Shifting the guilt
Even though Israeli novelist Agur Schiff’s latest book is meant to be a satirical reflection on the legacy of slavery and stereotypes about Africa, it ends up reinforcing them.
Continental
On safari
On our annual publishing break, we’ll be pondering what the responsibility of the African intellectual is today.
Reading List: Luke Sinwell
Once associated with socialism, the language of participation has been co-opted. How was this radical idea depoliticized?
A tale of two reviews
In the 1960s, two African nationalist magazines shared a name—but declassified files reveal that they were on opposite sides of a literary Cold War.
False progress
From 2024, the Grammys will feature an award for Best African Music Performance. Is the category a positive step embracing the global popularity of African music, or another homogenizing exotification?
Africa for Africans
After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States were not only locked in an ideological struggle with each other, but also competed with an anticolonial vision of modernity, an ideology which is still influential today.
The bittersweet pursuit of liberation
Ismay Milford’s new book takes us into the world of anticolonialism, giving us a rich account of the struggles of a cohort of activists from east and central Africa.
Pat Robertson’s Africa
The ultra-conservative American televangelist Pat Robertson has died. As poisonous as his influence on American politics was, Robertson’s legacy in Africa is even more cynical.
Understanding Africa’s middle class
The middle classes of Africa are often idealized as spearheads of democratization and opponents of corrupt regimes. But what does the research actually say?
The coloniality of global health
The full recognition of the neocolonial structure of international economic and global health relations demands much more radical political alternatives.
How to think about colonialism
Contemporary approaches to the legacy of colonialism tend to narrowly emphasize political agency as the solution to Africa’s problems. But agency is configured through historically particular relations of which we are not sole authors.
Resistance is a continuous endeavor
For more than 75 years, Palestinians have organized for a liberated future. Today, as resistance against Israeli apartheid intensifies, unity and revolutionary optimism has become the main infrastructure of struggle.
The two Africas
In the latest controversies about race and ancient Egypt, both the warring ‘North Africans as white’ and ‘black Africans as Afrocentrists’ camps find refuge in the empty-yet-powerful discourse of precolonial excellence.
Where is Amazigh studies?
It is burgeoning field that intersects with Arabic, Francophone, Middle Eastern and African studies. But why is Amazigh Studies absent in Anglophone academia?
God tax the king
The British royal family has tried to shake off its colonial past. But its long reign over these wrongs was succeeded by a new form of plunder, exacted today by Britain’s tax haven empire.
Reading List: Sheila Collins
American civil rights activist George Houser was also active in Africa’s anti-colonial struggle. To write his biography, Sheila Collins widely read 20th century African political history.
Where are North Africa’s Jews?
A fascinating new graphic novel sets out to describe the effects of Nazi and collaborationist policies on the inhabitants of French-controlled colonies and protectorates of World War Two North Africa.
The Africanness of North Africa
As xenophobic attacks and anti-black rhetoric ramp up in North Africa, it is useful to highlight (or remember) the fluid, intertwined histories of the Saharan region.
Demystifying austerity
Government’s around the world are talking about tightening their belts. Austerity is a common economic policy, but what is it actually? On the podcast, we discuss.
In defense of precolonial Africa
How are we to discuss and deal with colonization in Africa without using language that acknowledges that we were something before colonization?