Teaching IR Globally, Part II

Abstract

Este Simpósio 'Ensinando RI Globalmente' se engaja e contribui para o debate atual sobre análises alternativas e nao ocidentais e a questäo da inevitabilidade da perspectiva no campo da RI e do estudo da política global. Este Simpósio é único, pois aborda específicamente nao como realizar pesquisas efetivas sobre ou em RI global, mas como ensinar RI globalmente para estudantes nos níveis de graduaçao e pós-gradua&ecedil;ao. Neste grupo de contribuiçöes, Meera Sabaratnam e Kerem Nişancıoǧlu apresentam um plano de estudos que desafia os estudantes do último ano a vincular a história racial das Relaçöes Internacionais, a onda de descolonizaçöes políticas na Ásia e África no século XX e as atuais lutas de descolonizaçao na teoria e prática. Em uma apresentaçao de um curso básico para um mestrado internacional, Martin Weber mostra como trabalhar com e contra os 'isismos' que geralmente organizam o campo das RI, colocando justaposiçöes temáticas de clássicos familiares com textos geralmente relegados a abrangente categoria de 'outras abordagens.'

Alternate abstract:

This Symposium on 'Teaching IR Globally'1 engages with and contributes to the current debate on non-Western and alternative analyses and the question of the inevitability of perspectivity in the field of IR and the study of global politics. This Symposium is unique in that it specifically addresses not how to undertake effective research on or in global IR, but rather how to teach IR globally to students at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In this group of contributions, Meera Sabaratnam and Kerem Nişancıoǧlu present a syllabus that challenges final-year undergraduate students to link the racial history of International Relations, the wave of political decolonizations in Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, and current decolonisation struggles in theory and practice. In a presentation of a core course for an international Master's Degree, Martin Weber shows how to work with and against the '-isms' that usually organize the field of IR by staging thematic juxtapositions of familiar classics with texts usually relegated to the catch-all category 'other approaches.'

Headnote

Abstract: This Symposium on 'Teaching IR Globally'1 engages with and contributes to the current debate on non-Western and alternative analyses and the question of the inevitability of perspectivity in the field of IR and the study of global politics. This Symposium is unique in that it specifically addresses not how to undertake effective research on or in global IR, but rather how to teach IR globally to students at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In this group of contributions, Meera Sabaratnam and Kerem Nişancıoǧlu present a syllabus that challenges final-year undergraduate students to link the racial history of International Relations, the wave of political decolonizations in Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, and current decolonisation struggles in theory and practice. In a presentation of a core course for an international Master's Degree, Martin Weber shows how to work with and against the '-isms' that usually organize the field of IR by staging thematic juxtapositions of familiar classics with texts usually relegated to the catch-all category 'other approaches.'

Keywords: theory; decolonisation; empire; race; slavery; freedom; liberalism.

Resumo: Este Simpósio 'Ensinando RI Globalmente' se engaja e contribui para o debate atual sobre análises alternativas e nao ocidentais e a questäo da inevitabilidade da perspectiva no campo da RI e do estudo da política global. Este Simpósio é único, pois aborda específicamente nao como realizar pesquisas efetivas sobre ou em RI global, mas como ensinar RI globalmente para estudantes nos níveis de graduaçao e pós-gradua&ecedil;ao. Neste grupo de contribuiçöes, Meera Sabaratnam e Kerem Nişancıoǧlu apresentam um plano de estudos que desafia os estudantes do último ano a vincular a história racial das Relaçöes Internacionais, a onda de descolonizaçöes políticas na Ásia e África no século XX e as atuais lutas de descolonizaçao na teoria e prática. Em uma apresentaçao de um curso básico para um mestrado internacional, Martin Weber mostra como trabalhar com e contra os 'isismos' que geralmente organizam o campo das RI, colocando justaposiçöes temáticas de clássicos familiares com textos geralmente relegados a abrangente categoria de 'outras abordagens.'

Palavras-chave: teoria; descolonizaçao; império; raça; escravidäo; liberdade; liberalismo.

Received on 4 November 2019, and approved for publication on 10 June 2020.

Decolonising World Politics

Meera Sabaratnam and Kerem Nişancıoǧlu

Decolonising World Politics is a 15-credit, 10-week course for final year undergraduate students in their International Relations/Politics degrees. The course tracks theories and practices of decolonisation in the twentieth and twenty-first century, with a primary focus on African, Asian and diasporic figures. We focus on the intellectual and political claims, dilemmas and strategies of these figures, demonstrating both their overlaps and tensions. A key aim of the course is to cultivate appreciation for both the dynamism and contradictions of movements that have aimed to 'decolonise' the world order in different times and places. Given the location of the course in an International Relations programme, the course also aims to introduce these figures as developing and practising their own 'theories of the international' in making sense of the world. We make links with our first-year course Introduction to Global History, which tells a story of connected histories through capitalist transformation, revolution and empire.

This includes, for example, comparing W. E. B. Du Bois and Vladimir Lenin on questions of imperialism, or the different ways in which Mohandas Gandhi and Aimé Césaire mobilised culture anti-colonially. We look at varieties of women's activism and the attempts to build solidarity across/beyond lines of identity. We discuss tensions between violent and non-violent tactics as well as nationalist and internationalist aims. We highlight contemporary discussions around Afro-pessimist thought and traditions of political blackness. We close with reflections on what it means to approach the university as a space that might be decolonised.

By connecting contemporary debates to historical ones, we underscore the perennial character of some key questions within the politics of decolonisation, such as the relation between cultural and material dynamics of decolonisation, the difference between forms of strategic solidarity and essential/ist claims, and the distinctiveness of claims in different spaces, such as settler-colonial societies, imperial metropoles and the 'Third World.' In doing so, we collectively interrogate the contested character of decolonisation as a heterogeneous and disputed field of political activity.

From a teaching perspective, we developed this course based on our own research interests in coloniality, race and empire, as well as the politics of student activism in the university (Sabaratnam 2011; Nişancıoǧlu and Pal 2016; Bhambra et al 2018). We wanted both to support and to challenge the students by giving them a space to critically examine the ideas, claims and practices being invoked. However, we also build into the pedagogy space to examine the limits of education itself as a space for liberation.

We teach the course through a two-hour interactive lecture and one-hour small-group tutorials.1 The assessment is slightly unusual in format but corresponds with the module's aims of provoking critical thinking on questions of decolonisation. From 2019-20 it will be entirely based around having the students submit short reflective questions every other week based on their reading of the texts. We have found that this practice encourages consistent active reading across the course and deeper engagement in classroom discussions (Yamane 2006).

Students have found the module both very enjoyable and challenging. Many of the students who take the course have a broad political interest in questions of racism and coloniality, and a number are also political activists. Our large number of students with African and Asian heritage in the programme and module appreciate that the module often engages radical ideas and practices of resistance connected to their roots. In the context of a highly antagonistic and crude debate on these matters within social media, we believe that the module provides a space for considered reflection, mutual learning and independent thought.

However, the module does, as it should, expose the very profound challenges involved in confronting global coloniality. We feel that as things stand we need to better equip the students with respect to traditions of political organising and transformation, which will help them better realise their own agency within this political order. We also hope that over time the module contributes to wider efforts to connect syllabus design to political practice outside of the university (NYC Stands with Standing Rock Committee 2016; Roberts 2016).

Changing the Approach: Towards Teaching IR Theory More Globally

Martin Weber

One of the challenges of teaching IR theory with an intent to enable students to be both competent on established approaches and equipped to engage critically and constructively with their respective limitations, has been how to negotiate the dominance of canonical thinking. The effect of the latter is readily and obviously brought home by the fact that the majority of IR theory courses aimed at providing a comprehensive introduction to this field of study follow a specific sequence that is also mapped out in the majority of textbooks on the matter: Realism, Liberalism (and neo-variants), then (perhaps) 'Globalism' (Structuralism, or Marxism), followed by Constructivism, and, finally (if the curriculum permits), we reach the outlying provinces of Feminist, Critical, and Poststructuralist theorizing.

This compartmentalizing approach to theoretical projects of explaining and understanding IR does, of course, serve useful heuristic and pedagogical purposes; or, at least it does so up to a point. When finding myself in the position of having to redesign an IR theory course for our Masters Program based on the premise of making this an advanced learning experience, the 'classical' approach began to look too limiting. As a result, I developed, tested, and have for the third year in succession adhered to a different approach.

