The Life, Thought, and Legacy of Cape Verde's Freedom Fighter Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)


Book Description

Arguing for what he describes as the weapon of theory, Amilcar Cabral, founder of the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde and Guinea (PAIGC) and a major figure in the struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in Africa, highlights the pivotal role of culture in national liberation and nation building. This book is the product of a collection of scholars who have come together to interpret and give new meaning to the life and philosophy of Amilcar Cabral. While the focus here in on Cabral and his thoughts, the philosophical lesson is that for any people victimized by oppression, the weapon of theory is an alternative to armed conflict.




Africana Critical Theory


Book Description

Building on and going far beyond W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century and Du Bois's Dialectics, Reiland Rabaka's Africana Critical Theory innovatively identifies and analyzes continental and diasporan African contributions to classical and contemporary critical theory. This book represents a climatic critical theoretical clincher that cogently demonstrates how Du Bois's rarely discussed dialectical thought, interdisciplinarity, intellectual history-making radical political activism, and world-historical multiple liberation movement leadership helped to inaugurate a distinct Africana tradition of critical theory. With chapters on W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Negritude (Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor), Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, Africana Critical Theory endeavors to accessibly offer contemporary critical theorists an intellectual archaeology of the Africana tradition of critical theory and a much-needed dialectical deconstruction and reconstruction of black radical politics. These six seminal figures' collective thought and texts clearly cuts across several disciplines and, therefore, closes the chasm between Africana Studies and critical theory, constantly demanding that intellectuals not simply think deep thoughts, develop new theories, and theoretically support radical politics, but be and constantly become political activists, social organizers and cultural workers - that is, folk the Italian critical theorist Antonio Gramsci referred to as 'organic intellectuals.' In this sense, then, the series of studies gathered in Africana Critical Theory contribute not only to African Studies, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Postcolonial Studies, but also to contemporary critical theoretical discourse across an amazingly wide-range of 'traditional' disciplines, and radical political activism outside of (and, in many instances, absolutely against) Europe's ivory towers and the absurdities of the American academy.




Resistance and Decolonization


Book Description

How can a people overthrow 500 years of colonial oppression? What can be done to decolonize mentalities, economic structures, and political institutions? In this book, which includes the first translation of the text ‘Analysis of a Few Types of Resistance’ as well as ‘The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence,’ the African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral explores these and other questions. These texts demonstrate his frank and insightful directives to his comrades in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde’s party for independence, as well as reflections on culture and combat written the year prior to his assassination by the Portuguese secret police. As one of the most important and profound African revolutionary leaders in the 20th century, and justly compared in importance to Frantz Fanon, Cabral’s thoughts and instructions as articulated here help us to rethink important issues concerning nationalism, culture, vanguardism, revolution, liberation, colonialism, race, and history. The volume also includes two introductory essays: the first introduces Cabral’s work within the context of Africana critical theory, and the second situates these texts in the context their historical-political context and analyzes their relevance for contemporary anti-imperialism.




Concepts of Cabralism


Book Description

By examining Amilcar Cabral’s theories and praxes, as well as several of the antecedents and major influences on the evolution of his radical politics and critical social theory, Concepts of Cabralism:Amilcar Cabral and Africana Critical Theory simultaneously reintroduces, chronicles, and analyzes several of the core characteristics of the Africana tradition of critical theory. Reiland Rabaka’s primary preoccupation is with Cabral’s theoretical and political legacies—that is to say, with the ways in which he constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed theory and the aims, objectives, and concrete outcomes of his theoretical applications and discursive practices. The book begins with the Negritude Movement, and specifically the work of Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Next, it shifts the focus to Frantz Fanon’s discourse on radical disalienation and revolutionary decolonization. Finally, it offers an extended engagement of Cabral’s critical theory and contributions to the Africana tradition of critical theory. Ultimately, Concepts of Cabralism chronicles and critiques, revisits and revises the black radical tradition with an eye toward the ways in which classical black radicalism informs, or should inform, not only contemporary black radicalism, African nationalism, and Pan-Africanism, but also contemporary efforts to create a new anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, and anti-imperialist critical theory of contemporary society—what has come to be called “Africana critical theory.”




