Nationalists And Nomads

How does African literature written in French change the way we think about nationalism, colonialism, and postcolonialism? How does it imagine the encounter between Africans and French? And what does the study of African literature bring to the fields of literary and cultural studies? Christopher L. Miller explores these and other questions in Nationalists and Nomads. Miller ranges from the beginnings of francophone African literature—which he traces not to the 1930s Negritude movement but to the largely unknown, virulently radical writings of Africans in Paris in the 1920s—to the evolving relations between African literature and nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout he aims to offset the contemporary emphasis on the postcolonial at the expense of the colonial, arguing that both are equally complex, with powerful ambiguities. Arguing against blanket advocacy of any one model (such as nationalism or hybridity) to explain these ambiguities, Miller instead seeks a form of thought that can read and recognize the realities of both identity and difference.

How does African literature written in French change the way we think about nationalism, colonialism, and postcolonialism? How does it imagine the encounter between Africans and French? And what does the study of African literature bring to the fields of literary and cultural studies? Christopher L. Miller explores these and other questions in Nationalists and Nomads. Miller ranges from the beginnings of francophone African literature—which he traces not to the 1930s Negritude movement but to the largely unknown, virulently radical writings of Africans in Paris in the 1920s—to the evolving relations between African literature and nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout he aims to offset the contemporary emphasis on the postcolonial at the expense of the colonial, arguing that both are equally complex, with powerful ambiguities. Arguing against blanket advocacy of any one model (such as nationalism or hybridity) to explain these ambiguities, Miller instead seeks a form of thought that can read and recognize the realities of both identity and difference.

"Fabled for more than three thousand years as fierce warrior-nomads and cameleers dominating the western Trans-Saharan caravan trade, today the Sahrawi are admired as soldier-statesmen and refugee-diplomats. This is a proud nomadic people uniquely championing human rights and international law for self-determination of their ancient heartlands: the western Sahara Desert in North Africa. Konstantina Isidoros provides a rich ethnographic portrait of this unique desert society's life in one of Earth's most extreme ecosystems. Her extensive anthropological research, conducted over nine years, illuminates an Arab-Berber Muslim society in which men wear full face veils and are matrifocused toward women, who are the property-holders of tent households forming powerful matrilocal coalitions. Isidoros offers new analytical insights on gender relations, strategic tribe-to-state symbiosis and the tactical formation of 'tent-cities'. The book sheds light on the indigenous principles of social organisation - the centrality of women, male veiling and milk-kinship - bringing positive feminist perspectives on how the Sahrawi have innovatively reconfigured their tribal nomadic pastoral society into globalising citizen-nomads constructing their nascent nation-state. This is essential reading for those interested in anthropology, politics, war and nationalism, gender relations, postcolonialism, international development, humanitarian regimes, refugee studies and the experience of nomadic communities."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Although nomadic peoples are scattered worldwide and have highly heterogeneous lifestyles, they face similar threats to their mobile livelihood and survival. Commonly, nomadic peoples are facing pressure from the predominant sedentary world over mobility, land rights, water resources, access to natural resources, and migration routes. Adding to these traditional problems, rapid growth in the extractive industry and the need for the exploitation of the natural resources are putting new strains on nomadic lifestyles. This book provides an innovative rights-based approach to the issue of nomadism looking at issues including discrimination, persecution, freedom of movement, land rights, cultural and political rights, and effective management of natural resources. Jeremie Gilbert analyses the extent to which human rights law is able to provide protection for nomadic peoples to perpetuate their own way of life and culture. The book questions whether the current human rights regime is able to protect nomadic peoples, and highlights the lacuna that currently exists in international human rights law in relation to nomadic peoples. It goes on to propose avenues for the development of specific rights for nomadic peoples, offering a new reading on freedom of movement, land rights and development in the context of nomadism.

A nuanced understanding of literary imaginings of masculinity and femininity in the context of the 'national' canon of Egypt.

In this book, Author Katharine N. Harrington examines contemporary writers from the French-speaking world who can be classified as literary "nomads." The concept of nomadism, based on the experience of traditionally mobile peoples lacking any fixed home, reflects a postmodern way of thinking that encourages individuals to reconsider rigid definitions of borders, classifications, and identities. Nomadic identities reflect shifting landscapes that defy taking on fully the limits of any one fixed national or cultural identity. In conceiving of identities beyond the boundaries of national or cultural origin, this book opens up the space for nomadic subjects whose identity is based just as much on their geographical displacement and deterritorialization as on a relationship to any one fixed place, community, or culture. This study explores the experience of an existence between borders and its translation into writing that. While nomadism is frequently associated with post-colonial authors, this study considers an eclectic group of contemporary Francophone writers who are not easily defined by the boundaries of one nation, one culture, or one language. Each of the four writers, J.M.G. LeCl zio, Nancy Huston, Nina Bouraoui, and R gine Robin maintains a connection to France, but it is one that is complicated by life experiences, backgrounds, and choices that inevitably expand their identities beyond the Hexagon. Harrington examines how these authors' life experiences are reflected in their writing and how they may inform us on the state of our increasingly global world where borders and identities are blurred.

The nomads of Central Asia were already well accustomed to life under the power of a distant capital when the Bolsheviks fomented revolution on the streets of Petrograd. Yet after the fall of the Tsar, the nature, ambition and potency of that power would change dramatically, ultimately resulting in the near eradication of Central Asian nomadism. Based on extensive primary source work in Almaty, Bishkek and Moscow, Nomads and Soviet Rule charts the development of this volatile and brutal relationship and challenges the often repeated view that events followed a linear path of gradually escalating violence. Rather than the sedentarisation campaign being an inevitability born of deep-rooted Marxist hatred of the nomadic lifestyle, Thomas demonstrates the Soviet state's treatment of nomads to be far more complex and pragmatic. He shows how Soviet policy was informed by both an anti-colonial spirit and an imperialist impulse, by nationalism as well as communism, and above all by a lethal self-confidence in the Communist Party's ability to transform the lives of nomads and harness the agricultural potential of their landscape. This is the first book to look closely at the period between the revolution and the collectivisation drive, and offers fresh insight into a little-known aspect of early Soviet history. In doing so, the book offers a path to refining conceptions of the broader history and dynamics of the Soviet project in this key period.

"[W]ithout a doubt one of the most important studies so far completed on literature in French grounded in the experiences of migrants of sub-Saharan African origin." —Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University France has always hosted a rich and vibrant black presence within its borders. But recent violent events have raised questions about France's treatment of ethnic minorities. Challenging the identity politics that have set immigrants against the mainstream, Black France explores how black expressive culture has been reformulated as global culture in the multicultural and multinational spaces of France. Thomas brings forward questions such as—Why is France a privileged site of civilization? Who is French? Who is an immigrant? Who controls the networks of production? Black France poses an urgently needed reassessment of the French colonial legacy.