Tag: Colonialism
Med Hondo’s Vital Political Cinema Comes to New York
This upcoming Friday, when two simultaneous New York revivals of Med Hondo’s films get under way, many viewers are going to find their cinematic map expanding. Film Forum will be screening a new restoration of Hondo’s large-scale, big-budget 1979 musical “West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty,” while Anthology Film Archives presents a retrospective of most of his other features—from the first, “Soleil Ô” (1970), to the last, “Fatima, the Algerian Woman of Dakar” (2004)— along with a number of
For Some Islanders, Deep Sea Mining Evokes Colonialism – Mother Jones
Rarotonga is the largest of the Cook Islands’ 15 islands. Tourism currently drives the country’s economy, but deep-sea mining is being touted as a way to diversify the economy and provide much-needed services and amenities.Svetype26/Shutterstock/Hakai
This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The Cook Islands’ main harbor is a small indentation in the island of Rarotonga, which is the most developed of the nation’s 15 islands, yet
Another Side of W.E.B. Du Bois
One of the most significant American political thinkers of the 20th century, W.E.B. Du Bois is perhaps best known for his books The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935). The former is considered a classic sociological study of the Black experience in the United States, while the latter is a landmark history of the Reconstruction era. Du Bois was also one of the founders
The Ghosts of the British Empire
For anti-colonial thinkers of the last century, decolonization was not a mere transfer of power. It was about reparation, including repair of the self. “Decolonization is the veritable creation of new men,” wrote Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. As Jean-Paul Sartre made clear in a preface to the book, decolonization was equally required of former colonizers: “Let’s take a good look at ourselves, if we have the
Preparing for War in the South China Sea
“Imagine you have a visitor who comes into your house,” Corazon Valdez Fabros said over Zoom from Quezon City in the Philippines. “You welcome this visitor. But this is a visitor who has all the guns, all the materials, that basically you
The Long, Bitter History of Globalism
Historians often interpret the history of Europe between the two world wars as an epochal struggle between emergent and entrenched systems of governance: communism versus fascism, democracy versus dictatorship. Yet in her new book, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars, Tara Zahra offers a different frame for grasping the interwar
MI5’s War Against British Intellectuals and Artists
When some of the people blacklisted during the McCarthy era left the United States to find work in the United Kingdom, they might have thought they had left their troubles behind them. But they were wrong. The FBI passed its files on to MI5, the British Security Service, which seems to have accepted the bureau’s judgments without question.
The theater and movie director Joseph Losey was a
The Tricky Politics of Ecological Restoration
In her new book, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration, environmental historian Laura J. Martin charts the history of a practice devoted to mending damaged ecosystems, which she argues is currently the most important mode of environmental management in the world. Martin, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Williams College, defines ecological restoration as “a mode of reconciliation with the human past.”
The Gods of Galas Porras-Kim
Chaac is frail. Centuries without proper oblation have drained the Mayan rain god of his power. Across the Yucatán, the sacred cenotes, or sinkholes, where his worshippers once presented offerings of gold and jade and human remains are now swimming with tourists. Most of his relics were dredged from the water decades ago and taken to the metropoles, where they’re exhibited as artifacts to apostates—if not
The British Empire’s Worldwide Devastation
In 2005, Britain’s then–Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, chose the backdrop of Tanzania to make a dramatic statement about his nation’s unmatched record of imperial conquest and rule. “The time is long gone,” he said, “when Britain needs to apologize for its colonial history.” The choice of locale for such a proclamation was, to be charitable, curious. A braver stage would have been Kenya, to