Decolonizing Dialectics

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In Decolonizing Dialectics George Ciccariello-Maher breaks this impasse by bringing the work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion.

When Frantz Fanon's critiques of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism are brought into the ever-widening orbit of Africana critical theory something unprecedented in the annals of Africana intellectual history happens: five distinct forms of Fanonism emerge. Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization is discursively distinguished from other engagements of Fanon's thought and texts insofar as it is the first study to consciously examine his contributions to Africana Studies and critical theory or, rather, the Africana tradition of critical theory. Forms of Fanonism identifies and intensely analyzes Fanon's contributions to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory. In highlighting his unique 'solutions' to the 'problems' of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism, five distinct forms of Fanonism materialize. These five forms of Fanonism allow contemporary critical theorists to innovatively explore the ways in which his thought and texts can be dialectically put to use in relieving the wretched experience of this generation's wretched of the earth. Critics can also apply these forms to deconstruct and reconstruct Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory using their anti-imperialist interests. Throughout Forms of Fanonism, Reiland Rabaka critically dialogues with Fanon, incessantly asking his corpus critical questions and seeking from it crucial answers. This book, in short, solemnly keeps with Fanon's own predilection for connecting critical theory to revolutionary praxis by utilizing his thought and texts as paradigms and points of departure to deepen and develop the Africana tradition of critical theory.

Latin America’s experiments in direct democracy Since 2011, a wave of popular uprisings has swept the globe, taking shape in the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, 15M in Spain, and the anti-austerity protests in Greece. The demands have been varied, but have expressed a consistent commitment to the ideals of radical democracy. Similar experiments began appearing across Latin America twenty-five years ago, just as the left fell into decline in Europe. In Venezuela, poor barrio residents arose in a mass rebellion against neoliberalism, ushering in a government that institutionalized the communes already forming organically. In Building the Commune, George Ciccariello-Maher travels through these radical experiments, speaking to a broad range of community members, workers, students and government officials. Assessing the projects’ successes and failures, Building the Commune provides lessons and inspiration for the radical movements of today.

This incisive study reveals the fundamental, paradoxical weakness of colonialism and the enduring power of anticolonial resistance. Resistance is everywhere, but everywhere a surprise, especially when the agents of struggle are the colonized, the enslaved, the wretched of the earth. Anticolonial revolts and slave rebellions have often been described by those in power as “eruptions”—volcanic shocks to a system that does not, cannot, see them coming. In Anticolonial Eruptions, Geo Maher diagnoses a paradoxical weakness built right into the foundations of white supremacist power, a colonial blind spot that grows as domination seems more complete. Anticolonial Eruptions argues that the colonizer’s weakness is rooted in dehumanization. When the oppressed and excluded rise up in explosive rebellion, with the very human demands for life and liberation, the powerful are ill-prepared. This colonial blind spot is, ironically, self-imposed: the more oppressive and expansive the colonial power, the lesser-than-human the colonized are believed to be, the greater the opportunity for resistance. Maher calls this paradox the cunning of decolonization, an unwitting reversal of the balance of power between the oppressor and the oppressed. Where colonial power asserts itself as unshakable, total, and perpetual, a blind spot provides strategic cover for revolutionary possibility; where race or gender make the colonized invisible, they organize, unseen. Anticolonial Eruptions shows that this fundamental weakness of colonialism is not a bug, but a permanent feature of the system, providing grounds for optimism in a contemporary moment roiled by global struggles for liberation.

Revolutionary theories from Marx onward have often struggled to unite the psychological commitments of individuals— understood as ideological— with the larger ethical or political goals of a social movement. As a psychiatrist, social theorist, and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon attempted to connect the ideological and the political. Fanon’s work gives both a psychological explanation of the origins of ideology and seeks to restore the individual to autonomy and political agency. This book explores the deeper philosophical foundations of Fanon’s project in order to understand the depths of Fanon’s contribution to the theory of the subject and to social theory. It also demonstrates how Fanon’s model makes it possible to understand the political dimensions of Freudian psychoanalysis and the psychological dimensions of Hegel’s social theory. This is the first book to bring these two central dimensions of Fanon’s thought into dialogue. It uses Fanon’s position to provide a deeper interpretation of key texts in Freud and Hegel and by uniting these three thinkers contributes to the creolization of all three thinkers.

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

In giving to charity, should we strive to do the greatest good or promote a lesser good that we care more about? On such issues, ethical theory can have momentous practical effects. This volume is a unique collection of new papers on philanthropy from a range of philosophical perspectives. The authors are among the best-regarded philosophers writing on ethics today and include a number of thinkers who have not previously published on the subject. Most recently published work by philosophers on charitable giving tends to support what is called effective altruism-doing the most good you can. In practice, however, charitable giving is often local and relatively ineffective, supporting causes dear to the givers' hearts. Are ineffective givers doing wrong or merely doing less praiseworthy work than they might? This volume includes at least three challenges to the effective altruism movement, as well as two chapters that defend it against the gathering tide of objections. Most thinkers who align with utilitarianism support effective altruism, and some other perspectives do as well. But the ideal of personal integrity can push the other way. So can justice-based theories of giving: perhaps I could do the most good by stealing and giving to the poor, but that would be unjust. In the most important cases, however, justice leads to the same result as effective altruism. Other theories give different results. The authors represent include intuitionism, virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, theory of justice, and the ideal of personal integrity.

In Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities Bernd Reiter contributes to the ongoing efforts to decolonize the social sciences and humanities, by arguing that true decolonization implies a liberation from the elite culture that Western civilization has perpetually promoted. Reiter brings together lessons learned from field research on a Colombian indigenous society, a maroon society, also in Colombia, from Afro-Brazilian religion, from Spanish Anarchism, and from German Council democracy, and from analyzing non-Western ontologies and epistemologies in general. He claims that once these lessons are absorbed, it becomes clear that Western civilization has advanced individualization and elitism. The chapters present the case that human beings are able to rule themselves, and have done so for some 300,000 years, before the Neolithic Revolution. Self-rule and rule by councils is our default option once we rid ourselves of leaders and rulers. Reiter concludes by considering the massive manipulations and the heinous divisions that political elitism, dressed in the form of representative democracy, has brought us, and implores us to seek true freedom and democracy by liberating ourselves from political elites and taking on political responsibilities. Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities is written for students, scholars, and social justice activists across cultural anthropology, sociology, geography, Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, and political science.