Modernity, Eurocentrism, and radical politics in Ethiopia, 1961–1991

Abstract

This article provides a critical reflection of radicalism in Ethiopia in the thirty years from 1961 to 1991. Radical politics among Ethiopians, both at home and abroad, grew out of the global radicalization of the 1960s. Radicalism in Ethiopia took one form: Marxism. The article highlights three main points. First, unlike any other place in the history of revolutions, Ethiopia went through three simultaneous revolutions during the 1974–1991 period: those in Eritrea, Tigray and Ethiopia at large. Second, almost all the military conflicts that consumed hundreds of thousands of lives in the country were conducted among political forces that were Marxist, or Marxist‐oriented. Third, Marxism was deeply embedded in the Eurocentric structure of knowledge. Ethiopian Marxism by extension was Eurocentric in its grasp of the Ethiopian situation. It rejected Ethiopia's past as being one reactionary pile of refuse badly in need of cleaning. The paper presents a critical reflection of this Eurocentric paradigm.