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Dr Sara Salem STC.S218

This course is available on the MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics and MSc in Political Sociology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Places are allocated based on a written statement, with priority given to students on the MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics and MSc in Political Sociology. As demand is typically high, this may mean that not all students who apply will be able to get a place on this course.

This course focuses on 20th century anti-colonial movements in order to explore the postcolonial moment that emerged after the end of European empire. It addresses debates within global sociology, postcolonial studies and political sociology, looking at the legacies and afterlives of empire and what these mean for our current moment. We trace conversations anti-colonial movements had around nationalism and post-nationalism; capitalism and geopolitics; resistance, subjectivity and modernity; and global patterns of inequality. The course investigates these topics through various “anticolonial archives,” including theoretical texts by major anticolonial and postcolonial theorists, literature, archival data, posters, images, speeches, films, memoirs and private correspondence.

The first part of the course explores anticolonial movements through some of the major theoretical texts that emerged during this moment by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, B.R. Ambedkar, Kwame Nkrumah, Claudia Jones, Aimé Césaire, Chandra Mohanty, and Edward Said, among others, in order to sketch out the theoretical stakes of decolonisation and in particular the multiple alternative postcolonial projects that were proposed. The second part of the course focuses on two particular features of anticolonial movements and the postcolonial states they produced: their internationalism on the one hand and their focus on nationalism on the other. We look at internationalist and third worldist movements such as pan-Africanism, pan-Arabism, transnational feminism and Third World Marxism—particularly through the lens of international spaces such as the Marxist ‘internationals,’ the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung and the Pan-African Congresses—before delving more deeply into particular national contexts (cases include South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, India and Cuba). The course ends by addressing the afterlives of empire, assessing the emergence of postcolonial states; global migration and the end of empire; the effects of the global neoliberal project on the postcolonial world; and contemporary debates around postcolonial/decolonial theory

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures, online materials and seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours in the LT.

Reading Weeks: Students on this course will have a reading week in LT Week 6, in line with departmental policy

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the LT.

A 1,500 word reflective essay to be handed in during Week 7 of LT that takes a particular object or material from an “anticolonial archive” and discusses it in re