Decoding the ‘Bandung Moment’: Aijaz Ahmad on decolonisation

Aijaz Ahmad’s work traversed several disciplines: literary criticism, history, Marxist theory and philosophy, politics and political economy. His book In Theory navigated the intersections of class, nationalism and literature, offering a critique of postcolonial theory at the height of its popularity. 1 His insights in essays like ‘Imperialism of our time’ were a thought-provoking commentary […]

On not becoming Chinese: The racialisation of compliance

As philosophy departments in the West come under greater pressure to provincialise themselves, calls to give ‘non-Western’ philosophical traditions their due have grown louder – and rightly so. But for all that is surely right about ‘diversifying the curriculum’ as a project driven by the relentless work of anti-racist and decolonial activists, the institutional co-optation […]
Tapestry of Emperor of China glanked by elefant and servants and a fanastical architectural structure

184 Reviews: Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Alain Badiou, Cinema George Henderson, Value in Marx: The Persistence of Value in a More-Than-Capitalist World Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman David Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko, eds, The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory Federico Campagna, The Last Night: Atheism, Anti-work and Adventure Gyanedra Pandey, A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States Peter K.J. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 Gilbert Achcar, Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism

REViEWS The cunning of capital explained? Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2012, xxi + 812 pp., £22.99 pb., 978 1 60846 067 0. In ‘The Notion of Bourgeois Revolution’ (1976) Perry Anderson wrote: ‘Among the concepts traditionally associated with historical materialism, few have been so problematic and contested as that […]

Edward Said, 1935–2003

Obituary Edward Said, 1935–2003 The erudition, range and élan of Edward Saidʼs work as a literary scholar, cultural critic and politically engaged public intellectual have produced a mountain of commentary, within and beyond academic communities and across continents. With his death, friends, colleagues, collaborators, former students and acquaintances all over the world have been offering […]

Orientalism in reverse

Orientalism in reverse Gilbert achcar The years 1978–79 constitute a watershed in Oriental and Islamic Studies, for they witnessed three outstanding events. I am referring here to events that occurred on two utterly different and therefore incomparable levels, but all three have powerfully impacted the academic field nonetheless. The first two events took place on […]