In order to explain how it works, it is useful to provide a brief impression of the student cohort that will typically enrol. The course is a core course for Master students in International Relations at the University of Queensland (Australia) and can be taken as an elective by students in Peace & Conflict Studies, as well as from cognate disciplines. A typical class has students (always more than only a few) from North America (Canada, the USA, but frequently also Mexico), Latin America (mostly from Brazil and Argentina), Africa (from South Sudan in particular, but also Kenya, and sometimes Nigeria), Europe (with an emphasis on Scandinavian countries), Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the SubContinent, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia. Although the preconditions for enrolment in this course stipulate undergraduate-level familiarity with IR theory, the levels of preparedness are predictably quite different; and the concerns that have motivated students to enrol in the study of IR are often related to situated experiences of political change and conflict that prompt very diverse perspectives and expectations.

In order to avoid the problems imparted by the textbook-template approach outlined above, I redesigned the course by focusing the sessions thematically. This is signalled already, if only subtly, in the course title: Theories in International Relation (rather than 'of'), puts an emphasis on how theories in the field may implicate and/or problematize each other, while signalling that the ostensible object of inquiry (International Relations) is co-produced rather than 'stable' and 'just there.' From this premise, the principles of the approach I have taken are relatively easy to sketch, and I'll do so by outlining by way of example one of the sessions from a course comprising 12-13 two-hour seminars.

The first principle was not to try too hard to break the habitual mould, but instead to work with it against it. So, much (though not all) of the course (see syllabus, Figure 2) does outwardly look a bit like the textbook sequence. However, under the headers, something quite different happens, and to give you an example of this, let's look at the session entitled 'Who and what it is Liberal Thought in IR for?'

The key to the different approach lies in the selection of readings in accordance with the idea that the different theories address thematic fields, rather than framing or defining them comprehensively. Thus, the field of 'liberal thought' is concerned, in one way or other, with questions of 'freedom'; this means that any theoretical account that speaks to such concerns is, in one way or another, relevant (linking here to my point above about 'co-production'). The readings for this topic reflect that. In preparation for the session, my students will read O'Neal's and Russett's account of Liberal Peace Theory (1999), but they will also read Shilliam's 'Forget English Liberty, Remember Atlantic Slavery' (2012), Neta Crawford's account of the democratic peace among the constituents of what has been referred to as the Iroquois Confederacy (1994), and Berlin's essay on the two concepts of liberty (2002).

The concept behind this approach is quite clear, and transferable also insofar as different texts could be recruited for similar effects: all of the texts in question deal somehow with questions of freedom, but they do so very differently, using different methods and pursuing different interests. By putting the texts next to one another, the questions can be made thematic and considered for their strengths and weaknesses in disclosing and explaining, as well as for what they disarticulate, omit or forget. Theorising is therefore put centrally into the seminar discussions, and we have avoided the problematic practice of compartmentalization that would put Crawford and Shilliam somewhere in the 'other approaches' section towards the end of the course, and that would section off Berlin as belonging to a different discipline altogether.

This concept is replicable in a number of different ways; feminist texts frequently deal with questions of domination and repression; so, a sample text could (and should) figure in a session on 'liberal thought,' not in the 'other approaches' section.

The reading list I have compiled for the UQ course is, of course, not at all considered as a model; it reflects pragmatic choices with regard to the cohort, experience of their readiness (or, more often than not, reluctance) to read a fair bit of material in preparation of their classes; and the challenges of thinking about how best to tease out the tensions in theorising across the different thematic fields. On the whole, though, the experience with students taking the class in this format has been very positive and encouraging.

Sidebar

Decolonising World Politics

Module Code: 153402002

Unit value: 0.5

Year of study: Year 3 of 3 or Year 4 of 4

Taught in: Term 1

Overview

Decolonisation was a set of historical processes that radically transformed international politics in practice and thought. The emergence of a world of sovereign states - a core premise for International Relations - is founded on the assumed completion of such processes. Yet increasingly, research in the field points to a number of ongoing theoretical, methodological and practical issues that result from the colonial and post-colonial constitution of global order. This course asks what it means to 'decolonise International Relations' by engaging with the challenges posed by anti-colonial, post-colonial and de-colonial thinkers on such issues. We will do so by critically examining the complexity and diversity of anti-colonial movements and thinkers. We will study colonialism and anti-colonialism as international and transnational in thought and practice by exploring how both the colonised and the coloniser were transformed by decolonisation. We will also consider the contemporary relevance of decolonisation by looking at the condition of postcolonialism. In addition we will examine decoloniality in its intersections between 'race,' gender and class. In doing so we will critically examine the relationships between theory and practice, text and action, thought and history. Moreover, we will critically assess key concepts and theories in contemporary International Relations from a decolonial lens.

Objectives and learning outcomes of the module

* Understand the historical complexity of decolonisation as an international and transnational process

* Understand, use and critique a range of different interpretations of colonialism and decolonisation

* Critically deploy 'decolonial' methods in historical and theoretical analysis

* Identify relationships between history, theory and practice

Course outline

1. Why Decolonise? - 1/10 KN / MS

PART I: Seeking Self-determination

2. Du Bois and Debates on Imperialism - 8/10 MS

3. Identity, Culture and Decolonisation - 15/10 MS

4. The Idea of the Third World - 22/10 MS

5. Decolonising India - 29/10 MS

*··Reading Week···

6. Concerning Violence: Fanon in Algeria - 12/11 KN

7. Anticolonial nationalism and its alternatives - 19/11 KN

PART II: Decolonising the Metropole?

8. Political identity/identity politics - 26/11 KN

9. Death, Deportation and Disposability - 3/12 KN

10 Conclusion: Performing Decolonisation - 10/12 KN/MS

Assessment

READING QUESTION: 40% [Hand in 10% every two weeks]

A fundamental part of the course is collective learning through participation and conversation in seminars. This collective and participatory component is built into your assessment. Every week you must come up with one question based on the week's reading in preparation for the seminar discussion.

These questions should identify something in the given authors' arguments that you found particularly:

* Interesting

* Inspiring

* Convincing

* Problematic

* Unconvincing

* Weak

* Any combination of the above

In addition to devising the question you should also provide justification for why you are asking these questions. To do this, you should:

* Spell out what is at stake in each of the questions you're asking: why is it important?

* Identify specific parts of the reading - quotes/passages/page numbers - that your questions refer to.

* Locate a controversy brought out by your questions. NB: a controversy usually arises out of a disagreement over how to answer any given question. This implies that there are different ways of answering any given question. So when devising your questions consider:

- What are the different ways in which this can be answered?

- How would people from different political, theoretical or personal positions attempt to answer this question?

- And what would the author of your chosen reading respond to your question?

- How do different answers to your question help respond to the 'provocation' in your given week (see week-by-week guide below).

- Doing the above will help you prompt further discussion on the back of your questions.

You can focus on a particular passage, the reading as a whole, or through reference to or comparison with other texts, political events, historical processes, personal experiences, etc.

An example of an excellent question and justification, based on the Sabaratnam reading from week 1:

Question: Does treating decolonising as a 'dialogue' elide the antagonism between coloniser and colonised (and thus its radical potential)?

Justification: Sabaratnam's typology of strategies (see pp. 785-793) provide effective tools through which the world can be reinterpreted through a decolonial lens; but the point is to change it. Insofar as decolonising is first and foremost a political project (or a project that is never independent from politics), centring a political strategy of decolonisation which explores and ultimately seeks to abolish the irreconcilable antagonism between coloniser and colonised (see Fanon's, 'Concerning Violence') appears to be problematic.

A 'less excellent' one, but one which shows some understanding:

Question: Are the different strategies identified by Sabaratnam compatible with each other?

Justification: In the article, Sabaratnam claims that the strategies are about challenging the 'exclusionary premise of a Western subject of world politics' (785), but the strategies seem to be doing different things in terms of historical analysis or cultural analysis. Don't these different approaches assume fundamentally different things?

