‘Causes’ versus ‘Conditions’: Imperial Sovereignty, Postcolonial Violence and the recent Re-Emergence of Arendtian Political Thought in African Studies

‘Causes’ versus ‘Conditions’: Imperial Sovereignty, Postcolonial Violence and the recent Re-Emergence of Arendtian Political Thought in African Studies

Lee, C. J. (2008) ‘‘Causes’ versus ‘Conditions’: Imperial Sovereignty, Postcolonial Violence and the recent Re-Emergence of Arendtian Political Thought in African Studies’, South African Historical Journal, 60(1), pp. 124–146. doi: 10.1080/02582470802287752. Abstract: Since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, an increase in scholarship on genocide and mass violence has developed over the past ten years, an interdisciplinary effort that has initiated a search for both a ‘usable past’ and at times a useful ‘theoretical past’. Against this backdrop, this article is concerned with the provisional re-emergence of Hannah Arendt’s thought in African studies. It aims to explore the main facets of this under-recognised legacy to claim a contemporary place for her within the history of political thought on Africa and imperialism more generally. Divided into two parts, this essay first provides a summary of Arendt’s engagement with imperial conditions in Africa, as found in her first major work The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Her influence is then traced in recent studies on South Africa and Rwanda, though not without critique. The insights and limitations of her interpretations rest on a distinction between ‘causes’ versus ‘conditions’, with her emphasis on the latter circumscribing the effectiveness of her analysis. Distinguishing such points of view is a key lesson to be drawn from her work, offering further means for understanding and assessing the contours of contemporary scholarship. This essay concludes that her ideas have prefigured current debates and deserve renewed recognition. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Youth as Death

Neely, A. H. (2024) ‘Youth as Death’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 114(10), pp. 2281–2296. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2374922. Abstract: Since the end of apartheid, life in South Africa has been marked by an epidemic of death among the youth—people between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five. First as a result of HIV/AIDS and political violence, and more recently as a result of “these diseases,” a broad group of illnesses that affect the youth, homicide and suicide, this epidemic is in part a consequence of ongoing processes of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in South Africa. This epidemic of death can also be understood as an example of necropolitics—the failure of the postapartheid state. At the same time, as the stories in this article reveal, no one or two analytical approach(es) can fully make sense of what it means to live in a place where the youth are dying at such a high rate. Drawing inspiration from work in Black studies, and Black feminisms more specifically, and driven by the stories of those living through loss in South Africa, this article sketches what it means to live in a place where youth is defined by death. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

‘We Want Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of Human Rights

Fregoso, R. L. (2006) ‘‘We Want Them Alive!’: The Politics and Culture of Human Rights’, Social Identities, 12(2), pp. 109–138. doi: 10.1080/13504630600583296. Abstract: In this essay I argue that a new order of power is emerging on the US-Mexico borderlands. This order of power is necropolitical. I then analyse feminicides on the borderlands in relation to this emerging order of power. Drawing upon theories of sovereignty, I argue that the consolidation of a necropolitical order in the region is a result of the convergence and intersection of multiple forces and processes, including militarization, denationalization, neoliberalism and ingovernability. Secondly, I examine the countervailing forces to this emerging order of power, especially the turn to a politics of human rights by grassroots and transnational collectivities. Finally, my essay probes the role of culture in shaping new understandings of human rights and re-imagining new democratic possibilities and subjectivities. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Fundamentalism in Iranian Kurdistan and its others: a critical discourse analysis

Salehipour, Farhad, Seyed Hossein Serajzadeh, and Kamal Khaleghpanah. 2026. “Fundamentalism in Iranian Kurdistan and Its Others: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, February, 1–21. doi:10.1080/13530194.2026.2632201. Abstract: Although Islamist movements in the Middle East share certain similarities, their diversity and divergences are closely tied to their specific social, historical, and political contexts. This qualitative study, focusing on Iranian Kurdistan and employing critical discourse analysis, examines the construction of ‘others’ within fundamentalist discourse. To this end, 20 speeches delivered by representatives of fundamentalism in Kurdistan were analysed to uncover the mechanisms of othering and its effects on the social and political sphere. The findings indicate that fundamentalism constructs two categories of others: intra-religious others and extra-religious (secular) others. It may be argued that the process of othering in this discourse not only fails to secure the social and political interests of the Kurds but also fragments Kurdish society by excluding its discursive plurality. Through its particular interpretation of religion, this discourse seeks to reshape Kurdish society under signifiers such as the ummah, the caliphate, and transnational thought. Such an approach transforms fundamentalist discourse into a tool for legitimizing regional hegemonic powers—including dominant nationalisms and mainstream Islamisms—while simultaneously articulating discursive antagonism in Kurdistan in ways that further subalternize the Kurdish lifeworld and reproduce domination across multiple dimensions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Call and response

Goldberg, D. T. (2010) ‘Call and response’, Patterns of Prejudice, 44(1), pp. 89–106. doi: 10.1080/00313220903507651. Abstract: Goldberg’s essay is an extended response to five reviews of his recent book The Threat of Race contributed by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Susan Giroux, Kelly Gillespie, Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Peter Wade. Issues discussed range over the sadistic elements of racism’s characteristic violence, the ‘disappearance’ or ‘invisibility’ of race and the impact on racisms, the distinction and relation between naturalism and historicism in racial articulation, and the connection to biologism and culturalism, racial epistemologies, racial coloniality and racial neoliberalism. The central theme of the book, the notion of racial neoliberalism, is elaborated and exemplified by reference to the characterization of Obama by some since he was elected president of the United States. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit necropolitics.substack.com [https://necropolitics.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]