Solidarity in the Age of Decolonization

The central demand in numerous contemporary emancipation movements is “decolonization,” irrespective of the presence of a formal empire. This class addresses how we think about decolonization today. What does paying attention to the big picture view of decolonization reveal about the term’s changing meaning? We will look at events, paying attention to how decolonization is perceived by different people, in different places, at different times–not only in the colony but in the metropole. How do “sympathetic” members of society react? What does it mean to sympathize? What kinds of solidarity were formed between metropolitan activists and anti-colonial leaders? What about solidarity-activists in the empire? What counts as solidarity? How does this fit into our understanding of decolonization? These are the questions that will be guiding our course. We will focus our topic by concentrating on liberation from the maritime empires of Great Britain and France (though these are just a fraction of independence movements), starting with the independence of the American colonies and ending with contemporary debates on the notion of decolonization. We will also direct our attention to specific global issues connected to the process of decolonization: the world economy, human rights, apartheid, and transnational protest.The course will be organized like a seminar–there are no lectures, only discussions of the assigned texts.