Albert Memmi is well known for his book The Colonizer and The Colonized (1957). As a kind of follow-on “Decolonization and the Decolonized” (2004 French, 2006 translation), I had high expectations for this book (and had not having read the reviews). After reading the book, and now having looked at reader reviews and comments, I […]
Siegfried Pausewang (1937-2012) was one of the leading European scholars of Ethiopia, with contributions made over decades. His engagement in Ethiopia began in the late 1960s, as a professor at the then Haile Selassie University (now Addis Ababa University). This post covers “Peasants, Land and Society: A Social History of Land Reform in Ethiopia” (1983), […]
Tags: #Agriculture #Ethiopia #Land #Land Reform #Land Tenure
Zara Yacob was an Ethiopian philosopher, a rationalist thinking who wrote nearly a hundred years before Descartes. Claude Sumner has written extensively about Zara Yacob, devoting a career to Ethiopian philosophy and penning many books. Kiros says “Sumner is right when he contended that Zara Yacob along with Descartes was a founder of modern philosophy” […]
Tags: #Ethiopia #Ethiopian philosophy #Rationalism #Teodros Kiros #Zara Yacob
Issa G. Shivji is one of East Africa’s well-known critical scholars, researchers and professors. Much of his work has appeared in shorter essay form, as opposed to academic articles or books (although he has published several books as well). “Silences in NGO Discourses: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa” (2007) is one of […]
Tags: #Development Studies #Ideology #Issa Shivji #Neoliberalism #NGO
Aime Cesaire is one of the great voices of the anti-colonial struggle and was the teacher of Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks & The Wretched of the Earth). Cesaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism” was originally published in French in 1950, the English version I am using was translated in 1972 and republished in 2000. For the […]
Tags: #Aime Cesaire #Capitalism #Colonization #decolonization #Discourse on Colonialism
Achille Mbembe is not as well-known as he should be. One reason is that much of his work is written in French (although more translations are becoming available). I suspect this Cameroonian philosopher and critical scholar will become increasingly well-known in the years to come. This is essential reading (as is his Critique of Black […]
Tags: #Achille Mbembe #Colonization #Democratic values #Necropolitics #Racism