Although you will bring these to class, you will also submit these for marks and feedback online as follows:

* AS2: Questions from Weeks 3 and 4 (Identity, Culture and Decolonisation/The Idea of the Third World)

* AS3: Questions from Weeks 5 and 6 (Decolonising India/Fanon and Algeria)

* AS4: Questions from Weeks 7 and 8 (Anti-colonial nationalism and its alternatives/Political Identity/Identity Politics)

* AS5: Questions from Weeks 9 and 10 (Death, Deportation and Disposability/ Conclusion)

Each week, 1-3 students will be responsible for starting the class discussion by presenting their questions and justifications. When presenting, your aim is to provoke conversation, debate and collective learning which encourages your classmates to participate in the discussion.

Each individual presentation should take no more than 5 minutes. The presentation slots will be allocated at the start of term. You must indicate on your submission the week in which you presented.

ESSAY [3,000 words] 60%

You are required to write a 3,000-word essay on one of the 'provocations' from each week topic or a set question [to be distributed]. If you prefer, you are allowed to come up with your own essay question but this must be agreed with both your course convenor and seminar tutor before Friday 7th December 2018.

Essays should demonstrate a clear and deep engagement with the course material, focused on the core readings, but extending into the wider readings and other research. You will need to make an 'argument,' e.g., develop a sustained and clear line of thought that connects issues with each other, and support this with evidence and references. One of the most important skills you can demonstrate in good academic essay-writing is the capacity to show an understanding of competing interpretations and why they may be compelling even if you do not agree with them.

The deadline for this assignment is Monday 7th January 2019.

Useful Websites/Journals

* Decolonisation Indigeneity Education Society (DIES) Journal - http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/index

* Race and Class - http://iournals.sagepub.com/home/rac

* CLR James Journal

* Small Axe

* iMiXWHATiLiKE! - https://imixwhatilike.org

* Decolonise all the things - https://decolonizeallthethings.com

* Postcolonial Text http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/index

* Black Lives Matter Syllabus - http://www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/

* P°C Online Classroom - http://www.poconlineclassroom.com/

* History is a Weapon - http://www.historyisaweapon.com/indextrue.html#

Places to visit

* Black cultural archives - http://bcaheritage.org.uk

* Iniva [Stuart Hall Library] - http://www.iniva.org/library

* Black History Walk - http://www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk

* George Padmore Institute - https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/archive

Reading List

Week i: Why Decolonise?

'Decolonisation' as it is used today takes many forms. Although typically understood to refer to a particular history - the liberation of societies once ruled by European colonisers - it also refers to ongoing anti-colonial and anti-racist theory and practice. This involves not only collective forms of resistance but also the psycho-social - 'decolonising the mind' - by rewriting history from the perspective of the subaltern and dismantling the forms of knowledge produced by colonisers. Finally, decolonising also refers to radical forms of pedagogy and learning. This week we look at these different ways of understanding decolonising and ask: What does it mean to rewrite history and theory? And why/how should we do it?

[Each week, the 'provocation' raises a political point that relates to the week's topic; by the end of each week you should be able to formulate an informed response to the provocation]

Provocation: 'Decolonisation is over.'

Required Reading

Bull, H. 1984. 'The revolt against the West.' In Hedley Bull, The expansion of international society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 217-228.

Sabaratnam, M. 2011. 'IR in dialogue... but can we change the subjects? A typology of decolonising strategies for the study of world politics.' Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39 (3): 781-803.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S J. 2013. Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: CODESRIA, Chapter 2: In the Snare of Colonial Matrix of Power At https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/soas-ebooks/reader. action?docID=1220909&ppg=54

Further Reading

Crenshaw, K. 1991. 'Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color.' Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241-1299.

Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Gruffydd Jones, B. 2006. Decolonising International Relations. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Guha, Ranajit. 1988. 'On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India.' In Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 37-44.

hooks, b. 2014. 'A Revolution of Values.' In bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London and New York: Routledge.

Robinson, C J. 1983. Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Spivak, G. C. 1988. 'Can the subaltern speak?' In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan, pp. 271-313.

Trouillot, M R. 1995. Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon Press.

Wa Thiong'o, N. 1994. Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Nairobi: East African Publishers.

Wynter, S. 1995. '1492: A new world view.' In Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (eds), Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A new world view, pp. 5-57.

Part I: Seeking Self-determination

Week 2: Du Bois and Debates on Imperialism

The early part of the course examines aspects of an intensive period of anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggle between the beginning of the twentieth century and the formal independence of most European colonies by the 1960s. In the first of these topics, we look at the unfolding debates on imperialism through the writings and activism of W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) within the early twentieth century. In the lecture, we will set the scene for the class discussion through a survey of the height of what Hobsbawm describes as the 'Age of Empire' in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, looking particularly at its material and ideological foundations, as well as attempted forms of resistance up to this point. This includes the expansion and consolidation of colonial control within Asia and Africa, the intensification of settler colonialism, the ideological co-ordinates of liberal political thought and the emergence of violent and non-violent resistance. Within this context, the lecture also introduces Du Bois as a figure whose long and varied biography incorporates multiple aspects of the historical struggles against empire, colonialism and racism on the global stage. The task set for students in the seminars is to consider and evaluate some of Du Bois' intellectual arguments on the question of imperialism in relation to each other and the positions of famous contemporaries - Lenin, Hobson and Wilson. The required readings provide short excerpts of some key texts which should be thoroughly read and examined for their arguments. To what extent do Du Bois' writings overlap with or contest those of his contemporaries? What kinds of concepts and logic underpin his arguments? What picture of imperialism can be built up from his ideas? What did he advocate for as a political programme? The readings this week are all documents from the period, authored by the subjects of our inquiry.

Provocation: 'Du Bois' analysis of imperialism was too focused on race.'

Required Reading

Du Bois, W E B. 1900. 'To the Nations of the World' (closing address, first Pan-African conference in London). At http://www.blackpast.org/1900-w-e-b-du-bois-nationsworld (1 page).

Hobson, J A. 1902. 'Imperialism and the Lower Races.' In Hobson, J A, Imperialism: A Study. New York: James Pott & Company, pp. 237-246 only (8 pages).

Du Bois, W E B. 1915. 'The African Roots of War.' The Atlantic, pp. 707-714 http://scua. library.umass.edu/digital/dubois/WarRoots.pdf (8 pages).

Lenin, V I. 1916. 'The Division of the World Among the Great Powers.' Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, pp. 76-87.

Du Bois, W E B. 1917. 'Of the Culture of White Folk.' Journal of Race Development 7: 434-447. [14pp].

Wilson, W. 1918. Fourteen Points (1 page). At<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th century/wilson14.asp.

Du Bois, W E B. 1919. Memorandum on the Future of Africa. At http://credo.library. umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b210-i068 (4 pages).

It is worth reading the other chapters of Hobson's and Lenin's works if you are interested in a fuller view of their analysis.

Useful background

Hobsbawm, E. 1987. The Age of Empire 1875-1914. New York : Vintage, chapter 3.

Contee, C G. 1972. 'Du Bois, the NAACP, and the Pan-African Congress of 1919.' The Journal of Negro History 57 (1): 13-28.

Stoddard, L. 1920. The rising tide of color against white world-supremacy. London: Chapman and Hall.

Swagler, M. 2017. Did the Russian Revolution Matter for Africa? (Part I). At http:// roape.net/2017/08/30/russian-revolution-matter-africa-part/.

Further Reading

Mehta, U S. 1999. Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

McCarthy, T. 2009. Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vitalis, R. 2000. 'The Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture: Making Racism Invisible in American International Relations.' Millennium 29 (2): 331-356.

Pitts, J. 2005. A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Reed Jr, A L. 1997. W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marable, M. 2005 [1986]. W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat. Boulder: Hall & Co.

Vitalis, R. 2015. White World Order, Black Power Politics. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Week 3: Identity, Culture and Decolonisation

One notable aspect of anti-colonial struggles in the early twentieth century was the attempt to carve out a space for alternative identities and ways of being for the colonised, in the context of the historical and political erasures that colonialism was said to have produced. The emergence of prominent anti-colonial nationalism was a manifestation of an alternative that sought to repel colonial rule. However, this conversation took place both after and alongside questions of culture and identity as the basis for decolonisation.

