Liberation Struggle Research Articles

РОССИЯ В ПРЕДСТАВЛЕНИЯХ БЛИЖНЕВОСТОЧНЫХ ГРЕКОВ (СЕР. XIX - НАЧ. ХХ ВВ.)

In view of the increasing importance of the Middle East direction in Russian foreign policy, it seems relevant to study the history of ideas about Russia and attitudes towards it in the region. The article examines the evolution of the image of Russia in the Greek environment of the late Ottoman period. Traditionally, Orthodox Greeks, counting on Russian patronage to protect their rights and help in the liberation struggle, acted as allies of Russia in the fight against the Ottoman Empire. However, the acquisition by the Greeks of their own national statehood, the growth of national movements in the region and the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War contributed to the revision of the previous positive image of our country, which was gradually subject to peyorization and demonization.

Rewriting the flesh of the world for the new human: Merleau‐Ponty, Fanon, and Wynter on the ethics of futurity

AbstractThis article reads Maurice Merleau‐Ponty's ontology of the “flesh of the world” alongside the ontology that seems to undergird Frantz Fanon's sociodiagnostics as well as his theory of sociogeny. It argues that reading Fanonian sociogeny in terms of the ambiguity and intercorporeality of the flesh of the world renders the ethical and political imperatives of Fanon's decolonial project all the more pressing, since the “new human” is prefigured—if not totally determined—in the national consciousness obtained by “les damnés” through the decolonization process. It then examines how Sylvia Wynter's Fanonian call to (re)fashion the future of humanness through (re)conceptualizing “being human as praxis,” also seems to rely on this ontology of the flesh of the world. Bringing these arguments together, the article suggests that the conceptual content of the new human can be found in the liberation struggles of les damnés across what Wynter calls the “poverty archipelagos” wrought by colonial humanism. Hence, the “new skin” for which Fanon calls is fashioned through forming international solidarity with les damnés, with the conceptual content of the new humanism emerging sociogenically—and autopoetically—from those struggles themselves.

“Harriet Tubman is a Superhero”: Conceptualizing Young African American Children's Sociopolitical Awareness as Imaginative Praxis

Imagination is often relegated to the margins of African American children's schooling experiences. Furthermore, the varied role of children in liberation struggles and their centrality in ushering in just futures remain underexplored. This article examines five African American first graders’ sociopolitical knowledge and how they used their imagination to develop counternarratives of refusal and agentic possibilities. I offer imaginative praxis as a conceptual tool to analyze how young African American children name historical and contemporary racialized realities and generate joyful visualizations of actionable resistance. Young children's imaginative praxis challenges the notion that the fight for liberation is void of joy.

Everyday Communists in South Africa's Liberation Struggle: The Lives of Ivan and Lesley Schermbrucker

Everyday Communists in South Africa's Liberation Struggle: The Lives of Ivan and Lesley Schermbrucker

South African Women and the Liberation Struggle: Towards Three Traditions of Womanism in “South Africa”

South African Women and the Liberation Struggle: Towards Three Traditions of Womanism in “South Africa”

American Neocolonialism on the Soviet Cinema Screen (Based on Films About Latin America)

Introduction. The scientific relevance of the topic is due to the fact that the concepts of colonialism and neocolonialism are currently becoming part of the official Russian political discourse. The article examines how film representations of the struggle against American neocolonialism in Latin America are used to create the image of the American enemy in the context of the Cold War, which determines the novelty of this work. Methods and materials. The article is based on Soviet features and documentary films about Latin America. Analysis and results. The author comes to the following conclusions: images of neocolonial exploitation of Latin America contributed to the creation of the image of the American enemy, endowing it with such features as immorality, greed, cruelty, and contempt for the population of the Third World. In addition, the images of Latin America and the struggle of its population against neocolonialism were used in the politics of Soviet identity. A demonstration of solidarity with the people of Latin America maintained the image of the USSR as the leader of the liberation struggle against (neo)colonialism. The struggle against pro-American governments in Latin America acquired legitimacy through images of the plight of the countries ruled by powers accomplishing American neocolonialism. Films about the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions served to predict victory over neocolonialism in the region in particular and the American enemy in the Cold War in general.

