Discourse in crisis: situating slavery, jihad and military intervention in northern Mali

Abstract

French discourses narrowly represented the occupation of Timbuktu, Mali as a product of the proliferation of global Jihadi-Salafist networks and, consequently, as a threat to European security. However, revealing perceptions of their ongoing and systematic political economic marginalization, internally displaced persons and refugees from Timbuktu tended to racialize the occupation, distinguishing it as an attempt to (re-)enslave certain northern Malian populations. Both interpretations creatively highlighted certain themes while silencing others. Nonetheless, by selectively characterizing the occupation of the north, the French press reproduced hegemonic global discourses that largely overlooked the roles of (post)colonial domination in regional politics and justified neocolonial intervention. In so doing, these discourses have reinforced continued misconceptions of global geopolitics, and have therefore sustained imperialist knowledge-practices.