In this week we look at ideas from two prominent efforts in this regard - Gandhi's articulation of Indianness, and the Négritude movement. Both movements were conceived and populated within profoundly international networks, worked through different languages and had varying degrees of success in terms of their capacities for mass mobilisation. Both have been subject of major intellectual and political controversies both in the metropole and amongst those subjects interpellated by these labels. Ironically, critics have attacked both movements on the one hand for 'nativist' or even 'racist' essentialising and on the other for being ultimately derivative from Western ideas. Yet more sympathetic readings have found in these approaches a number of resources for making self, meaning and strategy out of a struggle for self-determination. Why is this? What does a reading of these two movements tell us about how to conceive culture and identity in the context of decolonisation? Can these movements be seen as engaging in 'cultural appropriation'? How do questions of gender emerge and become entwined with colonial power and resistance? In the lecture we will introduce the background to these two intellectual movements, outline some of the impact they had, the controversies generated and think about how we can begin to evaluate them as political and intellectual strategies. We will also look at some areas in which their contexts, approaches and ideas can be compared and contrasted.

This week's readings principally consist of sympathetic critical essays written by more contemporary scholars, with some suggestions for primary texts below. The latter are useful but the former should take priority. For more critical accounts of these movements, please consult the further reading guide.

Provocation: 'Swaraj and Negritude confirm, rather than resist, the hold of Western political thought over the imagination of the colonised.'

Required Reading: Critical Essays

Nandy, A. 2012 [1983]. 'The Psychology of Colonialism.' In Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, VI-VIII [48-63] [15 pages].

Rabaka, R. 2009. 'Aimé Césaire and Leopold Senghor: Revolutionary Negritude and Radical New Negroes'. In Reilan Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing The Black Radical Tradition: From W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. Lexington Books, Chapter 4: 130-131 'Black Being-In-theWorld'; 138-145 'Aimé Césaire; Revolutionary Négritude/Césaire's Radicalism"; ISO159, 'A Satrean [sic] African Philosopher? Léopold Senghor'; 164-165 'Négritude's Connections and Contributions' [21 pages].

Nardal, J. 2002 [1928]. 'Black Internationalism.' In T D Sharpley-Whiting. Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 105-107.

Nardal, J. 2002 [1928]. 'Exotic Puppets.' In T D Sharpley-Whiting. Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 108-113.

Strongly Recommended: Source Texts

Gandhi, M K. 2003 [1938]. Indian Home Rule, or Hind Swaraj. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust. Read Sections 7-8; 13-14; 18-20: [18 pages]

Senghor, L S. 2015. 'Negritude: a Humanism of the Twentieth Century.' In P Williams and L Chrisman. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New Work and London: Routledge, pp. 27-35.

Césaire, S. 2002 [1942]. 'Malaise of a Civilisation'. In T D Sharpley-Whiting. Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 130-134.

Further Reading

Bernasconi, R. 2010. 'Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" as the Fulfillment of Sartre's 'Critique of Dialectical Reason.' Sartre Studies International 16 (2): 36-46.

Bonnett, A. 2012. 'The Critical Traditionalism of Ashis Nandy: Occidentalism and the Dilemmas of Innocence.' Theory, Culture & Society 29 (1): 138-157. https://doi. org/10.1177/0263276411417462

Césaire, A. 2000. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: NYU Press.

el-Malik, S S. 2015. 'Interruptive discourses: Léopold Senghor, African Emotion and the poetry of politics.' African Identities 13 (1): 49-61.

Glissant, E. 1989. 'Beyond Babel.' World Literature Today 63 (4): 561-564.

Jeanpierre, W A. 1965. 'Sartre's Theory of 'Anti-Racist Racism' in His Study of Negritude.' The Massachusetts Review 6 (4): 870-872.

Jules-Rosette, B. 2007. 'Jean-Paul Sartre and the philosophy of négritude: Race, self, and society.' Theory and Society 36 (3): 265-285.

Nielsen, C R. 2013. 'Frantz Fanon and the Négritude Movement: How Strategic Essentialism Subverts Manichean Binaries.' Callaloo 36 (2): 342-352.

Parekh, B C. 1989. Gandhi's political philosophy: a critical examination. London: Macmillan.

Parekh, B C. 1999. Colonialism, Tradition, and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi's Political Discourse. New Delhi: SAGE.

Rabaka, R. 2016. The Negritude Movement: W.E.B. Du Bois, Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and the Evolution of an Insurgent Idea (Reprint edition). Lanham: Lexington Books.

Sharpley-Whiting, T D. 2000. 'Femme négritude: Jane Nardal, La Dépeche africaine, and the francophone new negro.' Souls 2 (4): 8-17.

Sharpley-Whiting, T D. 2002. Negritude Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Shilliam, R. 2016. 'Colonial Architecture or Relatable Hinterlands? Locke, Nandy, Fanon, and the Bandung Spirit.' Constellations 23 (3): 425-435.

Upadhyaya, P C. 1989. 'A Celebration of the Gandhian Alternative.' Economic and Political Weekly 24 (48): 2655-2662.

Week 4: The Idea of the Third World

The 1955 Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, has become renowned as the first meeting of heads of state from what increasingly became known as the 'Third World.' Mostly comprised of states that had recently achieved independence from colonialism, this group developed its own collective positions on a range of political issues and sought to make wider changes in the global arena. Core amongst these were concerns with sovereignty, racial equality, economic justice, rights and political autonomy, as well as critiques of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism. Some Third Worldist positions were self-consciously revolutionary; others might be called 'reformist' in their aims and methods. These activities were seen to be institutionalised during the Cold War in fora such as the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement and various UN bodies. But why did they come together, and what did they hope to achieve? Who were their leaders? What, and how substantial, were the connections, affinities and purposes which bound them together? How did they affect global order? To what extent can the project of the Third World be understood as a success? In which dimensions? The lecture will introduce the background to this period, key developments within it as well as debates around the idea of the 'Third World.' This week's readings are a deliberately dissonant bunch, with different accounts of the meaning, causes and significance of the idea of the 'Third World.' Use the provocation and the readings critically to assess the historical significance and legacy of this idea. In terms of further historical detail the Appadorai piece in the further reading is detailed and useful as an account of the Bandung conference itself, and the Armstrong piece is a provocative challenge to the conventional historiography of that conference.

Provocation: 'The Third World project has been a failure.'

Required Reading

Berger, M. 2004. 'After the Third World? History, Destiny and the Fate of Third Worldism.' Third World Quarterly 25 (1): 9-39.

Kang, L. 2015. 'Maoism: Revolutionary Globalism for the Third World Revisited.' Comparative Literature Studies 52 (1): 12-28.

Desai, R. 2004. 'From National Bourgeoisie to Rogues, Failures and Bullies: 21st Century Imperialism and the Unravelling of the Third World.' Third World Quarterly 25 (1): 169-185.

Further Reading

Ahmad, A. 1987. 'Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the "National Allegory."' Social Text 17: 3-25.

Allison, R. 1988. The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Appadorai, A. 1955. 'The Bandung Conference.' India Quarterly 11 (3): 207-235.

Armstrong, E. 2015. 'Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women's Movement in Asia and the Women's International Democratic Federation.' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41 (2): 305-331.

Dirlik, A. 1994. 'The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism.' Critical Inquiry 20 (2): 328-356.

Dirlik, A. 2014. 'Mao Zedong Thought and the Third World/Global South.' Interventions 16 (2): 233-256.

Escobar, A. 2011. Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mahbubani, K. 2009. The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. New York: PublicAffairs.

Murphy, C N. 1983. 'What the Third World Wants: An Interpretation of the Development and Meaning of the New International Economic Order Ideology.' International Studies Quarterly 27 (1): 55-76.

Shaw, T M. 1979. 'Dependence to (Inter) Dependence: Review of Debate on the (New) International Economic Order.' Alternatives 4 (4): 557-578.

Wright, R. 1956. The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Week 5: Decolonising India

The official departure of the British from India took place on 15th August 1947. Yet just a few years earlier Britain had been adamant that it would retain the 'Jewel in the Crown' of the British Empire. One widely received impression of the British departure from India was that it was negotiated in a civil, consensual and orderly way, with a bracketing of the death tolls of Partition as belonging to the post-colonial nationalist order. This week we will examine this historical period in detail, thinking about the long-term historical processes that led up to the British departure, the kinds of political, social and economic resistance that made it possible, the variety of tactics and strategies employed, the evolving and contested character of anti-colonial evolution, the forms of counter-revolution and counter-insurgency deployed and the kinds of dilemmas presented for the anti-colonial movement. We will pay particular attention to the question of the roles of elites and masses respectively in the processes resulting in decolonisation, thinking about what it means to mobilise effective political action, and what is meant by success or failure.

