Anti-Colonial Solidarity
Race, Reconciliation, and MENA Liberation
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Rowman & Littlefield
Published:31st Jan '22
Should be back in stock very soon
This book offers a critical examination of the racialization of MENA peoples, advocating for solidarity and collective action against colonial oppression.
In Anti-Colonial Solidarity, George Fourlas delves into the complex social and political vulnerabilities faced by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) perceived communities within the context of colonial legacies. He argues that these communities experience a unique form of misrecognition, which exacerbates their marginalization on both social and political fronts. By examining the interplay of orientalism, racism, and colonialism, Fourlas elucidates how these forces have shaped the narratives surrounding the MENA region and its peoples, often obscuring their rich histories and potential for solidarity.
The book highlights various case studies that demonstrate the power of anti-colonial relational existence. Through careful social labor and collective action, MENA communities have shown that meaningful resistance against colonial narratives is not just a theoretical aspiration, but a practical reality. Fourlas emphasizes the importance of understanding the past and present conditions that enable solidarity among MENA peoples and other subjugated groups, offering a pathway to navigate the cyclical nature of colonial violence that has persisted for centuries.
Rather than prescribing a rigid model for a liberated society, Anti-Colonial Solidarity advocates for an open-ended approach to collective action. It encourages the prioritization of reciprocal relationships with others and the environment, while challenging the limitations of traditional recognition politics. This book serves as a vital call to action for MENA communities and other marginalized groups to reclaim their narratives and histories from the grasp of colonial domination, paving the way for a more just and inclusive future.
Probing in its diagnosis, creative in its constructive spirit, against the alternative of mass extinction, Fourlas offers historical, mythic, and philosophical resources to forge anti-colonial solidarities that are as necessary as they are potentially far-reaching. Illuminating the nature of Middle Eastern racialization and the internalized Orientalism of insular MENA micro-communal, racialized-nationalist commitments, the book portrays a future that must be deliberately and tirelessly built through processes of relearning that center the renovation of reconciliatory practices indigenous to the between space of the Afro-Euro-Asian MENA region prior to its MENAfication. The “Decolonizing the Ancients” chapter is a must-read for all scholars of the history of ideas. I hope it will be taught and reprinted widely!
-- Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement andCreolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through FISBN: 9781538141458
Dimensions: 228mm x 160mm x 19mm
Weight: 490g
200 pages