#anticolonialism

[freegazafromhamas]

The entire internet needs to hear this.

[city-of-ladies]

An Algerian national heroine, Lalla Fatma N’Soumer (1830–1863) is remembered for the defeats she inflicted upon the French army.

The holy woman

Lalla Fatma, or Fadhma according to the Kabyle pronunciation of her name, was born in Ouerdja. Her father was a renowned religious leader and teacher. From a young age, she was drawn to mysticism and meditation and memorised the Qur’an by heart. At the age of sixteen, she was married to her cousin but ended the union to focus on her spiritual journey.

Lalla Fatma became active and influential in traditionally male-dominated religious and political spheres. She was therefore given the honorific title of “Lalla,” which denotes a woman of distinction.

Resisting the invasion

As the French army threatened to conquer the region of Kabylie, Lalla Fatma used her religious authority to build a structured resistance movement and mobilised an army of men and women. In 1849, she allied herself with the religious and independence leader Si Mohammed El-Hachemi. She and her brother were granted authorization to lead the Imseblen, the “volunteers of death.”

Lalla Fatma was believed to be a prophetess. A strict commander, she did not tolerate slackness or cowardice. Soldiers who tried to flee the enemy were burned with a poker.

In 1854, her troops defeated the French army under General Randon in battle. Although the French forces had superior numbers and equipment, the Kabyle troops prevailed after two months of fighting.

Her story brings to mind the exploits of warrior queens from the Aurès Mountains, such as al-Kahina in the 7th century or Fatma Tazoughert, “the Redhead,” in the 16th century. Both women were also regarded as holy women and prophetesses

As of 1854, the region was still independent and remained, for a time, the last bastion in Algeria free from French rule.

Entering the legend

By 1857, General Randon returned, determined to crush the Kabyle resistance. Lalla Fatma organised the defence. In spite of her people’s bravery, she was ultimately captured. From the moment she fell into the enemy’s hands, all resistance ceased.

She was placed in detention under French authority and died six years later at the age of thirty-three. She later became a symbol of the fight for Algeria’s independence. In 1999, her remains were transferred to the Martyrs’ Cemetery of El Alia in Algiers. Her legacy was also mobilised by feminist movements.

Today, the Kabyle expression “Lalla n’Ouerdja,” a name also attributed to Lalla Fatma, designates a woman who refuses to conform to traditional gender roles.

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Further reading: 

Boudjadja Meriem, “Lalla Fatma N’Soumer”, in: Amazones, Femmes de cheval chez tous les peuples de la terre, depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu’à nos jours

Benbrahim Malha,  “Documents sur Fadhma N’Soumeur (1830-1861)”

Carrey Emile, Récits de Kabylie 

Chitour Chems Eddine, L'Histoire de l'Algérie, De la résilience à la quête de la modernité

Smail Salhi Zahia, “Nsoumer, Fatma”, in: Dictionnary of African Biography

[victusinveritas]

Rest in Peace and Power

[itsmythang]

In tonight's World Cup match between Congo and Colombia, a Congolese man remained motionless for the full 90 minutes, imitating the salute of the Congolese anticolonial leader, Patrice Lumumba.

Lumumba was dismembered and dissolved in acid by the US and Belgium in 1961 for securing Congo's independence from colonialism and refusing to let imperialists continue plundering his country's resources.

Though the imperialists dissolved his body, they could not erase him from history; 65 years later, Lumumba remains present for millions of people.

If little Adolf was the worst person in the history of humanity, what position is Leopold in????

[balrogballs]

Your presentation yesterday was absolutely amazing! I'm interested in diving into postcolonial theory a bit more, do you have any essay/article/book recs??

Thank you very much! I was honestly rather worried I was veering towards the polemical (primarily because I did it at a friend's place I was stopping over at and they'd been listening in and was like 'how do you make a presentation about elves sound like you're speechifying from the soapbox' though that's probably just because of my delivery style RIP...) so it's very nice to hear this!

So with theory, I'd say the best thing would be to avoid theorists labelled as 'postcolonial' unless you're keen to do a critical reading, because postcolonial studies in itself is a dated and single-minded field. I mostly use it for its datedness and prescriptiveness, Nehru and literary representations-of-Nehru being a comparison to Elven historians for that very reason, plus Prayers' engagement with how the dominant 'postcolonial canon', particularly in Anglophone academia, remains overly invested in rigid modes of literary 'representation', and over-prioritises social realism and binary models of coloniser/colonised, resistance/collaboration, centre/periphery.

