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From Odysseus to Trump: Why the UN Charter Bound Power to the Mast

In Homer’s Odyssey (Book 12), we see Odysseus preparing to go through one of the most dangerous experiences of his entire trip. The experience involves being close to the sirens, creatures known for luring sailors into danger with their irresistible singing. As his ship approaches the Sirens, Odysseus does

Porous Modernities: from the Baltic to the Mediterranean

These are some of the notes and images from a talk recently given in Riga, the capital of one of the so-called front-line states in the increasingly aggressive Baltic and European posturing towards Russia. Of course, behind this minor moment lies the wider arrogance that, these days, passes for diplomacy.

They Who Learns, Teaches: Humanitarian and Development Education from the Global South?

Prior to European colonial expansion, numerous educational centres existed globally. Examples include Taxila and Maha Viharaya in the South Asian subcontinent, Jixia Academy, Taixue, and Taehak in East Asia, and Timbuktu in Africa. These institutions functioned not only as centres of learning but also as innovative spaces where scholars engaged

California Schemin’: Why Dundee Had to Sound Like California

There were two of us, a colleague and I, both keen to keep an eye on what is happening at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). It has become one of those places we return to, not only to watch films, but to think through what they leave behind. Perhaps that is

Pirates!

The latest example of the violence of the colonial state of Israel – piracy on the high seas in international waters to seize the boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla seeking, peacefully, to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza – is not only a cause for moral outrage and civil condemnation. It is

Extractivism in Chile: Epistemic Injustice and Territorial Belonging

How do different ways of inhabiting a territory coexist in the face of extractivism? The tensions between dominant Chilean state-society structures and Mapuche territorial lifeways have long manifested across the central and southern regions of Chile, and they persist today in renewed forms. These tensions are deepened by extractive projects

Everybody to Kenmure Street: Power Needs Us to Move. What If We Don’t?

There were six of us. Academic colleagues, though the word felt a bit too neat for the kind of evening it became. We went to Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). A place I have always thought of as open, almost generous in its spirit. It has been part of the city

Europe’s Unfinished Question: From Antisemitism to the Nakba

The history of Israel and Palestine is often told as a story that begins in 1948. That framing is convenient. It avoids harder questions about Europe, about antisemitism, about empire, and about how one people’s trauma was displaced onto another’s land.  Zionism (nationalist movement seeking Jewish self-determination in

Mamdani's New York: A “Rebel City”?

Many claim that politics in large US cities such as New York should not be considered relevant for formulating generalizations about American politics. But the recent election of Zohran Mamdani exhibits trends and expresses potentialities suggestive of larger developments relevant across the nation. The victory of Mamdani's grass

Everyone Has a Plan for Iran. Almost No One Has a Plan for Iranians

A worried Iranian student in the West gets a call from Tehran after five days of nothing. Not a normal call. Not the kind where you say hello twice and laugh at the signal. This one comes with rules built into the line. One way. One operator. Her father can

Zack Polanski the ethical Machiavelli?

Zack Polanski was elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (the Scottish Greens are a separate party) in September 2025. He has already made an impact. In the face of a swiftly rising tide of right-wing populism, it might be argued that he is the ethical Machiavelli,

The Silent COP and the Slowly Vanishing Future

Something unsettling happened in Brazil. After two weeks of bargaining, stalling, corridor whispering and outright obstruction, COP30 ended without a single mention of the world's largest source of the climate crisis. The final agreement avoided the word fossil altogether. Not oil. Not gas. Not coal. Language was treated

Disastrous Disasters – Again! Some Thoughts about Sri Lankan Experiences on Cyclone and Floods

Sri Lanka and its people are not new to natural hazards. Droughts, floods, landslides, epidemics and many other hazards are standard features of the recent history of the Island. The current predicament of the country due to Cyclone Ditwah, which unleashed catastrophic flooding and landslides, is the latest disaster people

A Parrot’s Tale: Rabindranath on Colonized Knowledge Production and Epistemic Violence

Tagore’s ideas about education, as seen in his story ‘Totakahini,’ continue to resonate with contemporary debates about schooling and the traditional education system. By exploring ‘Totakahini,’ we can better understand Tagore’s vision for education and its relevance to our modern-day educational challenges. So, basically ‘Totakaahini’ is a short

(Dis-)Located Memory: 10 years of the Balkan Route

I. From the beginning of what was mistakenly called a refugee crisis, one event remains crucial to understanding the performative dispersion of power that governs borders. On August 22, 2015, due to the failure of other measures to control border porosity, a state of crisis was declared in North Macedonia’

Blind to Their Own Power: Race, Gender, and the False Equilibrium of Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt

Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt begins like a film searching for truth. It speaks softly about consent, power, and doubt, but what it uncovers is something older and harder to name: how institutions protect themselves by calling it reflection. Beneath the polished dialogue and candlelit rooms is a quiet

Charity Unmasked: A Closer Look at the Humanitarian Reset

“The United Nations was not created to take us into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.”  The above quotation is claimed to be from Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary General of the UN from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. This quotation

Can the colonisers decolonise themselves?

