The Illusion Of The Post Colonial State

This book challenges the long-held conventional wisdom that Africa is a post-colonial society of sovereign nation-states despite the outward attributes of statehood: demarcated territories, permanent populations, governments, national currencies, police, and armed forces. While it is true that African nation-states have been gifted flag independence by their respective colonial masters, few have reached fully developed status as a secure nation-state. Most African nation-states have, since independence, been grappling with the crisis of state-building, nation-building, governance, and myriad security challenges which have been chronically exacerbated by the dynamics of the post-Cold War era. To focus merely on the agency of the African political elite and their inability to sustain functional modern nation-states misses the point. The central argument of the book is that an understanding of Africa’s contemporary governance and security challenges requires us to historicize the discourse surrounding nation-building and state-building throughout Africa.

Caribbean Political Thought: Theories of the Post-Colonial State reckons with the vast body of radical work and thought on the post-colonial Caribbean state. It focuses on the period after the Second World War, when a significant number of Caribbean countries gained their independence, and the character of the region's post-colonial politics had become clear. The survey of political thought in this collection is divided into four sections: theories of the post-colonial state, theorizing post-colonial citizenship, Caribbean regionalism and political culture. Includes contributions from: Walter Rodney Ernesto Sagas Percy Hintzen Michel-Rolph Trouillot Carl Stone Brian Meeks CY Thomas George Danns M. Jacqui Alexander Norman Girvan George Belle Eudine Barriteau Hilbourne Watson Tracy Robinson Obika Gray Patricia Mohammed Charles Mills C.L.R. James Frantz Fanon Stuart Hall Edouard Glissant Archie Singham Eric Williams Rupert Lewis Jack Dahomay George Lamming Erna Brodber Sylvia Wynter Arthur Lewis Patsy Lewis Havelock R.H. Ross-Brewster

"A highly readable, sweeping, and yet detailed analysis of the African state in all its failures and moments of hope. Crawford Young manages to touch upon all the important issues in the discipline and crucial developments in the recent history of the African continent. This book will be a classic."---Pierre Englebert, author of Africa Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow --

In this book the author examines the current state of postcolonial Africa with a focus on the "liberation predicament" and the crisis of epistemological, cultural, economic, and political dependence created by colonialism and coloniality.

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East. In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have engulfed multiple countries and political climes from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen, were driven by a 'Delayed Defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike - that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism. Sketching a new geography of liberation, Dabashi shows how the Arab Spring has altered the geopolitics of the region so radically that we must begin re-imagining the 'the Middle East'. Ultimately, the 'permanent revolutionary mood' Dabashi brilliantly explains has the potential to liberate not only those societies already ignited, but many others through a universal geopolitics of hope.

An essential guide to understanding the issues which characterize post-colonialism. A comprehensive glossary has extensive cross-referencing, a bibliography of essential writings and an easy-to-use A-Z format.

This volume addresses the analytical challenges of the colonial state from a variety of theoretical and thematic angles, and across a range of empirical cases that stretch over a vast span historically and geographically, to provide a new approach to analyzing the colonial state and its governmental practices.

In Home Rule Nandita Sharma traces the historical formation and political separation of Natives and Migrants from the nineteenth century to the present to theorize the portrayal of Migrants as “colonial invaders.” The imperial-state category of Native, initially a mark of colonized status, has been revitalized in what Sharma terms the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Under postcolonial rule, claims to autochthony—being the Native “people of a place”—are mobilized to define true national belonging. Consequently, Migrants—the quintessential “people out of place”—increasingly face exclusion, expulsion, or even extermination. This turn to autochthony has led to a hardening of nationalism(s). Criteria for political membership have shrunk, immigration controls have intensified, all while practices of expropriation and exploitation have expanded. Such politics exemplify the postcolonial politics of national sovereignty, a politics that Sharma sees as containing our dreams of decolonization. Home Rule rejects nationalisms and calls for the dissolution of the ruling categories of Native and Migrant so we can build a common, worldly place where our fundamental liberty to stay and move is realized.