ACSol · Anti-Colonial Solidarity: Analytical Clarification through Historical Reconstruction
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2024-03-30
- EU contribution
- €224,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Anti-Colonial Solidarity: Analytical Clarification through Historical Reconstruction
Appeals to ‘solidarity’ abound in political discourse today. Where public health officials formerly touted ‘pandemic solidarity’, politicians are increasingly decrying a ‘crisis of solidarity’ with Ukraine and criminalizing acts of ‘solidarity with Palestine’. At the same time, engaged citizens and activists demonstrate ‘solidarity’ to contest injustices rooted in global structures of imperialism and the legacies of European colonialism: from the so-called Mediterranean ‘refugee crisis’ to state-corporate invasion of indigenous territory globally. But in contemporary political theory, precisely a global and anticolonial perspective on solidarity is lacking. This research programme was designed to address this gap in our thinking about the politics of solidarity. The overall objective of this research programme was to develop an account of anticolonial solidarity grounded in the global history of political thought and, thereby, to clarify anticolonial solidarity’s contribution to a burgeoning discussion in contemporary political theory. The case studies were provided by the political thought and practice of anticolonial leaders Anténor Firmin, José Martí, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Three specific research objectives were combined to support the overall objective. (a) The first objective developed an account of asymmetrical interdependence in anticolonial solidarity through a comparative reading of anticolonial leadership in Firmin, Martí and Du Bois. (b) The second objective developed an account of the relation between ideals and practices in anticolonial solidarity by comparing their respective critiques of European civilization. (c) The third objective developed an account of the relation between local economic development and global solidarity by comparing their pan-political projects. Each specific objective corresponds to a central debate in contemporary political theories of solidarity. By developing these objectives through the history of political thought, the researcher provided both historical and theoretical insights. As to the former, the researcher demonstrated that the conceptual history of ‘solidarity’ has always been a global and anticolonial one: since solidarity’s rise to prominence in the 19th-century, anticolonial thinkers have always criticized European models of solidarity, just as they have always developed alternative models in anticolonial movements. From this historical insight, the research developed an account of anticolonial solidarity as a distinct type of solidarity for the first time. Thus, the global history of political thought emerged as the means through which the full potential of anticolonial solidarity’s contribution to political theory can be grasped. At the same time, the researcher explored the practices of solidarity in contemporary anticolonial social movements.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The overall objective of my research programme is to develop an account of anti-colonial solidarity grounded in the global history of political thought, and to work out anti-colonial solidarity’s contribution to contemporary political theory. I take my cue from the recent emphasis on the practical dimensions of solidarity in analytic political theory. On this account, solidarity is best understood as a particular mode of action, through which agents attempt collectively to redress the effects of injustice or to contest the structures that produce and sustain it. But my project is motivated by the following hypothesis: that the history of anti-colonial solidarity is best able to clarify solidarity’s practical and global dimensions. The first theories of solidarity were primarily concerned with nation building in modern France. But against and alongside these classical accounts, the central figures of my research project developed alternative models of solidarity in anti-colonial movements explicitly oriented transnationally and globally. Cuban revolutionary José Martí, Haitian statesman Anténor Firmin, and American Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois used solidarity to link local struggles against colonial domination around the world. By investigating these anti-colonial writers, and their understanding of the relation between local, transnational, and global political struggles, my research: (i) contributes to and expands on recent developments in analytic political theory by identifying anti-colonial solidarity as a distinct type of solidarity. In doing so, I (ii) develop a new perspective on solidarity that exceeds the ‘top-down’ models of cosmopolitanism that have long dominated political theory. I also (iii) excavate a crucial but neglected chapter in the global history of this contested political value.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGECoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union