Books & ideas

The decolonial continent

Lola Yon-Dominguez — 2025-04-17T07:00:00Z

What does it mean to “decolonize knowledge”? What is the difference between “anticolonial,” “postcolonial,” and “decolonial”? To address the semantic confusion surrounding the term “decolonial,” Lissell Quiroz and Philippe Colin propose a genealogy of this current of thought, which emerged in Latin America in the 1990s.

The Effervescence of Algerian Independence

Alain Messaoudi — 2024-01-30T07:11:00Z

How did the ordinary population experience the year 1962, when power was transferred from the colonial authorities to the representatives of the Algerian people? In the absence of archive material, Malika Rahal offers us a history rooted in emotions.

The Ghosts of Colonisation

Igor Martinache & Jules Naudet — 2024-01-19T09:00:00Z

What traces have colonial enterprises left behind? By confronting the public history of colonialism in the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe with that of his own family, Simukai Chigudu reveals the repressed part of the colonial legacy and how it continues to fuel the cycle of violence.

Organising a Muslim Society

Arthur Asseraf — 2023-09-21T09:00:00Z

The Association of Algerian Ulema played an important role in the process of decolonisation. Its goal: making Algeria into a Muslim society.

Knowledge Decolonized

Laura Singeot — 2020-03-23T08:00:00Z

While the “cognitive empire” feeds on a single conception of knowledge forged by European modernity, epistemologies of the South validate the knowledges produced by the resistance of groups having systematically suffered oppression.

Fragile States: Nation-building in Sudan

Christopher Tounsel — 2018-10-25T07:00:00Z

Was nation-building in Africa destined to fail? The question is particularly important for one of the most fragile states in the world—Sudan. Set in a period that straddles the late colonial and early independence era, Alden Young's book addresses the auspices of postcolonial nation-building.

Decolonizing Philosophy

Ernst Wolff — 2017-05-15T07:00:00Z

Behind the violent debates that have shaken up South African universities, it is the whole legacy of colonialism and of the apartheid era that is at stake. This allows Ernst Wolff to question the status of contemporary African philosophy.

The Sahel: In What State?

Emile Chabal — 2017-03-23T08:00:00Z

Gregory Mann considers the history of the Sahel as a state, between precolonial imaginary, colonial structures and postcolonial conflicts. His conclusions reveal that the states in that particular region have a tendency to give up their state power and authority by sub-contracting state responsibilities to international organisations and NGOs.

African Independence Reconsidered

Alden Young — 2014-09-08T07:00:00Z

Denouncing the neglect of the independence era by African historians, Frederick Cooper asserts that a continent of nation-states was not the inevitable outcome of decolonization.

The End of Empire and the Transnational System

Julia Clancy-Smith — 2012-03-15T08:56:15Z

The Algerian war was more than an episode of French-Algerian history: it brought about the emergence of the transnational system in which we now live. Matthew Connelly, a member of a cohort of diplomatic historians who have struggled to change our view of international relations, invites us to see this conflict for what it really was: the end of empire, but certainly not that of decolonization.