The immediate answer to this question is no. Cultural transit, translation and transformation are sustained in networks historically constructed in asymmetrical relations of power. Despite the illusions of liberal humanists, the exchange is never equal. Even the currency is rarely common. Presenting as a universal template the philosopher exchanging views

The Next Chapter: Building Bangladesh’s Democratic Future

In August 2024, Bangladesh’s streets erupted with a force beyond the control of any political party. Students, workers, and ordinary citizens dismantled Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule, built on electoral fraud, repression, and a web of loyalists embedded in the state.  Lives were lost, families disappeared, and the scale

Black Soil Poems: Wangechi Mutu at the Borghese Gallery

In the heat of July in Rome, we discussed the exhibition ‘Black Soil Poems’ (brilliantly curated by Cloé Perrone) by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu at the Galleria Borghese. A certain dissonance was inevitable in the conversation with the writer and journalist Igiaba Scego and Andrea Viliani, director of the Museum

12+3 days of writing. Mowing the Grass: The Epistemic Violence and the Enemy of My Enemy

This is the map published by the IDF on June 24th, ordering an emergency evacuation for everyone within the red circle, district 7 in Tehran. It is a map of my old neighbourhood in Tehran, a mixed area of working and middle-class families. The place where I was born, grew

An Unquiet Silence: Kashmir and the Rituals of Forgetting

The valley bleeds again, and the script writes itself. A militant attack. A volley of accusations. Troops amass. Politicians thunder. Nuclear nightmares are summoned like ancient gods, wielded for effect. And once the show is over, the curtain falls, leaving the stage empty and the people forgotten. But Kashmir is

The Return of the Scaffold: Trump’s Deportation Theatre and the Politics of Spectacle

The scaffold has returned—not as an instrument of justice, but as a stage for vengeance. In Donald Trump’s America, the state no longer merely punishes; it performs. And the audience, whether horrified or thrilled, is part of the script. Michel Foucault warned us about this. In Discipline and

Changing Words, Changing Nothing? A Critical Look at Humanitarian Terminology

Language shapes reality. That is the argument we hear every time a new term replaces an old one in development and humanitarian work. “Third World” became “developing countries,” then “Global South” or “majority world.” “Beneficiaries” turned into “participants” or “rights holders.” “The field” is now increasingly called “the response area”

A Sri Lankan Paradox: Our Country is a Reflection of Ourselves

There was once a man that’d been wounded by a poisoned arrow. And when his family wanted to find a doctor to help him, the man said no. The mortally wounded man said that before any doctor tried to help him, he wanted to know who had attacked him.

Gaza and the banality... of the West

I cannot speak for and on behalf of Palestine. But I can try to say a few words in light of the atrocious ongoing massacre in the eastern Mediterranean. Do you condemn Hamas? No, otherwise, I have to condemn the FLN in Algeria, the Vietcong, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the Cuban

What is the ‘black’ in the ‘Black Mediterranean’?

Bodies cast into the sea, left to die. This time, not by unscrupulous sea captains but by European legislation. Moving back and forward between the slave trade of yesterday’s Atlantic and those expelled and cast overboard in today’s global order certainly encourages us to interrupt and crease our

British election: Labour's landslide and the opportunities for the left

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide in Britain’s July 4 general election. The previously all-powerful Conservatives were reduced to rubble. Labour won 412 out of 660 constituencies, and the Conservatives dropped to just 121, their lowest score ever. Behind the headlines, more complex movements can be discerned,

Ethical Exhaustion

The time of politics presents itself as flat and chronological: a response to the immediacies of  events. It operates within the calculus of existing powers, their distribution and geopolitical reach.  History is frequently reduced to the accumulation of common sense and structural contradictions to  crisis management. The new Labour government

Apparatus '92. Can History Be Rewound?* Genealogies of Colonialism in the Permanent Collection of the Museo Reina Sofía

Many of the changes that explain today's world order took place in the nineteen nineties. With the collapse of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) in 1989 and the disintegration of the Socialist bloc, free market economic policies became widespread, provoking the response of anti-globalisation and alter-mondialist

Britain Needs Mr Gruber... and Of Course Paddington!

