Our scorching planetary age results from the conjoined forces of colonial extractivism, fossil capitalism, and postcolonial developmentalism.
Tag: Colonialism
Whose Homeland? Whose Security?
American overseas imperialism functions most powerfully through its infrastructures—debt, education, bureaucracy, mobility—filtered through DHS.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras on “The Man Who Could Move Clouds”
“I realized that if I was going to write a story about healers, I also had to write a story about healing.”
The Seduction of Desert Spectacles: Talking “Arid Empire” with Natalie Koch and Andrew Curley
“You cannot divorce domestic empire from international empire. Those histories created one another.”
A Forensic Level of Honesty: Aminatta Forna and Nicole Rizzuto
“There came a point in my life … where I realized that almost every narrative, whatever it came from, that dealt with an African country was pretty much a rewriting of ‘Heart of Darkness.’”
Nostalgia’s Empire: A Conversation with Grafton Tanner and Johny Pitts
Nostalgia is both a threat and a refuge.
A Detective Poet, and an Empire in Revolt
In 1857, the largest rebellion against the British East India Company took place. And famed poet Mirza Ghalib was there to witness it all.
Public Thinker: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on How to Upend Settler Colonialism
“One of my objectives in writing the book was a plea to immigrants to not become settlers.”
America’s “Land Grab” Universities: Robert Lee on Colonial Extraction by “Treaty-Like Agreements”
“It’s not about the land underneath campuses. It’s land at a distance, that can be sold or managed to raise funds for endowments.”
Many into One, One into Many: George Lamming (1927–2022)
Lamming never lets readers forget that within that one man—as within all of us—is a boiling multitude.
B-Sides: J. G. Farrell’s “Troubles”
His characters—in 1919 Ireland, 1857 India, and 1940 Singapore—intuit that the world is about to collapse. But they can do nothing to save it.
Gordon Syron and the Art of the Invasion
In what ways might art resist a colonial state? Can a painting function as a land rights claim?
The Best Classroom Is the Struggle
“As a historian and educator of college students, my experience teaching on US imperialism is one of disappointment.”
An Uncommon, Unconquerable Mind: Our Friend, Julius S. Scott III (1955–2021)
“Are there ways in which Black North Americans connected to places and things that were outside of the world we thought they were in?”
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tony Judt
“Writers are being made to carry the weight of politicians.”
Putting French Literary History on Trial
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s Goncourt-winning novel confronts the racist history of France’s literary prizes.
Why Does France Think Migration Is Growing?
Teach the history of colonization and decolonization—for this is the best antidote to the venom of exclusion and racism that threatens France.
Grounding the Humanities
A “regional” humanities abandons academia’s tepid globalism, and confronts local oppressions like prisons, schools, housing, and the police.
This Land Is My Land
Many landowners view themselves as environmental stewards. But can the environment ever be protected within the frame of private property?
The Borderland between Language and Genre
Within western poetry, women writers of color—and their lived experiences—are not nearly as recognized nor represented as their white peers.