Africa Is a Country

The West is no longer the motor of history

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The West is no longer the motor of history

By
Sean Jacobs

The possibility of a new politics emerging from the new left social movements to reconfigure the nation state.

Image credit Alisdare Hickson via Flickr (CC).

In this video, University of California University at Los Angeles history professor Vinay Lal talks to the Indian website Newsclick about “the new movements developing in different parts of the world, whether in West Asia, North Africa to Europe and the United States. He sees the possibility of new politics emerging from this and how it can reconfigure the nation state.”

There’s also a Part 2 to the interview with Lal. It may be worth spending a day or two with Newslick interviews with experts to educate yourself on some refresher course for a third worldist understanding of global politics other than Western or non-hegemonic viewpoints on what gets covered as “international news.”

* Hat tip to Zunguzungu’s regular “Sunday Reading” posts, which I can never finish by the time the next Sunday comes around. Feels like graduate school again.

Further Reading

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.

Biya forever

As Cameroon nears its presidential elections, a disintegrated opposition paves the way for the world’s oldest leader to claim a fresh mandate.

From Cornell to conscience

Hounded out of the United States for his pro-Palestine activism, Momodou Taal insists that the struggle is global, drawing strength from Malcolm X, faith, and solidarity across borders.