Provocation: 'Decolonisation in India was the achievement of the masses, not the elites.'

Required Reading:

Krishna, G. 1966. 'The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918-1923.' The Journal of Asian Studies 25 (3): 413-430.

Spodek, H. 1971. 'On the Origins of Gandhi's Political Methodology: The Heritage of Kathiawad and Gujarat.' The Journal of Asian Studies 30 (2): 361-372.

Bose, S. 2011. His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle Against Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Anderson, P. 2012. 'Gandhi Centre Stage.' London Review of Books. July 5, pp. 3-11.

Further Reading

Ambedkar, B R. 1945. What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables. Delhi: Gautam Book Center.

Anderson, P. 2013. The Indian Ideology (Reprint edition). London and New York: Verso.

Arnold, D. 1984. 'Gramsci and peasant subalternity in India.' The Journal of Peasant Studies 11 (4): 155-177.

Bayly, Christopher A. 1986. 'The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society.' In Arjun Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 285-322.

Bayly, Christopher A. 1993. 'Knowing the country: Empire and information in India.' Modern Asian Studies 27 (1): 3-43.

Bayly, Christopher A. 2000. 'Ireland, India and the Empire: 1780-1914.' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 10: 377-397.

Bayly, Christopher Alan and C A Bayly. 1987. Indian society and the making of the British Empire, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bose, S C. 1997. The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bose, Sarmila. 2005. 'Love in the Time of War: Subhas Chandra Bose's Journeys to Nazi Germany (1941) and towards the Soviet Union (1945).' Economic and Political Weekly 40 (3): 249-256.

Bose, Sugata. 2006. A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brown, Judith M. 1969. The Mahatma and Modern India. Modern Asian Studies 3 (4): 321-342.

Brown, Judith M. 1994. Modern India: the origins of an Asian democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chakrabarty, D. 2007. 'Remembering 1857: An Introductory Note.' Economic and Political Weekly 42 (19): 1692-1695.

Chaudhuri, S B. 2018. Civil Rebellion in the Indian Mutinies (1857-1859). Calcutta: The World Press Private.

Dirks, N B, G Eley and S B Ortner. 1994. Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gadgil, M and R Guha. 1993. This fissured land: an ecological history of India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gordon, R. 1975. 'The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915 to 1926.' Modern Asian Studies 9 (2): 145-203.

Guha, Ramachandra. 1983. 'Forestry in British and post-British India: A historical analysis.' Economic and Political Weekly 18 (44): 1882-1896.

Guha, Ranajit. 1999. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hardas, B. 1998. Armed struggle for freedom: 1857 to Subhash: ninety years of war of Indian independence. Noida: Jagriti Prakashan.

Hauser, W. 1985. 'Review of Review of Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, by Ranajit Guha.' The Journal of Asian Studies 45 (1): 174-177.

Indian Council of Historical Research. 2008. Towards freedom: documents on the movement for independence in India, 1945. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research and Oxford University Press.

Krishna, G. 1966. 'The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918-1923.' The Journal of Asian Studies 25 (3): 413-430.

Low, D A. 1966. 'The Government of India and the First Non-Cooperation Movement-1920-1922.' The Journal of Asian Studies 25 (2): 241-259.

Metcalf, T R. 2015. Aftermath of Revolt: India 1857-1970. Princeton University Press.

Minault, G. 1982. The Khilafat Movement: religious symbolism and political mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press.

Mukherjee, R. 1990. '"SATAN LET LOOSE UPON EARTH": THE KANPUR MASSACRES IN INDIA IN THE REVOLT OF 1857.' Past & Present 128 (1): 92-116.

Perusek, D. 1993. 'Subaltern Consciousness and Historiography of Indian Rebellion of 1857.' Economic and Political Weekly 28 (37): 1931-1936.

Ray, R K. 1974. 'Masses in Politics: the Non-Cooperation Movement in Bengal 19201922.' The Indian Economic & Social History Review 11 (4): 343-410.

Reeves, P D. 1966. 'The Politics of Order: "Anti-Non-Cooperation" in the United Provinces, 1921.' The Journal of Asian Studies 25 (2): 261-274.

Roy, R. 2006. Gandhi & Ambedkar: a study in contrast. Delhi: Shipra Publications.

Savarkar, V D. 1970. The Indian war of independence 1857. 8th ed. New Delhi: Granthagar.

Sitaramayya, B P. 1946. The History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. 1. Bombay: Padma Publications.

Stokes, E. 1969. 'III. Rural Revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: A Study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar Districts.' The Historical Journal 12 (4): 606-627.

Stokes, E. 1970. 'Traditional Resistance Movements and Afro-Asian Nationalism: The Context of the 1857 Mutiny Rebellion in India.' Past & Present 48: 100-118.

Stokes, E. 1986. The Peasant Armed: the Indian revolt of 1857. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Toye, H. 2007. Subhash Chandra Bose. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House.

Week 6: Concerning Violence: Fanon in Algeria

The use of violence has been a perennial issue in discussions around and practices of decolonisation. As a strategic question, some have emphasised the need for self-defense in the face of colonial violence. In contrast, critics of this position have highlighted the successes of 'passive resistance.' On a more fundamental - ontological - level, Frantz Fanon suggests that violent resistance to colonialism is necessary to the very making of new, decolonised human subjectivities, wherein violence is embodied rather than strategic. Finally, there is disagreement on the politics of naming: what is and isn't a violent act? How do we define violence? And who gets to define and attribute it? This week we examine these issues by reading Frantz Fanon's classic essay 'Concerning Violence,' written in the context of the Algerian struggle for independence. Alongside this text we watch Battle of Algiers - also produced in reference to Algerian independence. This film depicts the use of violence by both the Front de Liberation Nationale and the French occupying forces. We will ask what meaning did 'Concerning Violence' and Battle of Algiers give to practices of decolonisation, and what meaning do these texts hold today?

Provocation: 'Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon'

Required Reading/viewing

Fanon, F. 2001. 'Concerning violence'. In Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin, pp. 27-84

Pontecorvo, G ,B Haggiag, J Martin, Y Saadi and F Solinas. 1966. The Battle of Algiers. Criterion collection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Cn2p-AwPk

A Chronology of the Algerian War of Independence: https://www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/2006/11/a-chronology-of-the-algerian-war-of-independence/305277/

Further Reading

Ahlman, J S. 2010. 'The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana, 1958-1960: Debating "Violence" and "Nonviolence" in African Decolonization.' Africa Today 57 (2): 66-84.

Arendt, H. 1970. On violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. http://www.nybooks. com/articles/1969/02/27/a-special-supplement-reflections-on-violence/.

Armstrong, Amanda. 2016. 'Looting: A Colonial Genealogy of the Contemporary Idea.' Postmodern Culture 27 (1).

Bhattacharya, T and B V Mullen. 2015. 'Rewinding the Battle of Algiers in the Shadow of the Attack on Charlie Hebdo.' Critical Legal Thinking. At http://criticallegalthinking. com/2015/01/14/rewinding-battle-algiers-shadow-attack-charlie-hebdo/.

Byrne, J J. 2016. Mecca of revolution: Algeria, decolonization, and the Third World order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clover, J. 2016. Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings. New York: Verso Books.

Dabashi, H. 2012. The Arab Spring: the end of postcolonialism. London: Zed.

Dabashi, H. 2011. Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in a Time of Terror. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers.

Douglass, P and F Wilderson. 2013. 'The violence of presence: Metaphysics in a blackened world.' The Black Scholar 43 (4): 117-123.

Fanon, F. 1965. A Dying Colonialism. Transl. Adolfo Gilly. New York: Grove Press.

Fanon, F. 2004. 'Algeria unveiled.' In Frantz Fanon, Decolonization: perspectives from now and then. London and New York: Routledge.

