Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The implications of “an approach that captures the geopolitically interconnected and sociologically co-constitutive nature of its [capitalism’s] emergence.” “Uneven and combined development is capable of bringing together – not only theoretically, but concretely – historical processes understood from multiple vantage points into an interactive totality of social relations.” “A rethinking of what historically and theoretically constitutes capitalism.” “Capitalism is neither natural nor eternal: it has been historically constructed by annihilating or subsuming other – non-capitalist – ways of life.” “The conquest, ecological ruin, slavery, state terrorism, patriarchal subjugation, racism, mass exploitation and immiseration upon which capitalism was built continue unabated today.” “In the contemporary period, the divesting machinations of capitalism have continued and expanded into a global system of geopolitical violence and integrated production processes which afford it coercive and di...

An entire academic industry has developed around attempting to explain the apparent persistence and durability of Middle East authoritarianism. Much of this has been heavily Eurocentric, seeking some kind of intrinsic “obedience to authority” inherent to the “Arab mind.” Some authors have focused on the impact of religion, tracing authoritarian rule to the heavy influence of Islam, and the fact that “twentieth-century Muslim political leaders often have styles and use strategies that are very similar to those instituted by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia some 1400 years ago. The history of the region is thus characteristically recounted as a long-standing struggle between the “authoritarian state” and “economic and political liberalization. Instead of viewing the Arab uprisings as protests against the “free market” economic policies long championed by Western institutions in the region, they were framed as essentially political in nature. The state/civil society dichotomy serves to “con...

Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world.

What happens with thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical ‘pedigree’?

“[Frantz]  Fanon urged us to invent and make new discoveries and not blindly imitate Europe. The struggle of decolonisation, Fanon tells us, must challenge the dominance of European culture and its claims of universalism without being trapped in a romanticized and fixed past. It is these two alienations that colonised people must overcome in their cultural struggle. Decolonising the mind also means deconstructing Western notions of ‘development’, ‘civilisation’, ‘progress’, ‘universalism’ and ‘modernity’. Such concepts represent what is called a  coloniality of power and knowledge , which means that ideas of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ were conceived in Europe and North America and then implanted in our continents (Africa, Asia and Latin America) in a context of coloniality (Mignolo, 2012). These Eurocentric ideas and culture have reinforced the colonial heritage of land confiscations, resource plunder, as well as domination of ‘other’ peoples in order to ‘civilise’ them.” Gene...

 The Persistence of Orientalism: Anglo-American Historians and Modern Egypt

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

The Iranian Revolution 1979-2019 "Saffari’s methodological approach to Shariati’s and neo-Shariatis work is that of dialogical comparison. Drawing on this framework as developed by comparative political theorist Fred Dallmayr, Saffari seeks out the border-crossing and binary-shattering implications of Shariati and his followers who, in conversation with other critics of Western hegemony and Eurocentrism, offer responses to modernity that challenge rather than reproduce global relations of power." Beyond Ali Shariati

How did the West usurp the rest? Abstract: Traditional explanations of the “ rise of the West ” have located the sources of Western supremacy in structural or long-term developmental factors internal to Europe. By contrast, revisionist accounts have emphasized the con- junctural and contingent aspects of Europe ’ s ascendancy, while highlighting intersocietal conditions that shaped this trajectory to global dominance. While sharing the revisionist focus on the non-Western sources of European develop- ment, we challenge their conjunctural explanation, which denies differences between “ West ” and “ East ” and within Europe. We do so by deploying the idea of uneven and combined development (UCD), which redresses the short- comings found on both sides of the debate: the traditional Eurocentric focus on the structural and immanent characteristics of European development and the revisionists ’ emphasis on contingency and the homogeneity of Eurasian societies. UCD resolves these proble...

" Though it was originally published before the iconic events of 9/11, now more than a decade ago, S. Sayyid’s  A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism  (1997) has assumed even more timely significance since its first appearance. In this pioneering book, Sayyid provocatively suggests, and one can still see the logic of his proposition, that we must see political Islamism as a particular phase of decolonization of Muslim political cultures. Sayyid took the rise of Islamism as a challenge to ‘Western’ political hegemony, and particularly its self-congratulatory declaration of the End of History. That proposition still demands attention." Islamism — A Eurocentric Position?

" Beyond the racist and exclusionary borders of Tower Europe, there are other insiduous ways of silencing and marginalising the voices of people from the Global South, namely the Eurocentric framing of discussions, hearing from one or two voices from the Global South at the end of the day (after dinner and wine), not giving enough time to discuss important questions of colonialism and race, etc. I am becoming very pessimistic with everything coming from Europe (or almost). Fanon has been right after all: let's leave this Europe and its ways!" — Hamza Hamouchene