradigm of the times. Cultural politics has today emerged as an integral dimension of the vibrant student politics that characterize the progressive bloc in the country's political spectrum. With rising attacks on the democratic and progressive nature of these spaces, forms of cultural resistance have become an integral component of the resistance that these spaces have been putting up to the neofascist regime that rules over India. This is the cultural and political junction at which the current work draws its relevance. Drawing from insights gained from over 25 interviews with cultural activists, the book analyses the deep connections between culture and other forms of resistance. "Singing to Liberation is a highly provocative and timely work by Suddhabrata Deb Roy. The struggles, crises, violence, and resistant movements inside the university campuses in India have been openly spoken out without any unnecessary jargon and rhetoric. Each and every page of this book is a powerful archive of sociopolitical crises, censorships, and bloodshed that India is currently experiencing" - Sayan Dey, Author, Green Academia (Routledge) and Performing Memories and Weaving Archives (Anthem Press)
"Think global, act local!" "Be the change you want to see in the world!" "Every little bit counts!" We can all get on board with such sentiments, right? That, of course, is exactly what corporate spin-masters across the world are banking on. By weaponizing such seemingly innocuous yet powerful narratives, change becomes a matter of personal choice, something each of us must slave away at day by day: switching off lightbulbs to save the environment or exercising to shed the weight we've gained from consuming junk food. All the while, the corporate welfare tap continues to flow, with over $6 trillion worth of annual subsidies dished out to industries that directly contribute to the deaths of over 5.5 million people each year through diabetes, road deaths, global warming, and other crises. But such framing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the corporate disinformation playbook. This playbook is the dark matter of activist work: the unseeable element shaping harmful spin across all issues. It has never been reverse engineered - until now.In Dark PR, Grant Ennis - drawing on his decades of experience working in the environmental, philanthropy, and public health sectors - reveals exactly how multinationals go about hoodwinking and manipulating us. In doing so, he lifts the lid on the nine devious frames contained within the cross-industry corporate disinformation playbook: through denialism, normalization, victim-blaming, multifactorialism, and a variety of other tried-and-tested tactics, corporations divert citizens' attention away from the real causes of global problems, leading them into counter-productive blind-alley "solutions" like ethical consumerism and divestment. Sadly, though, buying Fair Trade chocolate has not and never will save the world. Only by collectively organizing to lobby our governments can we break this destructive cycle of lies and deadly incentives and reclaim control of our lives.
The struggle against direct colonialism by millions of people across Africa and Asia was fought with a view to the creation of a new world, one that would be free from the horrors of colonialism. Nowhere was a struggle waged on anything but hope and absolute faith in the eventual defeat of the colonial masters, some of who, like the British and French, connived and massacred in the vain hope of holding on to their possessions. The anti-colonial struggles not only laid bare the utter brutality of the coloniser, especially in their dying days, it also showed that the colonised had no choice but to unite within their respective countries but also across the continents against their common enemies. This desire would force them to come together in Bandung in 1955. The dreamers of this new destiny were clear, then, that not only was it necessary to take back control of the human and material resources from colonial powers but also to reclaim the past and culture as well and get back not only the land that had been stolen but the voice as well. Those fighting with guns, with people or with songs were also in search of a bridge that they could cross so as to find each other. Following Bandung, this indignation would resonate in a general desire for South-South unity and would lead to the largest-ever gathering of Afro-Asian Writers. This was the first time so many African and Asian writers had gathered together, and it was all the more remarkable that many of the writers did not speak a common language other than at of common experience, a common history of Africa and Asia as well as a common history of resistance in Africa and Asia. This book is a collection of poems by poets, leaders of liberation movements, activists, journalists and others involved in the struggle for freedom. They are drawn from Lotus Magazine and from The Call.
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