Lahore University of Management Sciences
Decoloniality and Decolonization
Course Code: HIST 3312
Fall 2016
Instructor
Ali Raza
Room No.
239 G - Old SS Wing
Email
[email protected]
Course Description
Few events and processes in the 20th century were as momentous as the unraveling of European Empires
and the successive decolonization of Asia and Africa. For millions around the world, and in particular the
Global South, decolonization was an epoch defining moment that promised the creation of a new world. It
was, in other words, imagined as a transformative process, and not simply as an event marked by the formal
transfer of power.
It is these utopic visions and dreams that our course is primarily concerned with. We will be looking at
dreamers and visionaries, with a revolutionary or two thrown in for good measure. While situating ourselves
within the larger canvas of 20th century decolonization, we will closely engage with ideas and movements that
emerged from Africa and the African diaspora. We will follow that up with a thematic discussion on
‘Decoloniality’ – an approach that critically interrogates the entangled legacies of colonialism and modernity
and explores what an emancipated future could look like.
Last but not the least, a number of questions lie at the heart of our course: What did independence mean for
the colonized? What were the legacies of European colonialism? How did they intersect with questions of
race, class and gender? What kinds of alternative worlds did liberation movements envisage? What could a
decolonized present and future look like? And perhaps, the most perennial question of them all: What does
it mean to be free?
Course Basics
Credit Hours
Sessions
Course Distribution
Core
Elective
Closed for Student
Category
4
2 per week – 110 minutes per session
No
Yes
This course is closed for Freshmen
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Course Prerequisites
Any 200 level History/English course is highly recommended
Grading Breakup
Weekly Blogs (500 words)
30%
Midterm Paper (10-12 pages, double spaced)
20%
Presentation/In class text commentary
15%
Annotated Bibliography
10%
Final Paper (15 – 20 pages, double spaced)
25%
Examination Detail
Midterm Exam
Final Exam
No
No
Additional Notes
This course will be reading/writing intensive. Students will be expected to actively participate in class
discussions.
Depending on the class discussions, the course outline can be changed to incorporate additional themes.
You are allowed three absences. Further absences will incur a grade deduction.
The midterm paper is due 14th October, the final paper on 2nd December.
Late submissions will be heavily penalized.
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Week
Session
Readings
Module 1 – Decolonization: An Overview
Guardian: ‘Why South African students have turned on
their parents generation,’ November 18, 2015
1
1. Introduction to the course
Guardian: ‘The real meaning of Rhodes Must Fall,’
March 16 2016
V.I Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916
2. Colonialism & Post Colonialism:
A Theoretical Overview
Robert C.J Young,
Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Post-colonialism, (Routledge,
2000), Chapter 1
2
3. Interwar Solidarities: President
Wilson; League Against
Imperialism; Communist
International
4. A World Falls Apart: Postwar
Decolonization in Asia
Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and
the International Origins of Anti Colonial Nationalism (OUP,
2007), Chapters 1 & 2
Hasan Gardezi, (ed.), Chains to Lose: Life and Struggles of a
Revolutionary, Memoirs of Dada Amir Haider Khan, (Two
vols., 1989), selections.
Dietmar Rothermund, The Routledge Companion to
Decolonization (Routledge, 2006), pp 1-48
Raymond Betts, Decolonization (Routledge: 1998) pp 1-30
3&4
David Birmingham, The Decolonization of Africa, (UCL
Press, 2009), pp 1 – 61
5 & 6. Decolonization in Africa
Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of
Amilcar Cabral (1979) Chapters 4, 5, 15
Kwame Nakrumah. “Unite Now or Perish,” OAU
Lahore University of Management Sciences
speech.
Aimé Césaire, A Season in the Congo, (Chicago, 2005)
Todd Shepard (ed.), Voices of Decolonization: A Brief History
with Documents, (Macmillan, 2015), Chapters 12, 13, 18,
20, 24
Christopher Lee (ed), Making a World After Empire: The
Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH:
Ohio University Press, 2010) Chapters, 1 and 2
7. Creating the Third World:
Bandung; Tricontental Conference,
Afro Asian Solidarities
Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the
Third World (New Press, 2008), Chapters, ‘Brussels’,
‘Bandung’,’Cairo’, ‘Havana’ and ‘Arusha’
4
Module 2 – On the Black Radical Tradition
Jeffrey Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization,
and the Third World Order (OUP, 2016) Chapters 1 and 3
Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (2005)
5&6
8 – 11. Indicting Colonialism
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2000)
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, (trans)
(Beacon Press, 1991)
Movies: Battle of Algiers, Concerning Violence
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
(trans) (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
7
12 & 13. Negritude
Frantz Fanon, Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks
(2008)
Patrick Williams & Laura Chrisman (eds.), “Léopold
Sédar Senghor: Negritude: A Humanism of the
Twentieth Century,’ Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial
Theory: A Reader (London, 1993)
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and
the Future of the World, (Duke, 2015) Chapters 1,2,3 4 and
8
Anthony Bogues, Black Heretics, Black Prophets : Radical
Political Intellectuals (Routledge, 2003), Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5
W.E.B Dubois, Souls of Black Folk
James Baldwin, ‘Stranger in the Village,’ Notes of a Native
Son (Beacon Press, 2012)
14 – 17
8&9
‘Black Heretics, Black Prophets’ in
North America and the Caribbean
Marcus Garvey, Selected Speeches and Statements
Elijah Muhammad, A Message to the Black Man in America
(Selections)
CLR James, Revolution and the Negro
Malcolm X, ‘Message to the Grassroots’
Huey Newton, ‘Revolutionary Suicide: A Manifesto’
Movie: Malcolm X, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the
Revolution
Kelly King Howes, Harlem Renaissance (UXL, 2000),
Chapters 2 & 3
10
18 – 19. Redemption Songs
Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the
Spirit of the Sixties, (Verso, 2005), Chapter 3
CLR James, Beyond a Boundary (2005) (Selections)
Movies: When we were Kings, Fire in Babylon
Module 3 – Decoloniality: Possibilities, Histories, Futures
11
20 & 21. Delinking, Decoloniality,
and De-westernization
Aníbal Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism,
and Latin America.’ Nepantla: Views from South 1(3)
(2000), pp 533-580.
Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity:
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke UP,
2011), Chapters 1,2 and 3
Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality.
Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, (Princeton
University Press, 2000), Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 5
Achille Mbembe, ‘Decolonizing Knowledge and the
Question of the Archive’ (speech) pp 1-29
Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research
and Indigenous Peoples, (Zed Books, 2008), Chapters 1, 2,
and 3
12 & 13
22 - 25 Decolonizing Knowledge
Boaventure de Sousa Santos (ed), Another Knowledge is
Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies, (Verso, 2008)
Chapters 7 and 9
Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Our Sins: An Indian Manifesto
(University of Oklahoma Press: 1969)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind, The Politics of
Language in African Literature (Heinemann, 1986)
bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism,
(1981)
14
26 & 27 Conclusion: Towards an
Emancipatory Future
Sylvia Wynter, Unsettling the Coloniality of
Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man
Its Overrepresentation – An Argument, pp 257 – 337)
Enriqué Dussel, Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of
Globalization and Exclusion (Duke, 2013) Chapters 4 and 5