For the last decade or so, we have been hearing news and reports on the UK government’s immigration policies—policies to reduce the number of immigrants, not ones to welcome immigrants. According to an article in The Guardian on 30 November 2023, Rishi Sunak “says he will ‘do what

Duterte's Independent Foreign Policy:Delinking the Philippines from the United States

Rodrigo R. Duterte's victory in the 2016 presidential elections signalled the beginning of a significant shift in the Philippines' foreign relations. Duterte introduced and pursued an "independent foreign policy" designed to reduce his country's reliance on its long-standing treaty ally and erstwhile coloniser,

Marx in the Anthropocene

When I was younger climate change appeared worrying but distant, something that would be harmful to future generations, a matter of extreme concern but not an immediate problem. Today, climate change is here. June 2023 has broken record after record for high temperatures, and extreme weather is the new normal.

The Enigmas of Argentina

Argentinians are currently in the process of electing a new president. The country is facing its usual state of economic turmoil and political uncertainty. Sergio Massa, a centrist candidate, will compete against Javier Milei, a right-wing firebrand, in a run-off election scheduled for November 19th. Concerns about financial and currency

Narrating and Displaying China and Chineseness: White Dominance, White Saviourism and Decoloniality

Who are the Chinese and what is China? These are seemingly irreverent and vacuous questions. Surely, the answers are evident to any Cartesian-minded person. And yet these are questions I have increasingly felt the need to address over the past three decades, from the moment I started questioning my own

Appeal: France is grieving and full of outrage

Étienne Balibar sent us a manifesto published in the French press some days ago. He believes, and we concur, that this open letter should also be known in English. The document is of great significance and warrants close examination. Furthermore, the recent events in France are of utmost importance, and

Hugo Blanco 15.11.1934 – 25.06.2023

Hugo Blanco, who died on Sunday 25th June, was an almost mythical Peruvian revolutionary leader. I had the pleasure of working with him and it is fair to say all of us who met him found not a cold legend but a warm and beautiful human being. He led a

Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Fascist Politics

The long shadow of domestic fascism, defined as a project of racial and cultural cleansing, is with us once again both in North America and abroad. Educators have seen the ghosts of fascism before in acts of savage colonialism and dispossession, in an era of slavery marked by the brutality

Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Decolonial Contradictions

Context[1] A book which I edited and which has been published recently Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political and Economic Imaginaries,[2] whilst not primarily oriented to the field of Postcolonial studies, certainly addresses a number of important questions regarding socialist Yugoslavia's enrolment in

US Fascism Is Spreading Under the Guise of “Patriotic Education”

The relentless state-based attacks on Black people in the U.S. and the war being waged against public and higher education are not unrelated. In the present political and ideological climate, far right political leaders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. J.D.

Decolonial Thinking And Revolutionary Events Conference - March 8th & 9th (Virtual)

Goldsmiths' Centre for Postcolonial Studies is hosting Decolonial Thinking and Revolutionary Events conference on March 8th and 9th, 2023. In the last decades, decolonial thinking has been reterritorializing corners of academia, producing a series of dislocations in our relationship to knowledge and political discourse. In doing so, it has

IT IS A CHANGE OF ERA, NO LONGER AN ERA OF CHANGES

I The current accumulation of “crises” (pandemic, global warming, financial crises, mass unemployment, the risk of nuclear conflagration, increasing rates of femicides and suicides) might appear as symptomatic of a specific juncture in the long modern/colonial era of changes and crises. (1500-2000) An unquestionable signpost of our time is

CALL FOR PAPERS: Decolonial Thinking and Revolutionary Events

Goldsmiths, University of London, March 8 and 9, 2023, London In the last decades, decolonial thinking has been reterritorializing corners of academia, producing a series of dislocations in our relationship to knowledge and socially constructed reality. In doing so, it has exposed the imprints of coloniality on thinking whilst looking

Algerians’ Anti-French Attitude: A Postcolonial Reaction?

