#45 - November 2007
It is fitting that Socialism and Democracy initiates its engagement with Africa through, in part, a philosophical prism. Our thanks for this go to Teodros Kiros, but our appreciation runs deeper. In the anguish of reflection on the...
Crisis is a medical term, connoting a progressive deterioration of the human body, threatening death unless a competent physician intervenes. Similarly in the life of the AfricanPolis, crisis is a metaphor for the...
In our times, one can no longer be a barbarian; as a barbarian, one gets cheated, trodden on, despised, abused. -– Johann Gottfried Herder, “Patriotism”
On his return to Earth from his flight in space in...
For Ato Sekyi-Otu
The morning on which I started writing this paper marked the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the African nation of Ghana. I saluted my Ghanaian friend and colleague, Anani...
Talk to us … not about us. -- Abahlali T Shirt
If as a theoretician, one’s ears are attuned to new impulses from the workers, new “categories” will be created, a new way of thinking, a step forward in...
Botswana many seem an unlikely place in which to explore the intersections of gender politics, democracy and socialism in Africa.1 The gendered “dual political systems” and strong market women’s associations of West Africa that might...
Some Recurrent Themes on the Challenges of an African Cultural Modernity
I start with the contention that if we are to derive much-needed illumination from the literature and critical thought of Africa of the...
The invasion of Iraq by the United States has been correctly seen by the left as an expression of US imperialism.1 In the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was freed of the political and military...
A notorious thing about democracy is that it is easy to define but difficult to interpret. Yet, you cannot implement the idea without interpreting it, and in fair detail. Granted that democracy is government by consent, we are...
MAAT was to ancient Egypt as Wisdom was to ancient Greece. Wisdom was to Plato’s aristocratic regime as Maat was to Egypt’s social and political life. The concept of Maat insinuated itself into every aspect of Classical Egypt. Pharaohs...
Venezuela’s construction of “21st-century socialism” is a unique experiment in the annals of history. It contrasts sharply with previous socialist experiences where the state seized control of the means of production and the...
Book Reviews
Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007).
Joel Kovel has given us an impressive and important book. Its first...
Nikolas Kozloff, Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge to the U.S. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
While Hugo Chávez has yet to define the “socialism for the twenty-first century” that he...
Stanley Aronowitz, Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006)
Stanley Aronowitz is distinguished, among other things, as an intellectual link between the many...
Jonathan Scott, Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
This book, the latest addition to the substantial body of Hughes scholarship, is different...
Steve Martinot, Forms in the Abyss: A Philosophical Bridge between Sartre and Derrida (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
Considering that both Sartre and Derrida are known as icons of...
***
Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA). He has written widely on Latin America and US foreign policy. He is working on a book, “The New Fire in the Americas: Popular Challenges to...