International Relations and Non-Western Thought


Book Description

International Relations, as a discipline, tends to focus upon European and Western canons of modern social and political thought. Alternatively, this book explores the global imperial and colonial context within which knowledge of modernity has been developed. The chapters sketch out the historical depth and contemporary significance of non-Western thought on modernity, as well as the rich diversity of its individuals, groups, movements and traditions. The contributors theoretically and substantively engage with non-Western thought in ways that refuse to render it exotic to, superfluous to or derivative of the orthodox Western canon of social and political thought. Taken as a whole, the book provides deep insights into the contested nature of a global modernity shaped so fundamentally by Western colonialism and imperialism. Now, as ever, these insights are desperately needed for a discipline that is so closely implicated in Western foreign policy making and yet retains such a myopic horizon of inquiry. This work provides a significant contribution to the field and will be of great interest to all scholars of politics, political theory and international relations theory.




The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles


Book Description

The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past presents a critical and comparative analysis on the memory of the colonial and liberation wars that led to a regime change in Portugal and to the independence of five new African countries: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Covering more than six decades and based on original archival research and critical analysis of sources and interviews, the book offers the first plural account of the public memorialisation of this contested past in Portugal and in former colonised territories in Africa, focussing on diachronic and synchronic processes of mnemonic production. This innovative exercise highlights the changing and crossed nature of political memories and social representations through time, emphasizing three modes of mnemonic intersections: the intersection of distinct historical times, the intersection between multiple products and practices of memory and the intersection connecting the different countries and national histories. The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles: Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past a major output of the research developed by CROME – Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence, a project funded by a Starting Grant (715593) from the European Research Council (ERC). The book advances current knowledge on Portugal and Lusophone Africa and deepens ongoing conceptual and epistemological discussions regarding the relationship between social and individual memories, the dialectics between memory, power, and silence, and the uses and representations of the past in postcolonial states and societies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.




Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism provides an international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary overview of, and approach to, Pan-Africanism, making an invaluable contribution to the ongoing evolution of Pan-Africanism and demonstrating its continued significance in the 21st century. The handbook features expert introductions to, and critical explorations of, the most important historic and current subjects, theories, and controversies of Pan-Africanism and the evolution of black internationalism. Pan-Africanism is explored and critically engaged from different disciplinary points of view, emphasizing the multiplicity of perspectives and foregrounding an intersectional approach. The contributors provide erudite discussions of black internationalism, black feminism, African feminism, and queer Pan-Africanism alongside surveys of black nationalism, black consciousness, and Caribbean Pan-Africanism. Chapters on neo-colonialism, decolonization, and Africanization give way to chapters on African social movements, the African Union, and the African Renaissance. Pan-African aesthetics are probed via literature and music, illustrating the black internationalist impulse in myriad continental and diasporan artists’ work. Including 36 chapters by acclaimed established and emerging scholars, the handbook is organized into seven parts, each centered around a comprehensive theme: Intellectual origins, historical evolution, and radical politics of Pan-Africanism Pan-Africanist theories Pan-Africanism in the African diaspora Pan-Africanism in Africa Literary Pan-Africanism Musical Pan-Africanism The contemporary and continued relevance of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism is an indispensable source for scholars and students with research interests in continental and diasporan African history, sociology, politics, economics, and aesthetics. It will also be a very valuable resource for those working in interdisciplinary fields, such as African studies, African American studies, Caribbean studies, decolonial studies, postcolonial studies, women and gender studies, and queer studies.




The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought


Book Description

From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.




The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy


Book Description

This handbook investigates the current state and future possibilities of African Philosophy, as a discipline and as a practice, vis-à-vis the challenge of African development and Africa’s place in a globalized, neoliberal capitalist economy. The volume offers a comprehensive survey of the philosophical enterprise in Africa, especially with reference to current discourses, arguments and new issues—feminism and gender, terrorism and fundamentalism, sexuality, development, identity, pedagogy and multidisciplinarity, etc.—that are significant for understanding how Africa can resume its arrested march towards decolonization and liberation.




State of the Continent


Book Description

What precisely is the state of the African continent today? Depending on ones perspective, the answer may either dwell on Africas recent economic and political accomplishments or focus on the long-standing single-story of failure, disaster and eternal dictatorships. This book provides a nuanced, forceful and balanced assessment of Africas political and economic performance since independence. While acknowledging Africas tragic pitfalls, dating to the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, State of the Continent skillfully argues that theories associated with the dependency school are no longer enough to explain the continents failures in governance and economic performance. For a continent so richly blessed and endowed with both human and material resources, the blame for Africas lackluster performance falls squarely on its leadership. To get things right, Nkrumahs vision of the primacy of the political kingdom must be prioritized whereupon economic gains shall predictably, follow. In lucid and persuasive prose, this volume is an ideal book for scholars as well as students of international studies and African politics.