Last month, Algeria hosted the 19th edition of the Mediterranean Games in the city of Oran. One particular incident that marked this event was when Algerian fans in the stadium— mostly young people—who were watching a football match during which Algeria was playing against France, lacked respect for the

Sri Lanka’s Crisis 2022

In early 2022, years of simmering economic problems reached a boiling point and sparked a months-long wave of peaceful public protests across the island nation. The cabinet capitulated quickly, resigning en masse on 3 April 2022. The Governor of the Central Bank and the Secretary of the Treasury also quit

Reality is Trolling You: The Farcical Nightmare of Post-Trump America

To be an American, picking your way through the debris field of what used to be, at least nominally, a democracy—before Trump and his confederacy of dunces defiled, corrupted, plundered, pimped, sabotaged, and otherwise destabilized it from within—is to live in a nation permanently on edge, a nation

Nomen est Omen: When Your Name Says the Quiet Part Loud

What do names tell us about people — and what should we have known about Trump? Nominative determinism: the gift that keeps giving. The term, coined by the British science journalist John Hoyland, in a 1994 New Scientist column, refers to the (purely hypothetical) tendency to pursue a calling or, more

Art for Politics: The Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale as a reflection of its international standing during the Franco dictatorship

International events sometimes highlight the connections between art and politics. Art and culture play a key role in defining and legitimating the narratives at such gatherings – and shaping the imaginary map of the contemporary world. For example, the Venice Art Biennale was launched in 1895 with the goal of restoring

Ukraine + Russia = Love? If Countries Were People

When I think about the current relationship between Ukraine and Russia, a certain conversation comes to mind. In 2007 in a university canteen in St Petersburg a former friend interrogated me over a cup of tea: Alexandra: Why do you call yourself a Ukrainian? Why are you being such a

“Those Who Are Poor, Die Poor”: Notes on the Chilean Elections

Premature obituaries of Chilean neoliberalism abound on the heels of the December 19 run-off presidential election.1 Gabriel Boric, of Apruebo Dignidad (Approve Dignity, AD) – a coalition of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, FA) and the Partido Comunista de Chile (Communist Party of Chile, PCC) –, secured a surprisingly robust victory

Bringing the state closer to people: 25 years of Kerala’s ‘People’s Plan’

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) of the south Indian State of Kerala, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), came to power for the second consecutive time in April this year, securing 99 out of 140 seats in the State Legislative Assembly. This victory broke a 40-year-old trend of

A Big Victory for India’s Farmers

On November 19, almost a year to the day when hundreds of thousands of farmers began to converge on the national capital of New Delhi in what turned out to be a year-long protest, the Bharitiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced that it would rescind the 3 farm Acts that

100 Years of the CCP

According to official accounts, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed on 1st July 1921, when 12 people met in a small room in Shanghai’s French concession. Western accounts differ, insisting the date was the 23rd July, and that there were 13, not 12, people in the room. Western

HONG KONG: THE DECOLONIZATION THAT NEVER HAPPENED

In this brief article, we attempt to demonstrate how a historic compromise between British colonial power and an affluent local Chinese social class created fertile ground for the emergence of another “Chineseness”, different to and separate from the Chineseness of mainland China, or that of the Nationalists who fled to

Cuba: A Protest Anticipated by Art

The protests that took place on July 11 in Cuba were neither convened by artists nor led by intellectuals nor conceived by a laboratory of aesthetic drives. They were popular demonstrations that evinced an extreme situation marked by political immobility, economic inefficacy, the devastating consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, growing

“Islamo-Leftism” – Hobby Horse of the Ideologues of French Universalism

The recent and intense attacks on what has been labelled Islamo-leftism, Islamo-gauchisme in the original, is the French iteration of a more global attack on “woke leftism”, or specifically critical race theory, gender studies and postcolonialism, summarized by France’s President Macron as the threat of  “certain social science theories

Civil Accountability Mechanisms in Mexico After Ayotzinapa

The case of the 43 students was one of the darkest episodes of human rights violations in the recent history of Mexico. Both inside and outside the country, the news about the brutal attacks on 17-18 year-old students of the Ayotzinapa school, in the hands of the local police and

The Second Wave of COVID-19: A Report from India

Thousands dead and the rest pleading for oxygen and medical care, burning funeral pyres and bodies stacked up along public streets, cremation grounds meant for animals used for humans out of lack of space, hospitals running out of beds, families wailing as their relatives gasp for air, ambulances booked for

THE RISK IS (UN)REAL

In an article published in the New York Times on the 12th of February, David Leonhardt reported on the latest round of restrictions imposed by Berkeley University, which prohibited outdoors exercise, even while wearing face masks, to prevent a further surge in Covid-19 cases. The measures taken were justified by

OPEN LETTER TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL OF THE UNITED NATIONS (regarding the resurgence of violence against social leaders in Colombia)

I am writing this letter in anguish and lament. Yet again, we are suffering the deaths of our social leaders. Yesterday, Francisco Giacometto Gomez was assassinated in the city of Bogota. Today, our communities in the department of Cauca heard tragic news of the assassination of Sandra Liliana Pena, compañera

