Latest news with #decolonisation
Mail & Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Making Knowledge African: Suren Pillay and the struggle to decolonise the university
What are the predicaments that hold us back from producing knowledge in African academic institutions? Is that something that lies at the heart of knowledge production or the accessibility of knowledge in Africa? And what is African knowledge? Suren Pillay's Predicaments of Knowledge: Decolonisation and Deracialisation in Universities seeks to answer these questions. Pillay's deeply grounded critical insights lead us to rethink the difference between accommodating knowledge and producing knowledge and what it means to engage with, or possess, knowledge in Africa. Though it has a particular focus on South Africa, the core issues debated in the book deal with the impediments to the process of decolonisation in Africa and its challenges in the institutionalisation of knowledge. The book is divided into six chapters, in which questions of modernity, the humanities, the university, epistemic injustice, anticolonial nationalism, justice, history and decolonial theory are discussed. The study alerts us to instrumentalisation — the use of knowledge as a tool to serve specific agendas rather than for deeper understanding. Drawing on Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, Pillay states that decolonisation is not reducible to identity politics and is about 'justice'. He cautiously warns scholars not to get trapped in atavistic and cosmopolitan sentiments. To be wary of these pitfalls, one should accommodate self-critique to renew understanding of the humanities. As he rightly says, 'Without self-critique, renewal will not happen' and it won't be appealing to students who have to navigate post-apartheid politics because the lack of self-critique in South Africa leads to ethical and political challenges as well. To create universality requires three commitments: 'an anthropological commitment to the particular; a philosophical commitment to the universal and historical commitment to the longue durée'. Writing about transformation, deracialisation and decolonisation, Pillay engages with debate on knowledge production. While the question of agency is a main part of the problem, he looks at the possibility of rewriting the African past, as the history of the continent is not recognised, and always dismissed in the world history books. These unthinkable silences which form African history should be addressed carefully. That's why transforming and decolonising knowledge should go hand in hand with remaking agency. The most compelling part of the book is the debate on decolonial theory. For Pillay, adapting decolonial theory in Africa, as many African scholars now aspire to employ Latin American experience in their reading, might lead to a deep epistemic discrepancy. The main problem of colonial difference is very central to the African experience of colonialism, which is not given importance by the decolonial scholars. For the means of decolonising varies from one place to another. The specific ways necessitated in different places should be applied. He argues that Western modernity is a European invention and dissemination of the Western knowledge should be questioned. For Pillay, Western modernity lies at a very specific historical conjuncture and animates in domination, so it becomes a means of power subsequently. Since Western knowledge is an accumulation of ancient cultures, and is not only the 'product of a racialised European genius', it has to acknowledge and recognise other cultures. If the West is the sole inventor and creator of knowledge, so is modernity. How can one debunk the whole knowledge to make it more accessible to Africa and the so-called Third World? It seems impossible even to challenge, since we are all bound by the very modernised school system. To situate the local, common experience or knowledge in this hegemonic system requires more challenge. The important question here is how to insert African wisdom and knowledge into world knowledge or how to diversify modern knowledge and make it more accommodative. It is important to rethink ways to navigate the norms surrounding the way we learn, the way we see the world and think of ourselves — even the way we treat each other. The distinction Pillay makes between Eurocentrism and Western knowledge is important to mention. Because the Eurocentric point of view is racialised and it needs to be separated from the Western knowledge. This move can only be actualised through decolonisation, as he notes. The book invites us to attend to the intricate dynamics of decolonising knowledge that requires confrontation with systemic knowledge inherited in colonial and modern institutions, not to replace but to revert the genealogy of knowledge in order to open up space to 're-narrate the history'. Predicaments of Knowledge is very comprehensive, intellectually grounded and deeply engaged with social and critical theory. Predicaments of Knowledge is published by Wits University Press.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Phoenician Scheme is fantasy. It is also a remarkable engagement with the real-life conflict in the Middle East
The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson's makebelieve treatment of the war-ravaged near east, reimagines the region as a sunlit Levantine fantasia of cypress trees, fez hats, camel-riders and kitsch hotels, all photographed with the lustre of an Ottolenghi cookbook. Meanwhile, livestreamed daily to our news feeds, the warlords of the Holy Land exhibit for us an equally spectacular dystopia of cities pummelled into sawdust, of skies scarred with scorching white phosphorus and gun-toting paragliders. How could these images be of the same place? What does it mean that they have been produced at the same time, and that we are consuming them alongside each other? The film is set in the Middle East of a parallel universe. It's 1950, but decolonisation, the Holocaust, the world wars – none appear to have taken place; history has stalled in a kind of perpetual belle époque, leaving only a pastiche of the orient in its imperial heyday, meticulously reconstructed in the film's geography and production design, its storylines and characters. In place of the warring states unleashed by Europe's botched withdrawal from its imperial mandates, the entire Levant forms a single nominally sovereign territory known as Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia, named after the ancient civilisation once inhabiting what would now be Lebanon, Palestine and Israel. Those national demarcations don't exist in the film, as you can see from all the quaintly displayed trademark Wes Anderson cartography, the whole region pristinely undivided – as it was before the first world war. All the ethnic and sectarian squabbles that beleaguer these lands in the real world are magically replaced by a peaceable patchwork of aristocratic families, each with their respective toeholds. Their inflated titles mean nothing, their names allusions to the toothless dynasties once patronised by imperial overlords. The film's King Hussein refers to more than one Hashemite monarch installed by Britain and Prince Farouk to Egypt's last king. The fact that a svelte Riz Ahmed has been cast to play a character, whose real-life inspiration, King Farouk, was a worldwide celebrity infamous for his fatness, tells us everything we need to know about the distorting mirror through which Anderson reflects the history of empire. Above all, the colonial order is represented by the film's devious protagonist Anatole 'Zsa-Zsa' Korda and his visionary scheme to build railways, tunnels, canals and dams across Phoenicia. The significance of infrastructure in colonial mythology cannot be overstated. Anderson says Korda was inspired by his father-in-law, the Lebanese construction magnate Fouad Maalouf, also the film's dedicatee. But Korda is as much an empire-builder in the mould of Cecil Rhodes or Ferdinand de Lesseps. With his African mines and railways, Rhodes brought to heel the better part of a continent. In building the Suez canal, a waterway in the deserted sands between Africa and Asia, De Lesseps performed Moses' miracle in reverse. Such magnificent infrastructure projects, said to be beyond the wit of the native, were the glory of empire and still feature in reappraisals of it ('What about the railways?'). It's in this context that Korda's Phoenician scheme must be understood: a plot to re-engineer the Middle East in his image. This is the east as a career, in Disraeli's famous words. And through such a career, the Palestinian literary critic Edward Said wrote, 'one could remake and restore not only the Orient but also oneself'. That sums up Korda, who is as motivated by megalomania as money. There's always been something grippingly cinematic about that. It was another Korda – the Hungarian Jewish émigré film director Zoltan Korda – who more than anyone demonstrated that, in colonial adventure films that he made with his brother Alexander in the 1930s, relating heroic adventures in a timeless orient under eternal British rule. In naming his hero Korda, Anderson proudly acknowledges his debt to a controversial narrative tradition. In its most pointed contrast with reality, its greatest hallucination about empire, The Phoenician Scheme unfolds in a cosmopolitan world that is, for all its lying and cheating and double-dealing, completely free of racism. Imperial cosmopolitanism is symbolised, of all things, in headwear. The fez is absolutely ubiquitous in the film, as it was among colonial elites, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. (There are photos of Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as a fez-hatted law student in Istanbul.) It fell out of fashion in the postcolonial Middle East, becoming a symbol of colonial nostalgia. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Anderson positively luxuriates in that nostalgia, in the ecumenical fellowship of the fez, worn in the film by Frenchmen, Arabs, Armenians, all happily sharing cocktails. Korda appears to be Armenian (judging by the script on his birth certificate) but in a bizarre twist Korda dons the distinctive white fez and robes of Lebanon's Druze sect, just as pharaonic imagery strangely adorns Phoenician hotels: all part of the pastiche. This is history stylised beyond all proportion. It's meant to evoke the urbane world that existed under imperial rule, before the emergence of violent ethno-nationalism. The state of Israel is absent from the film, but Zionism, interestingly, isn't. One corner of Phoenicia, visited by Korda, has a kibbutz, replete with Hebrew signage, quotations from the Old Testament and the suggestive imagery of 'making the desert bloom', palm trees sprouting from the barren earth. It has its own visionary founder, a rival of Korda's, played by Scarlett Johansson, working the land in khaki shorts, like the pioneer kibbutzniks portrayed in early Zionist posters. Crucially, though, it's labelled a 'private utopian outpost'. Nationalism is such an anathema to the ethos of the film that Zionism is reduced to the personal enterprise of another one of those visionaries making a career in the east. It has no aspirations to statehood. Such nonpolitical strains of Zionism were originally favoured by followers of the movement, including Einstein and Kafka, and one suspects it's the kind most palatable to Anderson. But this sanitised, fantasy vision of Zionism is of a piece with Anderson's fantasy of empire. Historically in both, violence and racism were always simmering. The Phoenician Scheme may at once be Anderson's worst and most profound film, a beautifully textured engagement with the past, and an almost morally repugnant retreat from the present. Its transformation of tragedy into comedy feels perverse. To watch The Phoenician Scheme amid the devastation of Gaza – during which it was also filmed – is to see two images of history, two maps of our time, disorientingly superimposed over each other: the sweet fantasy of a much-promised land, and the bitter, bloody reality of how it's turning out.
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Starmer's Chagos ‘surrender' will fund tax cuts for Mauritians
Sir Keir Starmer's Chagos ' surrender ' deal will fund tax cuts for Mauritians, it has emerged. The Mauritian government has said it will use almost £500 million in payments under the terms of the Chagos agreement to pay off its national debt. This will allow ministers to abolish income tax entirely for 81 per cent of employed Mauritians, and raise minimum salaries. Sir Keir has been criticised over the deal, which will cost the UK up to £30 billion over a 99-year period, including rent payments to use a joint US-UK military base on the Chagos Islands and creating a pot of development spending for Mauritius. Conservative and Reform MPs have said the 'surrender' of the islands, which have been owned by the UK since before Mauritius was granted independence in 1968, is unnecessary and expensive. The terms of the deal include rent payments of £165 million a year for the next three years for the Diego Garcia military base, which has been used for bombing runs by Britain and America in the Middle East. Mauritian leaders celebrated the deal as the ' decolonisation ' of the Chagos Islands, which lie at the centre of the Indian Ocean and are uninhabited except for military personnel. Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, has now announced that the money paid by the UK will help Mauritius cut taxes, so that 81 per cent of people in the African island nation will not pay any income tax. It comes despite warnings that Britons face tax hikes in Rachel Reeves's Budget this autumn, which is now thought to contain a black hole tens of billions of pounds large. The Mauritian reforms were announced in a budget speech by Mr Ramgoolam on Wednesday, when he said that the UK's Chagos payments for the next three years would be used to help pay off the country's national debt, which has reached 90 per cent of GDP. He said that to reach a long-term debt level of 60 per cent, the government would adjust 'both the expenditure side and the revenue side of the budget', and raise the minimum salary before an employee pays income tax to £1,774 a year. That increase, of 28 per cent, will scrap income tax entirely for 44,000 people and reduce levies on all other earners. 'As a result of the measures I have introduced, 81 per cent of employees in our country will not pay any income tax,' he said, adding that he had also decided to cut VAT on some food products. After three years, British payments for the Chagos Islands will be used for a 'future fund' to 'create wealth for future generations,' Mr Ramgoolam said. Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said the announcement showed that Mauritius had taken the 'feeble and pathetic' Sir Keir 'for a ride'. 'The only people benefiting from Labour's higher taxes are the people of Mauritius,' she said. 'While causing a financial black hole in Britain, whacking up our taxes and planning further tax raids, Labour's Chagos surrender deal means families in Mauritius will see their taxes cut at our expense. 'This is an insult to hard-working British people who have once again been betrayed by Keir Starmer with millions more paying more in tax.'
News.com.au
09-06-2025
- General
- News.com.au
Viral map completely confusing the internet
Now look what happens when you use a different projection like the Gall-Peters. This map corrects for size and shows each country in proportion to its actual land area. The result? Africa dominates the page, and suddenly Western countries look much smaller. It's a jarring reminder that the maps we trust are far from neutral. Picture: iStock Now, Gen Z is catching on. TikTok and YouTube are full of explainer videos breaking down map distortions and exposing the truth behind why countries like Africa have been visually minimised. It's part of a wider conversation about decolonising education. Picture: TikTok/@NASDAILY In true social media fashion, the viral issue has been turned into a meme. Picture: Reddit Australia appears almost comparable in size to Africa on a Mercator map. In reality, it's not even close. Africa is nearly four times bigger than Australia. Picture: Supplied Even in the digital age, the distortion lives on. Google Maps still uses Mercator projection for zoomed-out views, meaning countries far from the equator are stretched and inflated. Picture: Google Maps There's no such thing as a perfect map because every projection distorts something. But equal-area maps like the Eckert IV projection aim to show countries in their true size, without dramatically skewing shape or scale. It's less extreme than Gall-Peters, more balanced than Mercator, and offers a clearer picture of how continents actually compare. Picture: iStock The Equal Earth projection, introduced in 2018, is a modern attempt to balance aesthetics with size accuracy. It keeps continents in proportion without looking too unfamiliar, acting as a middle ground between Mercator and Peters. Picture: iStock The Robinson projection is often used in atlases. It's not strictly accurate in area or shape, but it looks 'right' to many viewers, which is why it's common in schools and classrooms. Picture: iStock
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Vikings were not all white, pupils to be told
Vikings were 'very diverse' and not all white, according to a guide to teaching schoolchildren. Tutors placed in schools by The Brilliant Club, an educational charity, have been urged to ditch 'Eurocentric' ideas in favour of a 'decolonised narrative' that moves subjects away from a Western focus. A guide produced by the charity suggests ditching the idea that the Vikings were a 'homogenous community of blonde Scandinavians'. Instead, tutors are told to consider teaching that 'Vikings were not all white'. The guidance, intended to make lessons more 'relatable' for pupils, adds that Vikings were 'a very diverse group of people' with 'diverse religious beliefs' and urges the tutors to consider that 'some Vikings became practising Muslims'. This claim appears to rely on Islamic goods being found in the graves of some Vikings, who traded with the Islamic world. The last large-scale study of Viking DNA, conducted by the University of Cambridge in 2020, suggested that diversity in Scandinavian genetics came from other parts of Europe and what is now Russia. The Brilliant Club runs a scholarship programme that places PhD students in more than 800 schools to tutor underprivileged pupils and help them get to university. Schools can apply to receive tutoring, and PhD students can apply for paid placements in Brilliant Club schools. It has created two 'decolonising your course' toolkits to help tutors with the courses they will deliver when working within schools. The guides present them with a preferred 'decolonised' approach narrative which is contrasted with a 'Eurocentric and colonised' version of history. It states that there is an 'imperative to provide material to students that they can relate to and connect with … part of this should be presenting them with courses where they can see themselves represented positively'. The guidance also stresses that making courses more relatable is not simply about 'adding token Black figures into courses'. Guidance for arts courses suggests tutors should not only teach Romanticism by referencing the great Romantic poets – including Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Byron – but find writers who are not just 'upper-class white men'. Tutors are also asked to consider the decolonised narrative of the spread of democracy across the world, which is defined as: 'Parliamentary democratic rule, a form of Western democracy, was exported and enforced on colonial subjects for the purpose of exploitation and domination.' The guide makes several other suggestions for tutors, including being aware of the controversial nature of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'. It states: 'This was not the term the people then used to refer to themselves' and adds that 'the term has 'a long history of being used in a racially charged manner'. Alfred the Great was referred to as 'Rex Angul-Saxonum', the king of the Anglo-Saxons, in the 10th century. The Brilliant Club has said that it is not a leading expert on decolonising, but encourages tutors to reflect on inclusive and thoughtful teaching practices. Its guidance to tutors is in line with other 'decolonising' work, which seeks to move away from Western accounts of history and science, and away from artistic canons that are seen to privilege the creative work of Western figures. William Shakespeare's birthplace is one of a number of sites to be 'decolonised', and the practice can also include addressing imperial history and ideas of national identity that are seen to be potentially controversial. In 2024, the University of Nottingham removed the term 'Anglo-Saxon' from its leading course over fears that the ethnonym could play into 'nationalist narratives'. In 2023, it emerged that Cambridge taught students that Anglo-Saxons did not exist as a distinct ethnic group, as part of efforts to undermine 'myths of nationalism'. The terminology of 'early medieval England' is the preferred replacement for 'Anglo-Saxon' by academics concerned that the latter has become a phrase surrounding white identity used by racists, principally to describe those in the US descended from white early settlers. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
