Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The Other and the Ordeal of the World Can the Other, in light of all that is happening, still be regarded as my fellow creature? The Other’s burden having become too overwhelming, would it not be better for my life to stop being linked to its presence, as much as its to mine? Why must I, despite all opposition, nonetheless look after the other, stand as close as possible to his life if, in return, his only aim is my ruin? If, ultimately, humanity exists only through being in and of the world, can we found a relation with others based on the reciprocal recognition of our common vulnerability and finitude? In a world characterized more than ever by an unequal redistribu- tion of capacities for mobility, and in which the only chance of survival, for many, is to move and to keep on moving, the brutality of borders is now a fundamental given of our time. Today we see the principle of equality being undone by the laws of autochthony and common origin, as well as by divisions within citizensh

Race, Labour and Citizenship

Individual or institutional subscription is required to access the article. “The Tutsi notables, who had come to believe in the superiority the Belgians attributed to them, became tools of the colonial administration, responsible for assigning forced labour and punishments. Only Tutsi children had access to education. The colonisers and missionaries unpicked the fabric of the Rwandan nation, even issuing identity cards that recorded the bearer’s ‘ethnicity’. A revolt by smallholder farmers, directed not against the Belgian colonial administration but against Tutsi notables and officials. This ‘social revolution’ was supported by the colonial regime’s top-ranking official. Independence, declared in 1962, was presented as a victory for ordinary people. The Tutsis’ huts were burned, and 300,000 fled into exile. Until 1990 the Belgians supported the Hutus, in the belief that the ethnic majority was also the political majority.  When war broke out on the Ugandan border in October 1990, Belg

Vekuii Rukoro, a Herero paramount chief who tried to sue Germany for compensation in US courts, said the deal is not enough to cover the "irreversible harm" suffered at the hands of colonial forces.   "We have a problem with that kind of an agreement, which we feel constitutes a complete sell-out on the part of the Namibian government," he told Reuters. Germany acknowledges colonial era Namibia genocide Related Link between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust

Another excellent article by Joseph Massad. Admitting it now is too little, too late Related A liberal argument. The United States Ignoring Israel’s Violence Against Palestinians

  Orientalism and Its Afterlives

  Fanon Can’t Save You Now

  The Colonial Contradictions of Albert Camus

 Rereading Edward Said’s Orientalism after capitol riots

 In memory of Patrice Lumumba

“ One might argue that, for us as historians, the principal challenge is to imagine the region outside of the commonplace assumptions about modern Middle Eastern societies, namely that they are best defined by a series of  absences or negations —the lack of “authentic” nation-states, capitalism, democracy, secularism, human rights, and so forth. Against the hegemony of these Orientalist narratives, we can encourage students to understand history as a far more complex process of contingency and contradiction, for example, by grasping the contemporaneity of modernity and tradition. This style of thinking encourages students to move away from conceiving of history in terms of simple oppositions, such as capitalism  or  socialism, democracy  or  despotism, religion  or  secularism, and instead grasp historical processes in the elegance of their complexity. History emerges, then, as the unstable play of forces, rather than the unfolding of teleological logics. More concretely, this means vi

  Marx’s debt to people of African descent Related The Africana paradigm in Capital

 ‘Islam’ is not in crisis, liberalism is Related "The most urgent priority is not for Europe to understand its  alters  better, but rather itself and its own history —for it is within Europe's own longstanding structures of self-definition that pluralism in general, and the Islamic presence in particular, have been rendered into nightmares. If so, it is Europe itself which stands in urgent need of therapy. But as yet the patient is still in denial, and as any spychotherapist would confirm, those who refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of their self-generated plight find it far easier to engage in a process of transference. Rather than confronting the illusory character of their own mental construction, they prefer to ascribe the very behavior which they refuse to acknowledge in themselves to those whom they believe are harassing them." —  Roger Ballard , quoted by Jospeh Massad in  Islam in Liberalism , 2015, p. 311 "If, according to Zwemer, the truth that Islam fa

This article is also available in French Arabic and Spanish  French Soldiers in the Sahel: A Barely Repressed Colonial Unconscious

Why Tunisia, Africa Must Demand French Apology [and Compensation]

Interesting but in fact the analysis does a disservice to socialism for its sweeping statements. The reader has the impression that both Tunisia and Algeria were socialist countries at one time. In Tunisia the cooperative experiment was a small part of the economy. There was never a socialist economy. A planned economy is not the equivalent of socialism. Ben Salah and the Fate of Destourian Socialism

This is a very good piece. If your university/institution has a subscription with Taylor and Francis online, you should be able to access the article. Decolonizing the history of British women’s suffrage movement

Historian Raj Pal to the BBC: We have a myth of ‘Britannia rules the waves’ and making Britain ‘Great’, but we don’t want to address the fact that Britannia ruling the waves is to do with the slave trade, colonialism, empire and massacre, as well as trade in tobacco, sugar and salt. Almost a third of stately homes owned by the National Trust have links to slavery or colonialism...

The Arab Gramsci

Decolonisation for the author does not include decolonising global capitalism, putting an end to - wealth accumulation in the hands of a few - obscene inequality - unequal exchange and monopoly of technology, - uneven development, - overthrowing of dictatorships/bourgeois classes in poor” and “developing” countries”, - debt, - imposition of economic programmes such as privatisation, etc. The author thinks ending discrimination and “reparations and restitution” will bring about decolonisation without touching the structure of the existent ownership and power relations. Colonialism made the modern world. Let’s remake it.