Օսմանյան բանկի գրավումն ու Խանասորի արշավանքը «Դրօշակ» պարբերականի էջերում / The Capture of the Ottoman Bank and the Campagn of Khanasor on the Magazine “Droshak”

In the history of the people’s liberation struggle of Western Armenia, significant place is taken by such offensive actions as the capture of the Ottoman bank and the campagn of Khanasor. Many authors referred to thess issues, but in the article the struggle is presented according to the data of the magazine “Droshak”, which reflected the events of those years with the greatest accuracy, since its information was supplemented by letters from direct participants and luminaries of that struggle, written under fresh impressions in the turmoil of events. This circumstance is of great importance, fruition since the memoirs of the liberation figure were written years events and many detailed were missing. “Droshak” is designed to fill this gap. The organizer of these offensives, the Dashnaktsutyun party, hoped with these actions to attract the attention of Evropean states to the Armenian reforms, which never came to realizing.

Decolonising archaeology in South Africa: two decades after the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999

Twenty-four years ago, the National Heritage Resources Act, No. 25 of 1999 (NHRA) was enacted in South Africa. This was a moment of change, when the heritage of those marginalised during the colonial and Apartheid eras would finally be given its rightful place on the national heritage list. There was a sense of optimism amongst politicians that the African past was finally to be recognised in an inclusive and representative future. This was echoed in archaeology, given its central role in uncovering and telling the story of precolonial South Africa. The discipline slowly opened its doors to academics of all ethnic groups and new perspectives were identified. But an examination of the practical consequences and impact of this progressive legislation for transforming officially declared heritage in the past 24 years shows surprisingly little change in the overall body of recognized, listed heritage. Recent studies of transformation in South African archaeology have focussed on institutional transformation; possible transformation of the types and frequency of sites declared as national and provincial heritage sites has not yet been examined. It is this issue which our paper addresses. The paper presents analysis that relies on the South African Heritage Resources Information System (SAHRIS) database covering the period 1936 to mid-2022. Whilst sites associated with European colonialism still predominate, there has been a change in the frequency of types of heritage declared since 1999, with an increase in sites associated with the Black liberation struggle. Yet the list remains very unbalanced, with only a single heritage site connected to the precolonial past of Black South Africans having been declared as a national heritage site since 1999. We discuss and classify the types of heritage declared since 1999 and suggest reasons for the distortion.

The New Apartheid

The fundamental distinction between a Civil Rights movement such as the African National Congress and a liberation movement like Poqo lies in the status of white settlers and Apartheid. The mythologisation of Apartheid by promoting it to the main problem in liberation politics and history in conqueror South Africa is the persistent intellectual obsession of the Congress Tradition. A trenchant contestation and rejection of Apartheid as the fundamental antagonism in the history of the struggle for national liberation is the defining trait of a liberation movement and liberation intellectual production.Having written a book entitled Democracy & Delusion: 10 Myths (2019), in which he debunks what he considers to be myths about the so-called post-Apartheid South Africa, Sizwe is back again only this time he is reinventing two myths.In the book under review, entitled The New Apartheid (2021), Sizwe promotes the delusion and first myth of Apartheid as the problem and the second myth of the ANC as a liberation movement. This review is about these two myths.

Radical Left Culture and Heritage, the Politics of Preservation and Memorialisation, and the Promise of the Metaverse

Radical left culture and heritage—understood as incarnations of leftist artefacts and praxis both past and present—have taken risks in challenging hegemonic machinations often when it is unpopular to do so. To the ire of hegemons, leftist projects across the globe have marshalled places, spaces, and technologies into sites of empowerment and struggle utilising ‘small’ and ‘big’ acts of resistance and critical interventions to champion social justice—sometimes successfully, and at other times, less so. However, the preservation of projects’ artefacts, praxis, and memory work has been anything but straightforward, owing primarily to institutional politics and infrastructural and resourcing issues. Taking The Freedom Archives (FA) as a case study, this article explores how FA is preserving the distinctive political education programme that underpinned the iconic liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau that kickstarted the seismic, global decolonisation project in the late 1950s. The article argues that FA could substantially enhance the preservation and memorialisation of that programme in the Metaverse—if this materialises as a fully open, interoperable, and highly immersive space (1) unfettered by hegemonic regulation, and (2) characterised by ‘strategic witnessing’, ‘radical recordkeeping’, and user agency. In doing so, FA would serve as an exemplar for leftist projects globally.

The Russian Diaspora in Africa. History and Modernity

The article is devoted to the history of the Russian diaspora on the African continent. Russia is a country with a relatively long emigration tradition. Having taken on a massive scale at the end of the XIX century, emigration from Russia continues to this day, representing a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has always had a great impact on the life of Russian society, regardless of the position that the state authorities took in relation to it at one time or another in history. The article traces its formation at different stages – from its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century to the middle of the twentieth century, marked by the beginning of the national liberation struggle of African peoples for their independence. An independent section of the article is devoted to the current state of the Russian Diaspora in the countries of the African continent., which highlights the problems of the formation of the Russian Diaspora at the present stage, comprehensively analyzes the civil and socio–cultural characteristics of the female Russian contingent - the main source of replenishment of the Russian Diaspora in modern Africa, the specifics of this group of compatriots and their descendants from Afro- Russian marriages de jure and de facto, its role in the social and cultural life of recipient countries and relations with the historical homeland. the unique potential of the “soft power” of the Russian Federation, concluded in its interaction with Russian-speaking communities on the African continent.

“Mortu Nega”: A Decolonial Film or a Film about Decolonization?

While discourse surrounding decolonization is not new, in recent years it has gained significant momentum with many advocating for its implementation as a means to address historical injustices. However, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò’s thought-provoking book, coupled with the movie “Mortu Nega”, invites us to critically examine the concept of decolonization. This article aims to present an argument that challenges decolonization narratives by exploring the potential limitations and unintended consequences of embracing decolonization as an absolute solution for humanitarian issues in African societies. To accomplish this, I will begin by providing historical context on Guinea-Bissau, the former Portuguese colony that serves as the focal point of the film. Furthermore, this article will provide a comprehensive description of Flora Gomes’ film, followed by a discussion addressing the trope of decolonization theory. I will use the persistent lack of women’s emancipation and their ongoing struggle for genuine liberation and gender justice in Guinea-Bissau as an example of the need, following Táíwò’s thought, to rethink the uses of decolonization as a tool for analyzing Africa’s issues.

Cooperation of the People’s Republic of China With Countries of the African Continent in the Military Sphere

The purpose of the research paper is to investigate the collaboration between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and African nations in the military domain, examining the impact of ideological, socio-economic, international, and other elements.
 Scientific novelty. Based on documents and historiographical materials, the study analyzes the stages of development, characteristics, and content of the PRC’s military cooperation with African countries.
 Conclusions. The PRC’s with African countries has gone through a long and complex path. The first stage (late 1950s – mid-1970s) coincided with the rise of national liberation struggles in Africa, and China’s involvement had an ideological character.
 The second stage, (late 1970s – 1990s) witnessed a transition to commercialization, but faced limitations due to resource constraints, low-quality weaponry, and concerns about relations with Western investors. However, cooperation with Western corporations to modernize the military-industrial complex and develop new weapons was disrupted by the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Instead, cooperation with Russia in the defense field intensified, which allowed China to update the military-industrial complex and develop new weapons systems. However, due to their low quality, they did not stand up to competition, particularly in the African arms market. From the mid-1990s, China involved European and American corporations in modernization process, under the condition of potential export opportunities.
 The third stage of cooperation began in the early 2000s and continues to this day. China has significantly expanded its military cooperation with African countries through various military training programs, participation in international arms exhibitions, arms loans, military equipment sales, and involvement in UN peacekeeping missions. Deepening military cooperation strengthens China’s position in Africa and increases its competitive advantage not only in the African arms market.

Liberation of Women in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun

This study focuses on the liberation of Afro-American women through women empowerment. It examines the basic rights of women, gender issues and domestic violence . it also examines the oppression towards women. Narrative technique is used to describe the status of women in a patriarchal society. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Purple Hibiscus” describes the struggle for liberation from oppression. The title of the novel “Purple Hibiscus” may refer to a particular type of flower but it develops the hope for liberation in the major character Kambili. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Half Of a Yellow Sun” describes the struggle for liberation from sexuality and to liberate Biafran from the Nigerian soldiers.

Reading Irish Solidarity with Palestine through Ireland’s “Unfinished Revolution”

Irish solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation is well documented. The shared experience of resisting state-sponsored colonial violence has helped to embed this transnational solidarity, especially among grassroots activists. Yet despite these similarities, there are critical differences between the two struggles that require careful consideration. In this essay, the author foregrounds the bonds of connection between Ireland and Palestine while arguing for the need to avoid platforming unnuanced, romantic, and mystical sentiments in light of Ireland’s “unfinished revolution” and the Irish government’s largely conservative approach to Palestinian liberation. He concludes that Ireland is far from an exemplar of postcoloniality and stresses that it is the activist community in Ireland that has been leading the call for full Palestinian liberation.