#chinesevirus: The Long Racism that Lurks Behind COVID-19

According to a recent study that analysed tweets from 9 March to 23 March 2020, corresponding to the week before and the week after President Donald J. Trump’s tweet with the phrase, “Chinese Virus,” there was a significant increase in anti-Asian hashtags associated with #chinesevirus when comparing the week

Open letter to two young indigenous Ecuadorians

My dear young friends, I appreciate the time you have spent conversing with me over these past few weeks, discussing the election process now underway in your country. As I told you then, I was truly perplexed by the international controversy among the various party families on the left regarding

Myanmar’s Diverse Revolution Digging in For the Long Haul

Six weeks after Myanmar’s generals staged a coup d’état, all-out civil war is looming over the country while resistance is not abating. Far from it, Myanmar’s Spring Revolution is rapidly transforming into an ever more defiant and unified movement. This is despite – or rather because – of the

Radical Imaginations: Decolonizing Art Institutions Through Practical Actions in the post-COVID Landscape

The museum is in crisis. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and social uprising centered around Black Lives Matter, conversations around art institutions have jumped to the forefront of calls for decolonization. Yet one major question remains: What will a decolonized museum look like, especially now?  Since beginning this

Chile’s constitutional battle: between neoliberal fascism and buen vivir

October 2019 marked a watershed in Chile´s recent history, as millions took the streets in almost four weeks, defying a military curfew and increasing police brutality. Synchronized with processes of social upheaval taking place in other latitudes from Hong Kong and Ecuador to the very core of the North

Migration, Technologies & Postcolonial Genealogies

Seminar series at the Centre Postcolonial Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London (Spring 2021) This seminar series centres on migration and bordering technologies, drawing attention to the postcolonial genealogies of the current governmentality assemblages. It aims at fostering a debate about the mutual entanglements between the racialisation of “migrants” and the

Remaking the Metropole

Remaking the Metropole Postcolonial scholarship has long held out the promise of helping us understand contemporary politics in both the metropole and the colony better. Fanon and Cesaire linked their concerns about colonialism’s racialization to the dehumanizing of not just the colonized but also the colonizer. Cesaire’s passionate

One Good Thing About Music

Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock episode Steve McQueen’s Small Axe has been widely acclaimed by both critics and viewers. The five-part film series takes its name from an African proverb popularised by a Bob Marley and the Wailers song: “If you are the big tree, we are the small

Asia is Working with Data and Masks

Translated by David Ownby[i] The coronavirus is a system test.  It appears that Asia has a better control of the pandemic than Europe. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore there are very few people infected.  Taiwan has 108 cases and Hong Kong 193.  In Germany, by contrast, in a

Reversing the pain: a new dawn for Bolivia

What happened in Bolivia during the last elections has been a fascinating social and political process worth sharing with you, wherever you are. The Movement for Socialism (MAS) and the international left triumphantly interpret their victory as the electoral ratification of their project. This reading constitutes an almost neurotic act

The Robotized Vigilante

The drone’s coming of age During the nineties, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, did not interest military strategists nor espionage agency directors. Drones were used marginally in different forms since World War I until the Vietnam war, mostly for spying and as decoys. It was considered a

Coup 53: A Re-Enactment of the British and American Role in the Overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh

“Coup 53”, a documentary by Taghi Amirani (Amirani Media, 2019), is an extensive visual account of the removal from power of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in the 19 August 1953 Coup, a historical event that continues to reverberate as a theme within Iranian society. The Anglo-American-directed operation which unseated

Historical Knowledge, Academic Journals and historical communication: new challenges

The health crisis has confined to varying degrees a large part of the population at home, limiting face-to-face interactions to a minimum. Even in countries like Brazil, where the disastrous management of the situation did not allow for strong and consequent social isolation, the fear of contagion interfered in interpersonal

The George Floyd case and racism in higher education systems and institutions: reflections from Latin America

The murder of George Floyd suffocated by a police officer exposed the serious problem of racism and police violence in the United States. But this way of looking at it is too simplistic. Let’s not forget that this policeman was a university graduate and that his crime, like many

Who Translated Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth into Persian?

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la Terre (1961), translated into English as The Wretched of the Earth, is an incontrovertible classic in the literature of anti-colonial insurgency. It has acted as a source of inspiration for myriad intellectuals in the Global South, but by no means

You can’t understand the world without learning about empire

Observing the protests against racism in the streets of the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere feels like watching not only a mass movement, but also a classroom, crackling with intellectual energy. For the movement on the streets is not just protesting against specific acts and omissions, it is also making