AGAINST COLONIALISM, AGAINST FASCISM

The Caribbean poet Aimé Cesairé argued that the terrors of World War II simply reflected colonial practices returned home to their origin, Western Europe. This course investigates the relationship between fascism and colonialism, during moment when we are experiencing a global rise in right-wing authoritarian governments premised on anti-migrant politics. What is the relationship between fascism and colonialism, and democracy, equality, and internationalism? What are the class alliances behind fascism? What are institutions that facilitate it? In a spirit of internationalism, this class brings together classic anti-colonial and anti-fascists works under one umbrella. We will start by reading theoretical texts by Umberto Ecco, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, G.M. Tamás, W.E.B. Du Bois, Gandhi, Tagore, Nancy Cunard, and George Padmore. Texts include: The Underdogs, Azuela’s novel of the Mexican Revolution; Chestnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition; Family Lexicon, Natalia Ginzburg’s memoir of Italian fascism; The Seventh Cross, a thrilling novel about escaping a German concentration camp by Anne Seghers, who herself escaped through France; Arab writers Etel Adnan, Emile Habibi, and Ghassan Kanafani; My Tender Matador by Chilean queer/trans author Pedro Lemebel; Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman; Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Roy; and Kureishi and Frears’s queer countercultural film, Sammie and Rosie Get Laid.