Decolonization Struggles Research Articles

The “Fate of Minorities” in the Early Afro-Asian Struggle for Decolonization

Abstract This article explores the significance of minority rights to postcolonial internationalism by examining an emerging Afro-Asian collective at the United Nations in the late 1940s. As postcolonial nations became UN member-states, they fostered transnational solidarity through the Arab-Asian group, a predecessor of the Afro-Asian bloc, and constructed an anti-imperial project that directly engaged with the making of the new international human rights system. However, the Arab-Asian group did not advance minority rights in their struggle for decolonization at the UN. Instead, they favored a gradual path toward formal self-rule and the recognition of national self-determination that worked within the international order, most clearly expressed through the removal of a minority rights article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Decolonization Struggles at the United Nations: The Question of Algeria, 1955-1961

AbstractAlthough national self-determination emerged as an international legal norm with the formation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, its implementation continued to be resisted by European colonial powers for decades after. This raises the following question: how was European colonial rule challenged at the UN? This article contends that existing accounts of decolonization have not fully theorized the processes through which colonialism was contested at the UN. It fills this gap by demonstrating the critical role of argumentation, narrativization and discursive struggles through deploying the crucial “Question of Algeria” that was debated between 1955 and 1961. It demonstrates that the Algerian question yielded two opposing discourses—an anticolonial internationalist discourse and a metrocentric civilizational discourse—with both drawing on distinct ideas about human rights and development. The analysis explains the eventual triumph of the former as states increasingly rallied behind the Algerian cause.

Zones of Occult Instability: The Birth of the Novel in Africa

Zones of Occult Instability: The Birth of the Novel in Africa

Author Response

Author Response

The Black Pacific and the Shapes of Global Black Power

The Black Pacific and the Shapes of Global Black Power

Decolonial Struggles in Indigenous Language Education in Neoliberal Times: Identities, Ideologies, and Activism

The importance of Indigenous languages and epistemologies for sustainable development, equitable society, and a green environment is acknowledged by a significant body of literature (e.g., Green et...

Politics, (Re)Possession and Resurgence of Student Protests in South African Universities

ABSTRACT In post-apartheid South Africa, one of the central analytical questions is to do with the continuity of protests, in particular student movement protests that are highly driven by social, economic and political conditions in the present. In a social and political context of student protests, student movement is considered a threat to the state and a target for state violence. In this paper, we assert that student movement in contemporary South Africa is a social and political space in which we can begin to engage with and understand issues of dispossession and repossession as re-emerging struggles in South Africa. We also assert that student protests should be understood as real or perceived emancipatory terrain of transformation within and beyond the university campus, but also as the engine that engages with the unfinished struggle for decolonisation and transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. We draw on and engage with decolonial thought as our analytical lens through which to unpack and understand student protests in South Africa.

Modulating Eventfulness: How Liaison Policing Strategies Mitigate Potentiality in Indigenous Land Defence Organising

AbstractLiaison policing strategies are increasingly deployed as Canada’s frontline response to Indigenous‐settler land disputes. A fusion of pre‐emptive interventions, intelligence gathering, and best practices in public order and community policing, contemporary liaison strategies have important implications for Indigenous self‐determination and decolonial struggles. Yet, despite their rapid proliferation, we know little about how liaison strategies are enrolled as a technique of settler colonial governance. I begin addressing this gap through a four‐year case study tracking how a multi‐agency liaison policing assemblage undermined an urban Indigenous land reclamation in the city of Ottawa, Canada’s national capital. I show how liaison strategies worked by constraining the terrain of manoeuvre for radical organising while simultaneously facilitating Indigenous engagement in state‐sanctioned processes of recognition and accommodation. Arguing that the literature on public order policing inadequately theorises the relationship between liaison policing and settler colonial power, I propose “modulating eventfulness” as a more apposite conceptual grammar.

Rethinking Russian Foreign Policy towards Africa: Prospects and Opportunities for Cooperation in New Geopolitical Realities

Diplomatic ties between Africa and the Russian Federation dates back to Africa’s dark decades of collective struggle for continental decolonization and severance in relations with its European colonizers. There is a vestige of historical evidence to support the claim that Russia had contributed immensely to this struggle in the early 1950s. Historically, the Russian Revolution of 1917 set the stage for the strenuous global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. This revolution, subsequently, inspired leaders of the nationalist movements on the African continent like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, among others to champion the fight for the liberation of Africa. Between 1945 and 1991, international politics was in a hegemonic geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective global allies. This power struggle polarized the world into the contrasting ideologies of Capitalism and Socialism. Some African nationalists situated the crusade for self-rule within the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union. The collapse of the USSR on 26 December 1991 and the fall of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989 heralded a new era in global politics. This paper is on the assumption that three decades into the demise of the Soviet Union, it is now time to reflect on the influence of Russia in international politics, with particular focus on Moscow’s foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa. This rethinking is crucial because of the criticism that Russia’s renewed interest in Africa is a grand strategy to dominate affairs of the continent, rather than a search for new opportunities for economic cooperation and geopolitical alliances.

Nyerere in Eyes of his Critics

There are a number of positive ideals about Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in the literatures. His ideals includes among others his devotion for peace, security, unity and democracy. However, the ideals do not limit the visibility of his negative traits. This paper specially examines the criticisms against Nyerere. The paper looks at the portrayal of Nyerere in number literatures from his critics. It examines the literatures against Nyerere in number of issues including his role in the decolonization struggle, the situation of democracy and individual freedom during his reign and his position towards Islamic religion and Zanzibar revolution. The paper establishes that most of criticisms against Nyerere are not refuted because supporters and critics talk about different things. Whereas his supporters put forward his role in building the nation, critics focus his in his economic failure and deprivation of individual freedom in Tanzania.

Decolonizing Settler Public Address: The Role of Settler Scholars

AbstractWe argue that decolonization must be a future direction for the study of rhetoric and public address. Settler rhetoricians must not only recognize that the field is founded on settler colonialism but also commit to an ongoing process of unsettling the field and making both mundane and extraordinary tangible engagements with decolonization. What the field needs is to begin charting a path for all rhetoricians to participate with decolonization struggles, particularly settler scholars. Drawing from research from Indigenous scholars and Native American and Indigenous studies, we focus on tactics for settler scholars to engage with this important research trajectory. This essay teases out the distinctions between theories of postcoloniality, decoloniality, and decolonization; highlights the active role rhetoric plays in settler colonialism; and lays out tactics for settler rhetorical scholars to enact forms of accountability and responsibility in their research, at their universities, and in the field of rhetoric.

Postcolonial casualties: ‘Born-frees’ and decolonisation in South Africa

ABSTRACT In South Africa, ‘decolonisation’ has re-emerged as a theme for identity, economic and cultural contestations among the youth. In this, the celebratory rhetoric of rainbow nationalism of post-apartheid utopia is confronted head-on. From a theoretical discourse of the problematics of ‘the postcolonial’ this inquiry engages a critical question: if decolonisation is to undo colonial (and apartheid) economic, political and cultural legacies, to what extent has this been achieved for the South African youth? The struggle for political decolonisation (freedom) was such a long and painful journey that the wounded still bear the scars. But political freedom is an imagined trophy that newly independent states parade as decolonisation; cultural and economic colonisations are more indelible to unsettle. Drawing from public data, social statistical information, media narratives and academic literature, I argue that the post-apartheid youth, although ‘born-free’, remain victims of coloniality and the difficult process of decolonisation.

Canada’s ecological political economy and the climate crisis: an interview with Dr. Laurie Adkin

Dr. Laurie Adkin is one of Canada’s pre-eminent environmental political theorists. In this wide-ranging interview, she draws connections across the political, economic, and personal challenges involved in taking on a capitalist political economy bent on the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources in the face of climate destabilization. Adkin discusses why it is important for concerned researchers and citizens to continue to speak out about these issues, and makes the links between environmental activism, decolonization struggles, and democratization.

Subject/ive bodies: the resistance poetics of Chrystos and Mahadai Das

Recent criticism has considered how literary texts harness historical and ideological forces in the representation of the body. However, much of that scholarship focuses on hegemonic structures such as Western medicine, post-human technologies or colonial race theories. This article looks at how two poets from the Americas – Indigenous North American Chrystos (Menominee) and Mahadai Das from Guyana – express representations of the body from a position of marginalisation to emphasise the connections between individual subjectivity and social transformation. I discuss the body as theme for producing a resistance poetry that directly connects desire, disaffection, sexuality and mourning to decolonisation. I perform close readings that emphasise the linkages between intimate relations and social movements. Chrystos and Das speak to a constitutive divide in post-colonial studies between the personal and political in what is called resistance literature. By centring deeply personal perspectives on decolonial struggle within a figurative context that encourages contemplation and complexity, these poets contribute to a diversification of resistance theory that addresses gender, anti-racist, sexual diversity and other movements of the last few decades.

