This seminar explores the global history and theory of "Decolonization" in the post WW2 world. It reviews the histories of anticolonial struggle in Asia and Africa and the fate of postcolonial states in the world system and Cold War as well as the relationships between national liberation struggles in the Global South and antiracism and freedom struggles in Europe and its settler colonies like the US and Canada. The course will examine Decolonization as not only a political, military, and economic process but also as a cultural, intellectual, and even psychological one.
It will therefore introduce key intellectuals like Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Malcolm X, Samir Amin, Ali Shariati, Amilcar Cabral, Ghassan Kanafani, and Edward Said as it encounters major ideological orientations of the era like Global South Marxism/Socialism, Maoism, Pan-Africanism, Arab Nationalism, Liberation Theology and Islamism. It will put into conversation study of anticolonial struggles in places like Kenya, Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine as well as movements like that of the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement of the 1960's and 70's to answer questions like: Is "decolonization" an unfinished process? How can the history of these struggles for sovereignty, freedom, justice, and equality contribute to understanding contemporary struggles and the geopolitics of our world?