Frazer, E and K Hutchings. 2008. 'On politics and violence: Arendt contra Fanon.' Contemporary Political Theory 7 (1): 90-108.

Hahn, H. 1969. 'Ghetto sentiments on violence.' Science & Society 33 (2): 197-208.

Lazreg, M. 2016. Torture and the twilight of empire: from Algiers to Baghdad. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Shepard, T. 2008. The invention of decolonization: the Algerian War and the remaking of France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Seshadri-Crooks, K. 2002. 'I am a master: Terrorism, Masculinity, and Political Violence in Frantz Fanon.' Parallax 8 (2): 84-98.

Shatz, A. 2017. 'Where Life is Seized.' London Review of Books 39 (2). At https://www. lrb.co.uk/v39/n02/adam-shatz/where-life-is-seized.

Surkis, J. 2010. 'Ethics and violence: Simone de Beauvoir, Djamila Boupacha, and the Algerian war.' French Politics, Culture & Society 28 (2): 38-55.

Wang, J. 2012. 'Against innocence: Race, gender, and the politics of safety.' LIES: A journal of materialist feminism 1: 145-171. At http://liesiournal.net/media/LIESAgainst-Innocence.pdfhttp://liesiournal.net/media/LIES-Against-Innocence.pdf

Week 7: Anti-colonial Nationalism and its Alternatives

What comes after liberation? Anti-colonial struggles turned to a variety of practices in the construction of 'new societies' after the dismantling of formal colonialism. Although the sovereign nation-state form and attendant nationalism would seemingly win out, anti-colonial movements were replete with visions of society that were internationalist, transnational and global in scope. This week we look at the histories of nationalist movements, their pitfalls and anti-nationalist alternatives to anticolonial projects. In particular, we explore Pan-African and socialist currents within anticolonial movements as well as criticisms of nationalism from the perspective of class and gender. In doing so, we seek to explore whether the anti-colonial turn to nationalism and the sovereign state were inevitable or the result of contested processes and contingent outcomes. We also ask whether the lost histories of anti-nationalist anti-colonialism might offer insights into whether another world is possible.

Provocation: 'Nationalism was a betrayal of anti colonial movements'

Required Reading

Fanon, F. 1963. 'The pitfalls of national consciousness.' Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin, pp. 148-205. https://www.marxists.org/subiect/africa/ fanon/pitfalls-national.htm

Chadya, J. M. 2003. 'Mother politics: Anti-colonial nationalism and the woman question in Africa.' Journal of Women's History 15 (3): 153-157.

Further Reading

Chadya, J M. 2003. 'Mother politics: Anti-colonial nationalism and the woman question in Africa.' Journal of Women's History 15 (3): 153-157.

Chatterjee, P. 1986. Nationalist thought and the colonial world: A derivative discourse. London: Zed Books.

Davies, C B. 2009. 'Sisters Outside: Tracing the Caribbean/Black Radical Intellectual Tradition.' small axe 13 (1): 217-229.

Gaines, K K. 2012. American Africans in Ghana: Black expatriates and the civil rights era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

James, C L. R. 2012. A history of Pan-African revolt. Oakland: PM Press.

James, L. 2014. 'Nation, diaspora and modernity.' In Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 143-163.

Jayawardena, K. 1986. Feminism and nationalism in the Third World. New York: Verso.

Kanogo, T. 1987. 'Kikuyu women and the politics of protest: Mau Mau.' In Sharon Macdonald, Pat Holden and Shirley Ardener (eds), Images of women in peace and war: Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives. London: Palgrave, pp. 78-99.

Legg, S. 2003. 'Gendered Politics and Nationalised Homes: Women and the anti-colonial struggle in Delhi, 1930-47.' Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 10 (1): 7-27.

Luongo, K. 2006. 'If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them: Government Cleansings of Witches and Mau Mau in 1950s Kenya.' History in Africa 33: 451-471.

McClintock, A. 1991. '"No longer in a future heaven": Women and nationalism in South Africa.' Transition 51: 104-123.

McDuffie, E S. 2011. Sojourning for freedom: Black women, American communism, and the making of black left feminism. Durham: Duke University Press.

McDuffie, E S. 2008. 'A "New Freedom Movement of Negro Women": Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War.' Radical History Review 101: 81-106.

Odhiambo, E S and J Lonsdale. 2003. Mau Mau & nationhood: arms, authority & narration. Oxford: James Currey.

Padmore, G. 1974. Pan-Africanism or communism. New York: Doubleday Anchor.

Reddock, R. 2007. 'Gender equality, Pan-Africanism and the diaspora.' International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 2 (2): 255-267.

Robertson, Claire. 'The economic roots of African women's political participation.' In Muna Ndulo and Margaret Grieco (eds), Power, Gender and Social Change in Africa, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Pubs, pp. 77-93.

Santoru, M E. 1996. 'The colonial idea of women and direct intervention: The Mau Mau case.' African Affairs 95 (379): 253-267.

Shilliam, R. 2006. 'What about Marcus Garvey? Race and the transformation of sovereignty debate.' Review of International Studies 32 (3): 379-400.

Shilliam, R. 2012. 'Garvey's Vision' 3rd Marcus Garvey Annual Memorial Lecture. At https://robbieshilliam.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/garveys-vision/.

Trewhela, P. 1988. 'George Padmore: A Critique. Pan Africanism or Marxism.' Searchlight South Africa 1 (1): 42-63.

Wallerstein, I M. 2005. Africa: The politics of independence and unity. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wilder, G. 2014. Freedom time: negritude, decolonization, and the future of the world. Durham: Duke University Press

Week 8: Political Identity/Identity Politics

The question of identity in anti-colonial and anti-racist movements has always been fraught and contentious. On the one hand, racialised identities have been central to constructing solidarity and unity considered necessary for anti-racist political movements. On the other hand, many have argued that the very articulations of race on which anti-racist politics operates depends on categories produced by racism itself. This week we look at the ways in which ideas of 'politically black' and 'people of colour' have been deployed as a political forms of identification, used to designate not only the African diaspora but other racialised groups resisting racism. Although ostensibly an attempt to generate solidarity through a shared political identity, these terms have been criticised for imposing a false equivalence and homogeneity on the otherwise differentiated experience of various non-white peoples. This week we look at the ways in which different anti-racist movements have self-identified across shifting social, economic and political contexts. We will also explore articulations of 'race' through other identifications - class, gender, sexuality, etc. In doing so, we will return to and examine a cornerstone of the anti-colonial and anti-racist movement - the very meaning of 'race' itself.

Provocation: 'Black is a political colour.'

Required Reading

Hall, Stuart. 1991. 'Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities.' In A D King (ed), Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 41-61 [read Hall's responses to questions if you fancy] http://pages.mtu.edu/~jdslack/readings/ CSReadings/Hall_Old_and_New_Identities_Ethnicities.pdf

Brixton Black Women's Group. 1984. 'Black Women Organizing.' Feminist Review 17: 84-89. [this is from a special issue titled Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives, which contains many important pieces from academics and activists. Some of these are cited below but the whole issue is worth looking into.]

Swaby, Nydia A. 2014. '"disparate in voice, sympathetic in direction": gendered political blackness and the politics of solidarity.' feminist review 108 (1): 11-25. [This is from another Feminist Review special issue, 20 years on from the last, titled black british feminisms. The whole issue is worth a close look] https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1057/fr.2014.30

Video

Loretta Ross, 'The Origin of the phrase "Women of Color"' - https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=82vl34mi4Iw

Further Reading

Amos, V and P Parmar. 1984. 'Challenging imperial feminism.' feminist review 17: 3-19.

Angelo, A. M. 2009. 'The Black Panthers in London, 1967-1972: A Diasporic Struggle Navigates the Black Atlantic.' Radical History Review 103: 17-35.

Andrews, Kehinde. 2016. 'The problem of political blackness: lessons from the Black Supplementary School Movement.' Ethnic and Racial Studies 39 (11): 2060-2078.

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. 1982. Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism In 70's Britain. London and New York: Routledge.

Costa Vargas, J H. 2006. 'Black radical becoming: the politics of identification in permanent transformation.' Critical Sociology 32 (2-3): 475-500.

Davies, C. B. 2007. 'Carnival and Diaspora: Caribbean Community, Happiness and Activism.' Left of Karl Marx: The political life of black communist Claudia Jones. Durham: Duke University Press.

