What can a critical analysis of imperialist political economy offer the decolonial turn in the contemporary social sciences? How might revisiting “classic” anti-imperialist thought and politics from the global South push scholars and activists to envision a more revolutionary decolonization? And how, in our discipline’s history, have anthropologists variously opposed or been complicit with the workings of imperialist power? In this article, and in the special issue of Dialectical Anthropology that this article introduces, we engage these questions with a call to bring imperialism “back in” to anthropological research and analysis. Our proposal, however, is not simply for an anthropology of empire, but for an anthropology against empire—a project, that is, not solely of interpreting imperialism, but of aiding its abolition.
Evgenija Filova is currently on fieldwork in Berlin, capturing the city through her photographs (see below). It is right before the EU elections and the city is plastered with posters from parties both left and right, with parties on the right spectrum openly advocating for anti-migration. This comes simultaneously with the scandal from the luxury holiday resort on the Sylt Island on the northern coast, when a video went viral of a white crowd chanting in German “Germany to the Germans, foreigners out” while partying and displaying Nazi-era gestures. While the video was horrifying crowds on social media, the German media merely gave attention to an issue that is ripping through the German public scene, with more and more videos shared online of similar crowds at parties and in night clubs chanting for “re-migration”. Only a few months ago, another scandal broke out of a mass gathering held in secret by different groups on the right spectrum meeting to discuss “mass deportations” from Germany. While hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the parliament to protest the emerging rise of the far-right, public figures across the political spectrum and politicians in high positions of power have been likewise talking of anti-migration.
P.S. While I choose to focus on the alarming presence of anti-migration content, the resistance is omnipresent. One of my favorite stickers reads: “They see but do not recognize, they hear but do not comprehend.”
This article historicizes and conceptualizes the Myanmar radical tradition: a tradition of thought and practice that has animated radical politics across Myanmar’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From anti-colonial struggle to decolonization, and from communist insurgency to left feminism, ethnic rebellion, and today’s revolutionary upsurge following the 2021 coup d’état, this radical tradition is best understood not as something bounded or solitary. Rather, it names a productive conjoining of radical thought and practice from within Myanmar, as well as from other times and places, beginning in the imperial world order of the early twentieth century. Revisiting scholarship on transatlantic and transpacific radicalisms, we argue that attention to imperialism offers important insights into Myanmar’s modern history and contemporary dynamics, including the Myanmar radical tradition. Yet, the Myanmar radical tradition—heterogeneous and internally conflictual, a site of historical dispute—also sheds light on the changing imperial world order, which we show has a fundamentally reactive, counter-revolutionary quality. Today’s late imperialism, we argue, can be seen as a retaliatory response to the long arc of decolonization, a story within which Myanmar’s contemporary revolutionary struggle renders the Myanmar radical tradition very much a living tradition.
Two PhD positions are currently available at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna in the ERC project “‘The anthropology of the future: an art world perspective’ (ANTHROFUTURE)” (PI: Manuela Ciotti).
Two PhD positions are currently available at the Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna in the ERC project “‘The anthropology of the future: an art world perspective’ (ANTHROFUTURE)” (PI: Manuela Ciotti).
I recently reconnected with a series of photos I took from my rooftop in Dakar, Senegal. Month by month, at the syncopated pace of construction, the view of the infamous and holy island of Yoff was obstructed. Block by block, walls and floors were erected. The wind found new obstacles on its way to cool down streets. The concrete jungle was growing, accompanied by the rhythms of builders’ sweaty choreography. The skyline is transforming, and the horizon becoming an urban luxury.