Imo the best way to start tackling it would actually be to approach via those very gaps in and criticisms of postcolonial studies: how its aesthetic commitments lean toward either the grotesque or the respectable, its preoccupation with being seen+heard and understood, the way it does little to dismantle the colonial modernities that sustain the hierarchies established by Empire and prioritises symbolic redress over structural transformation, in part because a lot of these postcolonial scholars themselves benefit greatly from said hierarchies (see: Bhaba and Spivak for the most egregious examples...).

Also, there's a lot of value in reading about how the field’s lingering focus on culture over structure means it often stalls at critique rather than moving toward transformation. And approaching via scholars who critique the term itself, ie “the state does not disappear when it is called post-" (Ruth Wilson Gilmore) and those who write not just about the aftermath of the colonial encounter but go on to address how many postcolonial nation-states have become agents of their own dispossession.

Some general recommendations from me under the cut... much of my reading focus is on South and Southeast Asia though so if anyone else has recs beyond this, feel free to jump in!

Anupama Rao's The Caste Question and Sharad Chari's Apartheid Remains = approach caste and race not as identity markers but as technologies of labour discipline + statecraft. The Persistence of Caste: The Khairlanji Murders and India’s Hidden Apartheid by Anand Teltumbde is a very, very good read on the modernisation of casteism, and goes into the institutionalisation of Naxalite-accusations as a tactic of the Indian state.

Priya Gopal's Insurgent Empire is quoted in my presentation and is a very good 'intro read' to dissent studies etc, but just a note that Gopal is writing from and to Cambridge, and that is evident in some of her positions. Vijay Prashad's The Karma of Brown Folk critiques the "model minority" myth and directly names class-caste collusions in U.S. South Asian migration patterns. Gaiutra Bahadur's Coolie Woman is an expansive intergenerational account of indentured labour migration from South Asia to the Caribbean.

Meena Kandasamy's The Gypsy Goddess is metafictional and formalistically very interesting, blends Marxist historiography and fiction, confronts the limits of literary form when narrating atrocity, tells of the 1968 Kilvenmani massacre of Dalit labourers in Tamilnadu. Kandasamy is great in general, really nice person too! No Land’s People: The Untold Story of India’s Deported Citizens by Abhishek Saha is a journalistic account of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and its brutal exclusion of Bengali Muslims from citizenship... biting read on how liberal framings of "Indian democracy" erase the violence of the country's border regime and ethno-religious nationalism.

The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present by Jini Kim Watson & Gary Wilder is a collection of essays/articles on how the postcolonial is often used to mask state violence or bourgeois aspiration + calls instead for anticolonialism reckoning with authoritarianism/environmental collapse/neocolonial relations. Being Muslim in South Asia: Diversity and Daily Life edited by Robin Jeffrey & Ronojoy Sen, particularly useful in its criticism of how liberal diasporic narratives can often treat Islamophobia as a “silly back home™️ problem", unlike US/UK racism, aka "the Real Problem™️".

Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan, another bit of fiction+non-fiction, presented in fragments, re: absurdity and brutality of South Asian labour diaspora in the UAE, really interesting when it comes to less-considered diasporic narratives. The Malayan Emergency: Essays on a Forgotten War edited by Diana Yong, a collection of essays on British counterinsurgency during the Malayan Emergency, the roots of military-industrial practices exported to Vietnam later, and the racialised labour that underpinned them (if you're a British liberal/lefty, get ready to get icked the fuck out by Attlee, sorry).

Finally, The Malaysian Indians: History, Problems and Future by Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown, a political history of Indian Malaysians, many descended from indentured labourers... it challenges celebratory economic-diaspora narratives but also Malaysia+Singapore's self-conception as utopian 'melting pots' by showing the structural disenfranchisement, plantation labour exploitation + ongoing marginalisation faced by the Malaysian Tamil community to this day.

(sorry i feel like i just went on such a lengthy tangent but hopefully you'll be interested in some of these!)

[cumbiamurguera]

Mmm...

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

"While we mourn, we also fight."

Anti-colonial graphics by Klee Benally

[titusandronicusonice]

Aimé Cesaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939) tr. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith