Short Description:
The author argues that the struggle to put an end to the epoch of world history that opened in 1492 will require new ideas, and new practices. It follows the Caribbean tradition that runs from Aimé Césaire to Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter in affirming the need for a counter-humanism, a radical humanism, a humanism that, in Césaire’s famous phrases, is “made to the measure of the world”. There is a need for a shift in the ground of reason towards the lived experience and struggles of people rendered, in Wynter’s phrase, as ‘pariahs outside of the new order’

Long Description:
The pamphlet begins with two letters written by Paul the Apostle in which Christianity first acquires a universal address. The new religion came to exclude people who were not Christians from the count of the human. This became explicit around a thousand years later when Pope Urban II authorised the First Crusade.

In 1492 planetary history was split in to two. Muhammad XII of Granada conceded defeat to Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs of Portugal and Spain, who went on to expel the Jews from the territory under their control. Europe became a Christian project. In the same year Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean and Europe also became an imperial project with a planetary reach.

The origins of the racial ideology can be seen in this period, in which ideas about religion came to be entangled with fantastical ideas about the imagined purity of blood. But it was in the English colony of Virginia in the seventeenth century that the legitimation for the exclusion from the count of the human began to move from claims made in the name of religion to claims made in the name of science. This is the point at which modern racism, rooted in the appearance of the body, began to cast its malignant shadow across the planet.

The author argues that the struggle to put an end to the epoch of world history that opened in 1492 will require new ideas, and new practices. It follows the Caribbean tradition that runs from Aimé Césaire to Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter in affirming the need for a counter-humanism, a radical humanism, a humanism that, in Césaire’s famous phrases, is “made to the measure of the world”. There is a need for a shift in the ground of reason towards the lived experience and struggles of people rendered, in Wynter’s phrase, as ‘pariahs outside of the new order’

Word Count: 8844

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Long Description:
This pamphlet is part of the series, “Moving Beyond Capitalism – Now.”

The first two parts appear here, and two additional parts by Howard Waitzkin will follow. These four parts show: Capitalist-oriented industrial agriculture and its destruction of habitat are the upstream causes that led to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other past and future pandemics of devastating, emerging viral pathogens. COVID-19 may trigger a collapse of the global capitalist system but it is not the cause. Health-care and public-health systems organized around capitalist principles don’t do well in pandemics, compared to those not organized around capitalist principles. The current economic collapse, triggered by a pandemic, opens a door for revolutionary transformation.

Several chapters by other authors will appear soon.

Please contact us with any questions or concerns (info@darajapress.com).

Word Count: 14444

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Short Description:
The book looks at the George Floyd uprising using the theory of the Black Radical Tradition and Black Marxism. Part of a global wave of rebellions against the police, inequality, and the state, the 2020 uprising opened up a new chapter in the revolutionary history of the proletariat.

Long Description:
The book looks at the George Floyd uprising using the theory of the Black Radical Tradition and Black Marxism. Part of a global wave of rebellions against the police, inequality, and the state, the 2020 uprising opened up a new chapter in the revolutionary history of the proletariat. Erupting in Minneapolis in late May, the uprising spread across the United States. Over the course of the next few months, dozens of police stations were attacked, hundreds of cop cars were burned, and thousands of stores in downtown urban centers were looted. The Black proletariat led the charge, but other racialized proletarians joined the fight, demonstrating new possibilities for multi-racial struggle. At the same time, this uprising was contained and repressed by a Black led counterinsurgency that played a definitive role in neutralizing the revolutionary potentials of the movement. Furthermore, there were clear limits to the uprising when it came to gender. When it was time to rebel for Breonna Taylor, few were willing to fight as hard as they had for George Floyd. These and other uncomfortable truths are considered in the opening text, “Race, Class, and Gender in the 2020 Uprising.” Aside from wrestling with these contradictions, Insurgent Possibilities documents the Walter Wallace Jr. rebellion in Philadelphia, where the Black proletariat refined the tactic of looting by car, one of the greatest tactical innovations of the uprising. “Cars, Riots, and Black Liberation» is a first hand reflection on this phenomenon. Insurgent Possibilities also argues that the tensions and contours of the 2020 riots indicate the unique relationship between civil war and revolution that is so pronounced in the United States. Building off of the analysis set out in earlier texts, “Prelude to a New Civil War” traces the mounting hostilities of the uprising back to the unfinished business of the first US Civil War. The last text in the collection, “Fire on Main Street,” looks at how the uprising played out in small cities and suburbs throughout the country, focusing on the strategic implications that these peripheral areas pose for questions of insurrection and revolution.