Reshaping Spirituality: Indigenous Decolonial Struggles for Justice in Mexico

Departing from Christian spiritualities, even those emerging from feminist theologians and Latin American eco feminist liberation theologies, the indigenous women´s movements started to propose their own “indigenous spirituality.” In some key meetings like the “First Summit of Indigenous Women of the Americas” and at other later meetings, their basic documents, final declarations, collective proposals have a spiritual component that departs from the influences of the largely Christian Catholic background of the country. Their discourses, demands, and live presentations have also expressed this religious background. Through several years of interactions and sharing with women in the indigenous worlds of Mexico, the author has systematized a series of characteristics that emanate from a particular cosmovision and cosmogony. These religious references to an indigenous spirituality are inspired on ancestral references re-created today as the women struggle for social justice. The inspiration for their social justice fight is often anchored in these beliefs and practices. It is a reference to worlds of ritual, liturgy, and collective worship that—although being often attired in Catholic and Christian imagery—reveal a deep disjuncture with Christianity and affirm their epistemic particularity. Working from these “cracks of epistemic differences” (Mignolo 2006) the author presents them as a de-colonial effort. Women are actively proposing to recapture ancestral spiritualities to decolonize both the religious universes they were forced to adopt during the historical colonial invasion as well as from the influences of a neo-colonial feminist frame for gender equality.

Arsenal of the Global South: Yugoslavia’s Military Aid to Nonaligned Countries and Liberation Movements

AbstractYugoslavia’s military internationalism was one of the most practical expressions of the country’s policy of nonalignment. Beginning with Algeria in the 1950s until its demise in the 1990s, Yugoslavia was an ardent supporter of liberation movements and revolutionary governments in Africa and Asia. This article argues that Yugoslav military internationalism was at the heart of Yugoslavia’s efforts to reshape the post-1945 global order and represented an extension of Yugoslav revolution abroad. Military aid was an expression of personal identification of Yugoslavia’s “greatest generation” with decolonization struggle. However, Yugoslav military aid to other countries went beyond a single foreign policy issue. Yugoslav military internationalism touched upon many other issues that included problems related to finances, economic development, the acquisition and transfer of military technology, relations with the superpowers, national security, ideology and politics, and prestige and status in global affairs. By the end of the 1970s, with the departure of the World War II generation and the looming economic crisis, Yugoslav military involvement in the Global South became increasingly driven by economic reasons. Former Yugoslav republics, after a short hiatus in the 1990s during the wars for Yugoslavia’s succession, are still present in the arms trade in the Global South.

The Ricardian State: Carlos Calvo and Latin America’s Ambivalent Origin Story for the Age of Decolonization

Abstract This article explores Latin America’s place in discussions about decolonization through the work of the Argentine international lawyer Carlos Calvo. It argues that while Calvo was an early proponent of Latin American sovereignty and a subtle critic of European empires, he worked within a framework that differed remarkably from that of post-World War II decolonization struggles. Most notably, Calvo’s defense of Latin American sovereignty was rooted in a liberal anti-imperialism which emphasized the important role of Latin American states as the bulwarks of free markets rather than the role of the state in curtailing markets in favor of national development. In the final section of this article I suggest some ways in which highlighting the history of liberal anti-imperialism might help reframe some of the conundrums present in recent histories of the more renowned era of Asian and African decolonization.

The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur'an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication

AbstractThe emergence of Islamic television in the Arab Middle East is usually explained as part of a Saudi media empire fueled by neoliberal petro-dollars. This article, by contrast, takes seriously the role ideas played alongside changing political economies in the origins of the world’s first Islamic television channel, Iqraa. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional career of “Islamic media” (al-i’lām al-Islāmī) as a category from the late sixties onwards in Egypt, I argue that Islamic television is part of a broader decolonization struggle involving the modern discipline of mass communication. Pioneering Arab communication scholars mounted a quest for epistemic emancipation in which the question of how to mediate Islam became inextricable from the question of what made media Islamic. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I show how the idea of Islamic media involved a radical reconceptualization of the Qur'an as mass communication from God and of Islam as a mediatic religion. This positing of an intimate affinity between Islam and media provoked secular skepticism and religious criticism that continue to this day. I conclude by reflecting on how the intellectual history of Islamic media challenges dominant framings of epistemological decolonization as a question of interrogating oppressive universalisms in favor of liberatory pluralisms.

Gazing at South African higher education transformation through the potential role of the Wesleyan quadrilateral: A theological approach

The 2015–2016 South African higher education student movements evoked critical conversations regarding the extent to which institutions of higher learning have transformed into democratic and inclusive spaces. One of the key gaps in this field is the paucity of research that explores the potential role of theology in steering the direction of transformation in South African higher education system. Through a Wesleyan approach, the paper argues that the four quadrilaterals of the Wesleyn approach, scripture, tradition, reason and experience will be used as a theological tool to weight beliefs in the levels of dogma and doctrine, opinion and so as not to confuse critical reflection with negativity and judgmentalism in critically reflecting on the South African higher education struggles for transformation and decolonization. In our attempt to contribute meaningfully to the broader debates, started by scholars such as Nadar and Reddy ( 2015 ) and more recently, Phiri and Nadar ( 2018 ), who locate their work in theology to think through gender, curriculum and African feminism differently, counter-hegemonically. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this emerging body of work by arguing that theology has a critical role to play in helping us to imagine what a transformed, inclusive and socially just higher education could look like.

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction