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OSUN Theme: Human Rights
Capital and Colony
Term:
January 30, 2023 – May 16, 2023
Level
: 300-Level
Day/Time:
Mondays, 12:00-15:00 New York Time, 18:00-21:00 Vienna Time
Instructor:
Asma Abbas
, Bard College at Simon's Rock
Register here
Credits:
3 US / 6 ECTS
Prerequisite:
Intermediate course in the Humanities or the Qualitative Social Sciences
What exactly did it take to ensure that the sun never set on the British Empire? From labour laws that put 6 year-old boys to work in the blacking factories in London, to the disposable bodies of natives and slaves producing tea and silk in the East, and sugar and cotton in the West, a very specific moral and political economy was installed that traversed entire oceans and needed nourishment and maintenance in spaces of the colony and metropole alike. The colonial search for, and romance of being at, home everywhere in the world produced a mode of hospitality and subjugation that necessitated the colony at home and abroad. Undoing or unmaking this lifeworld of the colony, it follows, has required more than passing of laws and drawing of boundaries. The goal of this two-part course is to track the coexistence and intertwinement of capitalism and colonialism. Part I posits that "the colony is always already inside capital, and capital always already inside the colony" and model an examination of this claim by taking a close look at the British Empire as an extended case study, spurring investigation into other empires of the modern age and a comparison to older imperialisms, to see the political, philosophical, economic, social, and cultural systems that together materialize these lifeworlds. Often the study of capitalism and colonialism falls prey to many current modes of thought that have separated issues of economic exploitation from other forms of subjugation, such as race, gender, religion, nationalism, etc., or those which reify an ontological manicheanism of metropole and colony, reaffirm the nation-state as redemption in new forms, or turn to an equally idealist investment in the phenomenon of globalization as if its something new or recent. We want to find a way to unpack, critique, counter, dismantle and/or build alongside systems of classism, racism, sexism, nationalism in a way that addresses their shared, often even unified genealogies in capitalism and colonialism. Part II probes the entanglement and interpenetration of capitalism and colonialism into the unfinished era of decolonisation and well into the postcolony. It tracks the emergence of anticolonial movements, their claims, philosophies, and tactics, and their relations to struggles against capitalism. We examine the intersecting genealogies of capitalism and colonialism by proceeding from peoples’ resistance to them. We delve into how people have articulated their desires, positions, friends, allies, and enemies, and how their ideas and actions have exposed the roots, destinies, convergences, and divergences of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politics. In this course, special emphasis is placed on apprehending the variations of political method within and across these struggles, and also at different levels of materiality, visibility, and legibility. Thus, an examination of the literary, philosophical, and artistic movements that emerge in anticolonial struggles is central to understanding the broader poetics and aesthetics of anticolonialism, anticapitalism, nationalism, and internationalism. While students build their own archives for inquiry around areas/movements of their choosing, our collective efforts draw on an abundant and hospitable canon of anticolonial and anticapitalist life, thought, and movement histories new and old. A hope is that at the end of this course, we might be more able to (1) question the premises shared by colonialism and capitalism and the political thought and imperatives they have naturalized, (2) avoid the trap of separating out the histories of various contemporary oppressions everywhere from the seemingly “local” histories of colonialism and capitalism, and (3) produce political action that does not sacrifice thought.