Gilroy, P. 1987. 'The Whisper Wakes, The Shudder Plays in Race, Nation and Ethnic Absolutism.' In Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No Black in The Union Jack. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 43-69.

Gilroy, P and G Yancy. 2015. 'What "Black Lives" means in Britain.' The New York Times [online]. At http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/ paul-gilroy-what-black-means-in-britain/? r=0.

Gilroy, P. 2013. There Ain't No Black in The Union Jack. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

James, W and C Harris. 1993. Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain. London: Verso.

Kelley, Robin D G and Betsy Esch. 1999. 'Black like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution.' Souls 1 (4): 6-41.

Kundnani, A. 2007. The end of tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain. London: Pluto Press.

Koram, K. 2016. '"I'm not looking for a new England": On the Limitations of Radical Nationalism.' Novara Media [online]. At http://novaramedia.com/2016/10/09/im-not-looking-for-a-new-england-on-the-limitations-of-a-radical-nationalism/.

Lentin, A and G Titley. 2011. The crises of multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age. London: Zed Books.

Mama, A. 1984. Black Women, the Economic Crisis and the British State. Feminist Review 17: 21-35.

Maylor, U. 2009. 'What is the meaning of 'black'? Researching 'black' respondents.' Ethnic and Racial Studies 32 (2): 369-387.

Modood, T. 1994. 'Political blackness and british asians.' Sociology 28 (4): 859-876.

Pitcher, B. 2015. The politics of multiculturalism: race and racism in contemporary Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rushdie, S. 2012. 'The New Empire within Britain.' Imaginary homelands: Essays and criticism 1981-1991. Random House. At http://public.wsu.edu/~hegglund/courses/389/rushdie new empire.htm

Shilliam, R. 2015. The black Pacific: Anti-colonial struggles and oceanic connections. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Sivanandan, A. 1983. 'Challenging Racism: Strategies for the 80s.' Race and Class 25 (2): 1-11.

Sivanandan, A. 1981. From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles. Race and Class 23 (1-2): 111-152.

Sky Palace. 2012. 'To be Liberated from Them (or Through Them): The Call for a New Approach.' LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism. At http://liesiournal.net/media/ LIES-Call-for-a-New-Approach.pdf.

Solomos, J. 1989. Race and racism in contemporary Britain. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Week 9: Death, Detention and Disposability

Ruth Wilson Gilmore famously defined racism as 'the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.' Here we see contemporary theorisations of racialised colonial projects through the specific practices of (a) producing death, and (b) differentiating between groups that are human and thus worthy of life and protection and those that are non-human and therefore disposable. That such practices have a longer genealogy, traceable to colonial warfare and transatlantic slavery, demonstrates a pervasive continuity in the practices of racialisation. This week we examine these genealogies and contemporary practices in which they are manifest - in racialised police violence, imprisonment, gentrification, border security, the war on terror, environmental catastrophe and industrial disasters. Through an examination of the ideas of 'social death' and 'necropolitics' we interrogate similar yet distinct theorisations of such experiences of death and disposability. Finally, we explore contemporary attempts to challenge racism through the reclamation of life and a politics of vitality.

Required Reading

De Genova, N. 2017. 'The "migrant crisis" as racial crisis: do Black Lives Matter in Europe?' Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 (10): 1765-1782.

L, R. 2013. "Wanderings ofthe Slave: Black Life and Social Death," Mute, June 5. Athttp://www. metamute.org/editorial/articles/wanderings-slave-black-life-and-social-death.

Provocation: 'All Lives Matter.'

Further Reading

Bell, D A. 1992. Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. New York: Basic Books.

Benn, M and K Worpole. 1986. Death in the City. London: Canary.

Butler, J. 1993. 'Endangered/endangering: Schematic racism and white paranoia.' In Robert Gooding-Williams (ed), Reading Rodney King/reading urban uprising. New York: Routledge, pp. 15-22.

Cacho, L M. 2012. Social death: Racialized rightlessness and the criminalization of the unprotected. New York: NYU Press.

Collins, P H. 2002. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York and London: Routledge.

Combahee River Collective. 1977. The Combahee River Collective Statement 1977. At http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2866-the-combahee-river-collective-statement.

Cowen, D and N Lewis. 2016. 'Anti-blackness and urban geopolitical economy: Reflections on Ferguson and the suburbanization of the "internal colony."' Society and Space. At http://societyandspace.org/2016/08/02/anti-blackness-and-urban-geopolitical-economy-deborah-cowen-and-nemoy-lewis/.

Davis, A Y. 2011. Are prisons obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press.

Gilmore, R W. 2007. Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California, Vol. 21. Berkley: University of California Press.

Giroux, H A. 2006. 'Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, class, and the biopolitics of disposability.' College Literature 33 (3): 171-196.

Hill, M L and T Brewster. 2016. Nobody: Casualties of America's war on the vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and beyond. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kelley, R D G. 2016. 'Thug Nation: On State Violence and Disposability.' In J T Camp and C Heatherton (eds), Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter. New York: Verso Books.

Lorde, A. 1987. 'The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.' Women and Language 11 (1): 4-4.

Mbembe, A. 2008. 'Necropolitics.' In S Morton and S Bygrave (eds), Foucault in an Age of Terror. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 152-182.

McKittrick, Katherine. 2011. 'On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place.' Social & Cultural Geography 12 (8): 947-963.

Alexander, M. 2010. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press.

Murch, Donna. 'Historicizing Ferguson: Police Violence, Domestic Warfare, and the Genesis of a National Movement Against State-Sanctioned Violence.' New Politics XV (3). At http://newpol.org/content/historicizing-ferguson.

Puar, J K. 2017. 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot!' New Inquiry. At https://thenewinquiry.com/ hands-up-dont-shoot/.

Sexton, J. 2010. 'People-of-color-blindness notes on the afterlife of slavery.' Social Text 28 (2): 31-56.

Sexton, J. 2011. 'The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism.' InTensions 5: 1-47.

Smith, C. 2014. For Claudia Silva Ferreira: Death and the Collective Black Female Body. Feminist Wire. At http://thefeministwire.com/2014/05/ for-claudia-silva-ferreira-death-black-female-body.

Spillers, H J. 1987. 'Mama's baby, papa's maybe: An American grammar book.' diacritics 17 (2): 65-81.

Taylor, K Y. 2016. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Wang, J. 2012. 'Against innocence: Race, gender, and the politics of safety.' LIES: A journal of materialist feminism 1: 145-171. At http://liesiournal.net/media/LIESAgainst-Innocence.pdfhttp://liesiournal.net/media/LIES-Against-Innocence.pdf.

Wilderson, F B. 2003. 'The prison slave as hegemony's (silent) scandal.' Social Justice 30 (2): 18-27.

Williams, Bianca C. 2015. '#BlackLivesMatter: Anti-Black Racism, Police Violence, and Resistance.' Fieldsights - Hot Spots Series, Cultural Anthropology Online. At https://culanth.org/fieldsights/696-blacklivesmatter-anti-black-racism-police-violence-and-resistance.

Yancy, G and J Jones. 2013. Pursuing Trayvon Martin: historical contexts and contemporary manifestations of racial dynamics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Week io: Conclusion/Reflection

In our final week we collectively draw out and reflect on key themes that have emerged over the course of this module. We will discuss some of the key tensions within the movement to decolonise - between the cultural and material; particularity and universality; local and global; specific and general. We will also ask: what does it mean to decolonise today? In asking this question, we will interrogate our own position within the space of a university in Western metropole and reflect on recent calls to 'decolonise the university.' Is this possible? Is it desirable? Perhaps more disturbingly, is it correct and faithful to the history of anti-colonial resistance to use the language of decolonisation in this context?

Provocation: 'Decolonisation is not a metaphor.'

Required Reading:

Kelley, R D. 2016. 'Black study, black struggle.' Boston Review 7. At http://bostonreview.net/forum/robin-d-g-kellev-black-study-black-struggle.

Tuck, E and K W Yang. 2012. 'Decolonization is not a metaphor.' Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society 1 (1): 1-40. At http://decolonization.org/index.php/ des/article/view/18630.

