Anticolonial connectivity and the politics of solidarity: between home and the world

Abstract

This special issue examines the connections among (post)colonial spaces forged in the struggle for national liberation and after. The focus on anticolonial/postcolonial connectivity indicates the existence of alternative forms of spatiality that go beyond the linear (and hierarchical) relationship between metropole and colonial spaces. Here we seek to challenge the dominant focus in the literature on the relations between colonial metropoles or hegemonic centres and colonized spaces. Rather we explore the ways through which colonized and postcolonial subjects cultivated knowledge ‘sideways’, meaning they inter-connected tactically, materially and intellectually without needing to call upon the imperial centre for interpretation or authorization. In surveying the connections between Algeria, Vietnam, Libya and Palestine, for example, or between Palestine and Mexico, between Islamic revivalist groups in the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent, in the making of Pan-Africanism and the anticolonial Caribbean, or the fragile moments of connections and solidarity in the Balkans - the articles in this special issue investigate a variety of anticolonial and postcolonial connectivities as well as a complex politics of solidarity that highlights both limits and blind spots but also untapped potentialities.