Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons – serie

This book compares Islamic and Western political formulations, highlighting areas of agreement and disparity. Building on this analysis, the author goes on to show that political Islam offers a serious alternative to the dominant political system and ideology of the West.Sabet argues that rather than leading to a 'Clash of Civlizations' or the assimilation of Islam into the Western system, a positive process of interactive self-reflection between Islam and liberal democracy is the best way forward.Beginning this process, Sabet highlights key concepts of Islamic political thought and brings them into dialogue with Western modernity. The resulting synthesis is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Islamic and Middle Eastern politics, political theory, comparative politics and international relations.

This book compares Islamic and Western political formulations, highlighting areas of agreement and disparity. Building on this analysis, the author goes on to show that political Islam offers a serious alternative to the dominant political system and ideology of the West.Sabet argues that rather than leading to a 'Clash of Civlizations' or the assimilation of Islam into the Western system, a positive process of interactive self-reflection between Islam and liberal democracy is the best way forward.Beginning this process, Sabet highlights key concepts of Islamic political thought and brings them into dialogue with Western modernity. The resulting synthesis is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Islamic and Middle Eastern politics, political theory, comparative politics and international relations.

Exodus, as a powerful narrative of liberation, has been a central imaginative touchstone in the black American struggle against US racism. This book traces the concept in a number of pivotal black thinkers, and explores its signficance for contemporary America.The exodus story is a fitting allegory for the painful experience of exile that disproportionately afflicted African Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it also provides compelling imagery for the triumphant election of Barack Obama in 2008. Building around these themes, Anna Hartnell traces the intellectual development of one of the defining narratives of black American thinking on social justice in the United States.In placing black America at the centre of the study of US culture, Rewriting Exodus suggests new ways of thinking about America's relationship with the Middle East and the wider postcolonial world. Hartnell's groundbreaking contribution marks a vital new chapter in American cultural and political history.

Queer subjects have become acceptable in society only through being cast in the shadow of the new folk devil, the 'homophobic migrant' who is rendered by society as hateful and disposable. This book explores this concept of 'queer regeneration'. Queerness has entered a transitional phase as it becomes co-opted by neoliberalism to make punishment and neglect appear as signs of care and love for diversity. To understand this transition, Jin Haritaworn looks at the environments in which queer bodies have become worthy of protection, discussing the everyday erasures that shape life in the inner city (focusing on Berlin), and how queer activists actively seek out and dispel the myths of sites of nostalgia for the 'invented traditions' of women-and-gay-friendliness.The author explores a rich archive of media, arts, policy and activism, including posters, newspaper reports, hate crime action plans, urban projects, psychological studies, demonstrations, kiss-ins, political speeches and films. Through these sources, the relationships between Islamaphobia, racism within Europe and the United States, and the global war on terror serves to reinforce the politics of homonationalism.

This book interrogates the Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery and assesses the historical consequences of this for contemporary European society.Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen show how the slave trade and slavery intertwined economic, social and cultural elements, including nation-state formation in the Netherlands and across Europe. They explore the mobilisation of European populations in the implementation of policies that facilitated Atlantic slavery and examine how European countries created and expanded laws that perpetuated colonisation. Addressing key themes such as the incorporation of the formerly enslaved into post-slavery states and contemporary collective efforts to forget and/or remember slavery and its legacy in the Netherlands, this is an essential text for students of European history and postcolonial studies.

This book interrogates the Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery and assesses the historical consequences of this for contemporary European society.Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen show how the slave trade and slavery intertwined economic, social and cultural elements, including nation-state formation in the Netherlands and across Europe. They explore the mobilisation of European populations in the implementation of policies that facilitated Atlantic slavery and examine how European countries created and expanded laws that perpetuated colonisation. Addressing key themes such as the incorporation of the formerly enslaved into post-slavery states and contemporary collective efforts to forget and/or remember slavery and its legacy in the Netherlands, this is an essential text for students of European history and postcolonial studies.