POLS7251 Theories in International Relations

Martin Weber

Reading List

Session 1:

Hollis, M and S Smith. 1991. 'Introduction: Two Traditions.' In Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 1-15.

Gadamer, H G. 1979. 'The Hermeneutic Priority of the Question.' In Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward, pp. 525-555.

Hay, C. 2002. 'What's Political About Political Science.' In Colin Hay, Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 59-88.

Jackson, P T. 2010. 'Playing With Fire.' In P T Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and it Implications for the Study of World Politics. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-25.

Session 2:

Schmitt, C. 2010. 'The Concept of the Political.' In Carl Schmitt, George Schwab, Tracy B Strong and Leo Strauss, The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 52-112.

Walker, R B J. 1995. 'International Relations as Political Theory.' In R B J Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-25.

Bartelson, J. 1995. 'Sovereignty and Fire.' In Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-11.

Grovogui, S N. 1996. 'Genesis, Order, Hierarchy.' In S N Grovogui, Sovereigns, QuasiSovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 11-42.

Session 3:

Skinner, Q. 2012. 'Freedom and the Historian.' In Q Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-120.

Fasolt, C. 2004. 'A Dangerous Form of Knowledge.' In C Fasolt, The Limits of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 3-45.

Cooper, F. 2005. 'Introduction.' In F Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1-32.

Federici, S. 2014. 'All the World Needs a Jolt.' In S Federici, Caliban and the Witch. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, pp. 21-60.

Session 4:

Kaplan, M A. 1961. 'Is International Relations a Discipline?' The Journal of Politics 23 (3): 462-76.

Smith, S. 2004. 'Singing our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11.' International Studies Quarterly 48 (3): 499-515.

Session 5:

Cox, R. 1986. 'Social Forces, States, and World Orders- Beyond International Relations Theory.' In R Keohane (ed), Neorealism and Its Critics. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 204-54.

Habermas, J. 1987. 'The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory'. In J Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 43-64.

Session 6:

Schweller, R. 2004. 'Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassicist Realist Theory of Underbalancing.' International Security 29 (2): 159-201.

Guilhot, N. 2010. 'American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory.' Constellations 17 (2): 224-253.

Bull, H. 2012. 'Part 1: The Nature of Order in World Politics.' In H Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 3-94.

Luttwak, E. 2001. 'The Scope of Grand Strategy.' In E Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge: Belknap Press, pp. 209-217.

Session 7:

Berlin, I. 2002. 'Two Concepts of Liberty.' In Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy (eds), Liberty: Incorporating 'Four Essays on Liberty'. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shilliam, R. 2012. 'Forget English Freedom, Remember Atlantic Slavery: Common Law, Commercial Law and the Significance of Slavery for Classical Political Economy.' New Political Economy 17 (5): 591-609.

Crawford, N C. 1994. 'A Security Regime Among Democracies: Cooperation Among Iroquois Nations.' International Organization 48 (3): 345-385.

O'Neal, J R and B Russett, B. 1999. 'The Kantian Peace: The Pacific Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence and International Organizations, 1885-1992.' World Politics 52 (1): 1-37.

Session 8:

Teschke, B. 2002. 'Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism.' European Journal of International Relations 8 (1): 5-48.

Mamdani, M. 2018. 'Introduction: Thinking Through Africa's Impasse.' In M Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-34.

Walker, R B J. 2002. 'International/Inequality.' International Studies Review 4 (2): 7-24.

Session 9:

Adler, E and V Pouliot. 2011. 'International Practices.' International Theory 3 (1): 1-36.

Ringmar, E. 2014. 'The Search for Dialogue as Hindrance to Understanding: Practices as Inter-Paradigmatic Research Program.' International Theory 6 (1): 1-27.

Weber, M. 2014. 'Between "Isses" and "oughts": IR Constructivism, Critical Theory, and the Challenge of Political Philosophy.' European Journal of International Relations 20 (2): 516-543.

Reus-Smit, C. 2013. 'Beyond Meta-Theory?' European Journal of International Relations 19 (3): 589-608.

Finnemore, M and K Sikkink. 2001. 'Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics.' Annual Review of Political Science 4 (1): 391-416.

Session 10:

Inayatullah, N and D L Blaney. 2004. 'The Westphalian Deferral.' In N Inayatullah and D L Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference. New York: Routledge, pp. 18-41.

Muppidi, H. 2012. 'Humanitarianism and its Violences.' In H Muppidi, The Colonial Signs of International Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 117-126

Ahluwalia, P. 2010. 'Sartre, Camus and Fanon.' In P Ahluwalia, Out of Africa: PostStructuralism's Colonial Roots. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 40-72.

Bhambra, G. 2013. 'The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology.' In J Go (ed), Postcolonial Sociology. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, pp. 295-314.

Shilliam, R. 2012. 'Redemption from Development: Amartya Sen, Rastafari, and Promises of Freedom.' Postcolonial Studies 15 (3): 331-50.

About the authors

Meera Sabaratnam is Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London. Her research interests are in the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of world politics, in both theory and practice. She has chaired the Global Development Section of the International Studies Association and co-convened the Colonial/Postcolonial/De-colonial Working Group of the British International Studies Association. Her recent award-winning book Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) is available for free download here (bit.ly/DecolInt).

Kerem Nişancıoǧlu is Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the relationship between Eurocentrism, capitalism, colonialism and race. He is co-author with Alexander Anievas of How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2015). His current research focuses on the role of colonialism and racialisation in the making of modern sovereignty. He is also interested in practices of and struggles against capitalism, colonialism and racism in universities and co-edited the volume Decolonising the University (Pluto Press, 2018) with Gurminder K. Bhambra and Dalia Gebrial.

Martin Weber's main research clusters are in International Social and Political Theory, and in Political Economy/International Political Economy (PE/IPE). In the former field, his work has focused on the contributions of Critical Theory to developments in normative International Political Theory, and to the 'social turn' in IR theory in general. His research in this field, which overlaps with his interests in International Political Economy, has been published in key journals (European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Alternatives, Globalizations), as well as in contributions to edited volumes. In PE/IPE, his work has focused on the political analysis of global governance, and in particular on global health governance and global environmental governance.

Footnote

Notes

1 [Note by Editors of Contexto Internacional] The syllabi published have been slightly edited for clarity and to correct any obvious errors. The reading lists in the syllabi, however, have been published as they were submitted, and Contexto Internacional does not take responsibility for incomplete, incorrect or misspelled bibliographic entries, nor for altered, incorrect or non-functional websites.

2 [Note by Sabaratnam and Nişancıoǧlu] These were excellently led by Maya Goodfellow, Ini Dele-Adedeji, Laurie Benson and Ida Danewid. Mark Laffey also co-taught the course in its first year.

References

References

Berlin, Isiah. 2002. 'Two Concepts of Liberty.' In I Berlin and H Hardy (eds), Liberty: Incorporating "Four Essays on Liberty." Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bhambra, Gurminder K, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoǧlu (eds). 2018. Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press.

Crawford, Neta. 1994. A Security Regime among Democracies: Cooperation among Iroquois Nations.' International Organization 48 (3): 345-85.

Nişancıoǧlu, Kerem and Maia Pal. 2016. 'Counter-Conduct in the University Factory: Locating the Occupy Sussex Campaign.' Global Society 30 (2): 279-300.

NYC Stands with Standing Rock Committee. 2016. '#StandingRockSyllabus.' At https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/ [Accessed 9 June 2020].

O'Neal, John R and Bruce Russet. 1999. 'The Kantian Peace: The Benefits of Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885-1992.' International Organization 52 (1): 1-37.

Roberts, Frank Leon. 2016. 'Black Lives Matter: Race, Resistance, and Populist Protest' syllabus. New York: Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University. At http://www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/ [Accessed 9 June 2020].

Sabaratnam, Meera, 2011. 'IR in dialogue... but can we change the subjects? A typology of decolonising strategies for the study of world politics.' Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39 (3): 781-803.

Shilliam, Robbie. 2012. 'Forget English Freedom, Remember Atlantic Slavery: Common Law, Commercial Law, and the Significance of Slavery for Classical Political Economy.' New Political Economy 17 (5): 591-609.

Yamane, David. 2006. 'Course Preparation Assignments: A Strategy for Creating Discussion-Based Courses.' Teaching Sociology 34 (3): 236-48.