Word Count: 18079

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Dentistry in Crisis - Time for Change

Word Count: 71855

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Short Description:
Every couple of years, an inspired group of people, led by the editors of AwaaZ Magazine (www.awazmagazine.com), organise a festival in Nairobi, Kenya, that goes by the name ‘SAMOSA’—South Asian Mosaic of Society and the Arts— bringing together different communities through art, music, dance, film and discussions. In 2016, during the 7th biennial event, included was a colloquium organised in collaboration with the Department of Literature of the University of Nairobi. This unique collection of essays considers the issues of citizenship, identity and belonging in Kenya through an examination of literature, film, music, and theatre, providing reflections on women, statelessness and refugees.

Long Description:
Every couple of years, an inspired group of people, led by the editors of AwaaZ Magazine (www.awazmagazine.com), organise a festival in Nairobi, Kenya, that goes by the name ‘SAMOSA’—South Asian Mosaic of Society and the Arts— bringing together different communities through art, music, dance, film and discussions. In 2016, during the 7th biennial event, included was a colloquium organised in collaboration with the Department of Literature of the University of Nairobi. This unique collection of essays considers the issues of citizenship, identity and belonging in Kenya through an examination of literature, film, music, and theatre, providing reflections on women, statelessness and refugees.

A pleasant quick read on a complex subject of citizenship, identity and belonging. Ignites an interest in these issues as expounded in the arts and film. —Dr George Gona, Senior Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Nairobi.

This excellent compilation of papers by leading Kenyan academics, writers, public intellectuals and practitioners of various forms of art focuses on issues of citizenship, identity and belonging in literature, film, music and theatre. They cover a vast range of subjects that tell the story of Kenya’s past and present.

Ramnik Shah- ex-Kenyan lawyer who writes on migration and diaspora related subjects.

Word Count: 20200

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

Echoes of Ecological Wars

Short Description:
The essays here contribute to developing and deepening an understanding of the ecological challenges ravaging Nigeria, Africa and our world today. They illustrate the global nature of these terrors. These essays are not meant just to enable for coffee table chatter: they are intended as calls to action, as a means of encouraging others facing similar threats to share their experiences.

Long Description:
Set out in seven sections, this book of 54 essays deals with deep ecological changes taking place primarily in Nigeria but with clear linkages to changes elsewhere in the world. The essays are laid out with an undergird of concerns that characterise the author’s approach to human rights and environmental justice advocacy. The first section rightly presents broad spectrum ecological wars manifesting through disappearing trees, spreading desertification, floods, gas flaring and false climate solutions.

The second section zeroes in on the different types of violence that pervade the oil fields of the Niger Delta and draws out the divisive power of crude oil by holding up Sudan as a country divided by oil and which has created a myriad of fissures in Nigeria. The exploitation of crude oil sucks not just the crude, it also sucks the dignity of workers that must work at the most polluting fronts.

Section three underscores the need for strict regulation of the fossil fuels sector and shows that voluntary transparency templates adopted by transnational oil companies are mere foils to fool the gullible and are exercises in futility as the profit driven corporations would do anything to ensure that their balance sheets please their top guns and shareholders. The fourth section builds up with examples of gross environmental misbehaviours that leave sorrow and blood in a diversity of communities ranging from Chile to Brazil and the United States of America.

Section five of the book is like a wedge in between layers of ecological disasters and extractive opacity. It takes a look at the socio-political malaise of Nigeria, closing with an acerbic look at crude-propelled despotism and philanthropic tokens erected as payment for indulgence or as some sort of pollution offsets.

The closing sections provide excellent analyses of the gaps and contortions in the regulatory regimes in Nigeria. It would be surprising if these were not met with resistance on the ground.

These essays provide insights into the background to the horrific ecological manifestations that dot the Nigerian environment and the ecological cancers spreading in the world. They underscore the fact there are no one-issue struggles. Working in a context where analyses of ecological matters is not the norm, decades of consistent environmental activism has placed the writer in good stead to unlock the webs that promote these scandalous realities.

Word Count: 80349

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)