Zambia’s Support for the African National Congress’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka, 1967–1992

ABSTRACT This article explores the contribution Zambia made to the liberation struggle in South Africa by hosting the ANC’s Radio Freedom in Lusaka. It relies on a combination of archival evidence (audio and documentary sources) from both countries, and interviews conducted with the broadcasters and other media workers of both Radio Freedom and the Zambian national broadcaster. The article argues that Zambia offered immense support to Radio Freedom in the form of broadcasting equipment, working space and airtime on the external services of the national broadcaster. While it waxed and waned in the early years, this assistance increased considerably in the aftermath of the Soweto student uprising of 1976, which enabled the ANC to have a sonic presence among its supporters back home, where listening to this radio was illegal. The support given to Radio Freedom was not isolated but part of a wider struggle and solidarity with the liberation movements in the Southern African region fighting white minority rule. Through Radio Freedom, the ANC was able to shape the course of the unfolding struggle and internal political developments and to attain the cultural hegemony of the Charterist tradition over the Africanist and Black Consciousness camp.

‘Revolution is Learned Faster than Culture’: On the Amateur-Professional Relationship in the Artistic Legacies of the People’s Liberation Struggle

‘Revolution is Learned Faster than Culture’: On the Amateur-Professional Relationship in the Artistic Legacies of the People’s Liberation Struggle

The concept of “freedom” in the Ukrainian diaspora prose

The purpose of this article is to analyze the mechanisms of realization of the concept of “freedom” in the Ukrainian diaspora prose. The object of the study is the literary texts by I. Bahrianyi, V. Bender, I. Kachurovskyi, Yu. Kosach, I. Kostetskyi, S. Liubomyrskyi, M. Prykhodko, I. Smoliy, and S. Fedorivskyi. Contextual analysis, descriptive, historical and literary, and biographical methods were used to achieve the goal. The article’s relevance is due to the need to comprehend the problem of freedom during the Russian-Ukrainian war, which prompts a new reading of the diaspora’s literary texts, which in many ways proved to be prophetic and instructive. The experience of colonial Ukraine during the liberation struggle and the Second World War provides an opportunity to better understand current military events and the tactics of the occupiers. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that the concept of “freedom” is studied in depth in the works of prose by diaspora writers. The analysis includes little-known texts by diaspora authors. The results of the study have shown that the analyzed concept is realized in the texts of the Ukrainian diaspora on the issues of existential and national freedom, which aroused the interest of both Ukrainian and foreign readers. The concept of “freedom” is presented both in fiction and in critical and journalistic discourse. In prose texts, this concept is realized at different levels of the text: at the level of problematics, figurative system, and textual strategies. The author emphasizes that for diaspora writers, personal freedom was inseparable from national freedom, so a recurring theme is the national liberation struggle, the discourse of which shapes the understanding of freedom as a necessary value. The results of the research can be used in the study of Ukrainian diaspora literature. The next stage in the realization of this topic will be the study of the concept of personal “freedom” in the works of the younger generation of the diaspora, in particular, members of the New York group.

An Analysis of the Significance, Social Relevance and Importance of “Sultana’s Dream” by Begum Rokeya; Then and Now

This analytical paper studies the impact of Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's short narrative Sultana's Dream on traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Born into a traditional Bengali Muslim family, Begum Rokeya shed cultural expectations by advocating for women's education and literacy. Sultana’s Dream, a pioneering feminist science fiction work, satirises patriarchal society by imagining a utopian future with gender roles reversed. Through a critical evaluation of Sultana's Dream, this paper exhibits Rokeya's revolutionary views on gender equality, education, and intellectual empowerment, contrasting her work with contemporary feminist works such as Barbie (2023). The essay emphasises Rokeya's constant struggle for women's liberation and its continued relevance in today’s evolving world.

Learnings from Black Liberation System Entanglements Part II: Our experience of system traps

Much of the systems community’s explicit justice work has focused on the ecological crisis of climate, but not as much has been shared about the learnings from other intersectional social justice movements such as racial, gender, disability, LGBTQIA+, indigenous, and economic justice. This is partly because this systems practice work is being done outside of the “expert” systemic design communities. In this paper, I explore an updated understanding of adverse system entanglements, or traps, contextualized to the lived experience and global struggle for Black liberation in conversation with other inextricably entangled struggles (feminist, queer, womanist, mujerista, queer womanist, Latin American liberation, disability, and more). Classical system traps still apply, but they are insufficient to capture our full, lived experience of entanglements. In other words, you can avoid the traditional system traps and still become ensnared in other traps. For there are further, deeper, more insidious traps that work against our justice movements and flows. These shapeshifting traps require that we also are shapeshifting. I highlight learnings we already have, embody, carry, and through which we tell stories to the systemic design community to facilitate inter-ontological and inter-epistemic conversation. This is the second in a short series of papers to explore updated Black Liberation adverse system entanglements (or traps), movements (or interventions), and praxeology (instead of methodology).