(ANTI-)IMPERIALISM
If Cesaire is correct in his analysis of colonialism as not a fixed, historical moment, but a set of ongoing ideologies that capture us in a violent global, social practice, then what recourse do we have for moving towards the truly “post”- colonial? For diverting our energies away from gauging intention and registering action? Through different movements, languages, narratives, arguments, performances, and identities, colonized peoples across the globe have given us multiple examples of what it means to imagine a world otherwise, beyond the racializing, stratifying, extractive logics of colonialism. How might our analyses and praxes shift if we were, instead, to engage in an anti-colonial/anti-imperial critique and practice?
Vocabulary
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Empire: a Very Short Introduction by Stephen Howe
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Orientalism by Edward W. Said
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How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney; Angela Davis (Introduction by Angela Davis)
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Reversing Sail by Michael A. Gomez; Martin Klein
Primary Sources
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“Frederick Douglass’ Lecture Last Evening—Geographical Position, Area, Climate, Soil, Productions, and Commercial Resources of Santo Domingo—the Government and the People—Mr. Douglass’ Seven Reasons for Annexation to the United States.”
Narrative
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The Harp and the Shadow by Alejo Carpentier; Thomas Christensen (Translator); Carol Christensen (Translator)
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The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
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Anacaona by Edwidge Danticat
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The Tempest by William Shakespeare
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Salt by Earl Lovelace
Poetry
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Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
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"Poem Against the State of Things" by June Jordan
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"Dis Poem" by MutaBaruka
Third Cinema
The Anti-Imperial assemblage sits in solidarity with the Indigenous LandBack Movement as it investigates the entanglements between imperialism, genocide, enslavement, and environmental degradation.
This assemblage is by no means exhaustive; more to the point, it is only a beginning – an opening. We encourage you to imagine and to share other aesthetics, philosophies, and songs that speak to its matter.
And sweep out all the obscurers, all the inventors of subterfuges, the charlatans and tricksters, the dealers in gobbledygook. And do not seek to know whether personally these gentlemen are in good or bad faith, whether personally they have good or bad intentions. Whether personally – that is, in the private conscience of Peter or Paul – they are or are not colonists, because the essential thing is that their highly problematical subjective good faith is entirely irrelevant to the objective social implications of the evil work they perform as watchdogs of colonialism (Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 55).
ANTI-IMPERIALISM ASSEMBLAGE