Three psychologies of Mau Mau
How racialized intellectual outputs placed in just the right circumstances can do the most damage.
6426 Article(s) by:
Paul Milchick
Paul Milchik is a pseudonym for the author of this piece. His name has been changed due to his status as an international student in the US during the second Trump administration, in a context where foreign students have been targeted for detention and deportation as a result of expressing pro-Palestinian views.
The Nigerian and the Lenin Prize
Peter Ayodele Curtis Joseph was a prominent left nationalist in Nigeria’s struggle for independence. Then he was forgotten. How do we commemorate him?
Nigeria’s Twitter ban and the resistance politics of VPNs
Anyone who cares about civil society, free speech, and human rights should find the state’s digital silencing of its citizens deeply troubling.
Where do just ideas come from
Exploring Senegal’s early post-colonial history, to make sense of the unhappiness with the government of incumbent president Macky Sall.
Trapped by history
Mexican American director John Gutierrez new film, set in Cape Town, South Africa, touches on colonialism, displacement, and man’s complicated relationship with nature.
The legacy of French colonial psychiatry
French psychiatry in West Africa saw Black bodies as “alien” to white ones. It hasn’t changed much.
Kwame Nkrumah and Israel
Israel projected itself as a plucky postcolonial nation. Many African nations and leaders bought into it. Israel’s occupation of the Sinai in 1967 changed that.
The house of migrants
An interview with the filmmakers, Ousmane Samassekou and Aïcha Macky, about their films: two stunning documentaries creating new narratives about migration.
Accra to Bandung, Addis to Beijing
On AIAC Talk this week, we are tackling Africa’s long and evolving relationship with Asia. Watch it live Tuesday on YouTube.
Another neoliberal Spring
Now that we have had time to process it: Uganda’s January 2021 elections were a key step in the country’s long transformation towards a fully fledged neoliberal society.
International thief thief
There can no longer be false justifications for holding Benin Bronzes, and other pilfered materials, in museums outside of Africa.
The making and unmaking of permanent minorities
Mahmood Mamdani’s new book asks how communities that have been enemies can heal. But does it succeed?
The possibility of thought
A Black South African academic in the United States on breaking the silence on Israeli apartheid in US classrooms and on campuses.
A child of the Rwandan diaspora and the longing for home
A film about young Rwandan-Canadian creates more questions than it answers, particularly about identification, belonging, and memory.
Exile is more than a geographical concept
Episode #39 of AIAC Talk is about exile: a new film on a Libyan dissident and a new exhibition on the black experience. Watch it live Tuesday on YouTube.
John Brown had a sick beard
Grégory Pierrot’s searing analysis of the deep roots of white supremacy and black exploitation in hipster culture. He also offers a way out of this.
Silicon Valley in Africa
Western tech companies in Africa often claim to be “social entrepreneurs.” But do their models reduce or contribute to inequality?
Writing is a cultural weapon
South African and Palestinian poets on the shared experiences of Apartheid and resistance. This week on AIAC Talk. Watch it Tuesday on Youtube.
The specter of Mannetjies Roux
An encounter on a cross continental flight with white South African men and their ways, by Robina Marks, a black woman and South Africa’s ambassador in Benin.
Another essentializing moment?
Since Stuart Hall wrote critically about race as an analytical category in the 1980s, naturalized accounts of race are back with a vengeance.