Anti-Colonial Solidarity

Political philosopher Fourlas begins his wide-ranging, stimulating discussion of how to overcome the effects of Orientalism, racism, and colonialism with a focus on racialized experiences of populations from the MENA region…. Eschewing both the status quo and Utopian dreams, Fourlas draws on examples of reciprocal-relationality found within the ancient Ionian worldview, at Babel in the plains of Shinar, in the contemporary peace movement among Turkish and Greek Cypriots, and in Kurdish non-state organization and action in Rojava. He demonstrates the possibilities, meanings, and praxis of non-domination and reconciliation across boundaries, including gender, that prove to be neither primordial nor eternal. Through epistemological decolonization and the bottom-up labor of reconciliation, democratic confederalism, consensual meaning-making, and shared leadership, Fourlas insists that the racist colonialism of the modern world can and must be eliminated.Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. * Choice Reviews *
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 Creolizing Political Theory and Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement
In Anti-Colonial Solidarity, George Fourlas seeks a way out of the morass that is our enduring colonial, racist, and Orientalist present. What he discovers is that real human freedom—the only kind that’s worth imagining and striving for—will never be found in call-out culture, in narrow nationalisms, or in appeals to the state for equality. Possibilities for real freedom, as Middle Eastern and North African peoples know only too well, can only be created when we work for justice with all of our selves and with each of our others. -- Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
Philosophy of race has been expanding beyond black-white relations in novel ways. Fourlas’ book is a compelling example in its sophisticated treatment of the sociopolitical condition and identities of MENA peoples. In making his case, Fourlas unsettles many conceptual habits by centralizing anticolonial solidarity, not just intranational concerns, prioritizing the concept of reconciliation, not merely justice, and reconceptualizing, not just “provincializing,” Europe. -- David H. Kim, University of San Francisco
Fourlas has succeeded in giving us a book in contemporary MENA political philosophy written for a MENA audience. In a field where MENA peoples do not exist outside the medieval period, and at a time when the MENA region is reduced to intractable sectarian violence, a hot-bed of terrorism, or a reductive fixation on “the Muslim woman,” Fourlas’s book is a refresh­ing glimpse of what philosophy might be. * Radical Philosophy Review *
In Anti-Colonial Solidarity: Race, Reconciliation, and MENA Liberation, Fourlas sees a world in need of “anti-colonial solidarity,” a concept he develops through various other thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, whose predictions haunt a post-colonial earth. The contemporary world remains burdened with the aftermath of colonial rule and capital’s schemes. It is still reeling from nationalisms borne from lines drawn by European imperialists without consideration for the people trapped within them... Fourlas’ text is a genuinely interesting attempt at grappling with the complexity of solidarity, a term often tossed around, but rarely explored. Fourlas clearly wants his philosophy to matter beyond the bounds of the page, to begin important conversations and organizing for power before it’s too late. * Philosophy and Global Affairs *