Tag: colonialism
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The Womb as Infrastructure: How Colonialism Turned African Women into Permanent Empire Support
Introduction: Bodies as the scaffolding of empire Colonial regimes did not merely exploit natural resources or extract labor; they reshaped entire social orders by treating African women’s bodies as integral infrastructure of the empire. This perspective reveals how gendered violence, reproductive labor, and caregiving became essential components of economic and political stability in colonial territories.…
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The Womb and the Field: How Colonialism Turned African Women into Permanent Infrastructure
Colonialism, Bodies, and Building Power When we study the colonial project, it is tempting to view it as a sequence of borders drawn and resources extracted. Yet a deeper analysis reveals a more insidious architecture: the transformation of African women’s bodies into permanent infrastructure for empire. The womb and the field—reproductive labor and agricultural labor—became…
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Womb and Field: How Colonialism Turned African Women into Permanent Infrastructure
Introduction: Bodies as Nodes in an Empire of Labor Colonial rule did more than extract resources from African lands; it repurposed the daily lives and bodies of African women to stabilize and expand imperial dominance. The metaphor of women as “permanent infrastructure” captures how their labor, reproduction, and social roles became enduring foundations for colonial…
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Cape Fever review: a masterful power struggle of mistress and maid
Overview In Cape Fever, Nadia Davids delivers a compact, charged novel set in a “small unnamed city in a colonial empire” just after the First World War. The story builds around a fraught relationship between a mistress and her maid, using their intimate dynamic to illuminate the broader social hierarchies and racial tensions that defined…
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Is Complexity Just an Excuse? The Tendaguru Dinosaur and Its Unresolved Legacy
Introduction: Recalling a Case That Haunts Paleontology The Tendaguru Dinosaur excavations in the early 20th century have long stood as a touchstone for debates about science, empire, and ownership. A follow-up to our previous report on the colonial conditions that kept Tanzania’s fossils in Berlin, this article digs deeper into the question: is complexity merely…
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Cape Fever by Nadia Davids: A Power Struggle Between Mistress and Maid
Overview Nadia Davids’s Cape Fever revisits the social maelstrom of a South African city just after World War I, a nation beginning to reckon with its colonial legacies. The novel, her second, follows the award-winning author as she sharpens her lens on power, gender, and class. Set in a small unnamed coastal city that evokes…
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Climate Crisis Is New Colonialism: How the Global South Pays the Price
Introduction: The Irony of the Climate Crisis The climate crisis reveals a troubling paradox: the communities contributing least to global warming bear the heaviest burdens. From rising seas to extreme droughts, the most vulnerable regions—often in the Global South—face climate shocks with limited resources and little control over the global systems that manufacture the problem.…
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Climate Crisis Is New Colonialism
The Irony at the Heart of Climate Change The climate crisis exposes a troubling irony: the nations least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions are often the first and most severely affected by its impacts. Small island states, least-developed countries, and communities in the global south face stronger storms, higher sea levels, and longer droughts while…
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Climate Crisis Is New Colonialism: Unequal Impacts Worldwide
Introduction: A Crisis That Mirrors Colonial Legacies The climate crisis is not just a scientific or environmental issue; it is a social and political phenomenon that exposes deep-rooted unequal power structures. The countries that contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions are often the ones bearing the heaviest costs—rising seas, extreme weather, and disrupted livelihoods.…
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Of Floating Isles: Kawika Guillermo’s Memoir Weaving Video Games, Self-Knowledge, and Colonial Truths
Introduction: A Memoir Grounded in Play Kawika Guillermo’s memoir Of Floating Isles situates itself at the intersection of personal memory, video game culture, and critical theory. Placed in a framing that resembles a psychological horror game, The Path, the book invites readers to wander rather than win, to confront and remember rather than conquer. Guillermo…