Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity [Hardcover]

Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africas subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The authors sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheniis the director of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute (AMRI) and is also a professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of South Africa.

At its best, this book offers interesting intellectual fodder for reflection, particularly on the question of, as Ivan Karp once put it, does theory travel? To what extent is modernist or postmodernist thought a tool kit that can be applied to and reformulated in response to a variety of historical and cultural formations and to what extent must it be seen as a colonizing force in its own right?... The book also provides valuable insight into the historical processes by which Africans formed continental and national subjectivities, and particularly into the role of the struggles against colonial rule, as well as racism and other pathologizing discourses, as part of those processes.? H-Diplo

&a fine, challenging survey of the African condition under continuing globalisation inlƒÐ