Following 9/11, 7/7 and the War on Terror, Islamophobia has become a ubiquitous expression of political racism; its presence is felt in immigration restrictions, critiques of multiculturalism and the co-option of feminism that casts Muslim women as abject figures. Throughout the book, what emerges is that most of our knowledge of Muslim communities is apprehended through signifiers, as defined by 'liberal' politicians and media: there is the - aforementioned - maligned Muslim female, the ontically pure religious Muslim and the fundamentalist terrorist. Through study of instances where politicians - from Tony Blair and David Cameron, to Geert Wilders and Enoch Powell - activate these racist essentialisms we begin to see how Islamophobia takes form as an expression of racialised governmentality. By mobilising accounts across different national contexts, David Tyrer reveals how Islamophobia is defining relations between states and ethnicised minorities.

Following 9/11, 7/7 and the War on Terror, Islamophobia has become a ubiquitous expression of political racism; its presence is felt in immigration restrictions, critiques of multiculturalism and the co-option of feminism that casts Muslim women as abject figures. Throughout the book, what emerges is that most of our knowledge of Muslim communities is apprehended through signifiers, as defined by 'liberal' politicians and media: there is the - aforementioned - maligned Muslim female, the ontically pure religious Muslim and the fundamentalist terrorist. Through study of instances where politicians - from Tony Blair and David Cameron, to Geert Wilders and Enoch Powell - activate these racist essentialisms we begin to see how Islamophobia takes form as an expression of racialised governmentality. By mobilising accounts across different national contexts, David Tyrer reveals how Islamophobia is defining relations between states and ethnicised minorities.

Latin America has been a place of radical political inspiration providing an alternative to the neoliberal model. Religion without Redemption looks at the sociology of religion, political philosophy and the history of ideas of the continent, in an attempt to show how Western understanding fails to come close to a correct analysis of how and why political and economic characteristics work as they do.It focuses on how the centrality of religion for the people of Latin America has influenced how they interact with the changes in the modern economic system. Capitalism has taken on religious characteristics: it has sacred places of worship, such as the shopping mall, as well as its own prophets. This book explains how this form of ‘cultural religion’ accompanies many aspects of life in a contradictory manner: not only does it fulfil the role of legitimating oppression, it also can be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling thus a subversive side to the status quo.Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory into the 21st century, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.

Latin America has been a place of radical political inspiration providing an alternative to the neoliberal model. Religion without Redemption looks at the sociology of religion, political philosophy and the history of ideas of the continent, in an attempt to show how Western understanding fails to come close to a correct analysis of how and why political and economic characteristics work as they do.It focuses on how the centrality of religion for the people of Latin America has influenced how they interact with the changes in the modern economic system. Capitalism has taken on religious characteristics: it has sacred places of worship, such as the shopping mall, as well as its own prophets. This book explains how this form of ‘cultural religion’ accompanies many aspects of life in a contradictory manner: not only does it fulfil the role of legitimating oppression, it also can be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling thus a subversive side to the status quo.Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory into the 21st century, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.

Colonised subjects can play roles that sustain the power structure of coloniality. In this book, Morgan Ndlovu asks why people help support a system responsible for their own subjugation.Morgan Ndlovu provides a critique of the agency of the colonised subjects as exercised under coloniality. Eschewing abstract theory, he takes a `bottom up' approach to theorising the agency of indigenous people. Through analysis of the experiences of the performance of indigeneity and the staged representations of commodified culture in South Africa, he recognises the efforts of the colonised subjects and the conditions under which they survive. However, he also cautions against choices and actions that may aggravate their conditions.Performing Indigeneity provides an insightful evaluation of what could constitute an `authentic' indigenous agency among the colonial subalterns in India, Australia, Canada, Africa and the Americas.

What kind of decolonial possibilities exist in today's world? Exploring the rise of Islamic activism in Lebanon and the Middle East, and drawing transnational parallels with other revolutionary religious struggles in Latin America and South Africa, Sarah Marusek offers a timely analysis of the social and political evolution of Islamic movements. The growing popularity of Islamic movements means that many groups, which emerged in opposition to Western imperialism, are now also gaining increasing economic and political powers. Based on more than two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon, Marusek paints a picture of how resistance is lived and reproduced in daily lives, tracing the evolution of the ideas and practices of the charities affiliated with Hizbullah and the wider Islamic resistance movement. Adopting a dialectical approach, Faith and Resistance discusses the possibility for resistance groups to reconcile acquiring power with their decolonial aspirations. In doing so, the book acts as a guide for liberation struggles and those engaged in resistance the world over.