BURNING? is a publication borne of our project UNRAVELING THE (UNDER-)DEVELOPMENT COMPLEX OR TOWARDS POST- (UNDER-) DEVELOPMENT INTERDEPENDENCE, which, 50 years on, is a revisiting of Walter Rodney’s seminal work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. This publication, more than documenting the chapters, invocations and activations which took place in Bandjoun, Nairobi, Berlin and Dar es Salaam and Abidjan, serves as a launchpad for a more regular discourse.

BURNING? following this first issue, will be a sustained effort; a periodical echoing board of resistances to the political-economic dimensions of neo-colonialism and a live-time accounting of the continued subjugation of the so-called under-developed by the soft hands of transnational corporations and multilateral institutions.

In the words of political economist Adolph Reed, the phrase “political economy” is "a phrase whose main function of implying a kind of heft and demands to be taken seriously, but has very little to do with what Marx or Krugman (or for that matter, Rodney) would ever call political economy.” [1] This exhibition has attempted to move beyond that – localizing and concretizing a discourse which too often fades into the abstract and theoretical while remaining largely detached from the actual mechanics of economic imperialism; trade agreements, structural adjustments, loans; the economic levers which control the flows of global finance, and how/why they are pulled. This publication will aim to preserve that concreteness; tying in continuous real-world case studies of how people live within the tentacles of economic imperialism. What happens when you try to cut them off? What is the effect and to whom in terms of capital inflows and outflows? Patterns of investments? Debt crises? Livelihoods, resources and dependencies?

Any analysis of the political economy of the so-called underdeveloped world is also incomplete without a robust study of the undercurrent of western led NGOs and nonprofits as well as the role they play. We must lean onto Freire’s analysis of this burgeoning industry as a body of anti-revolutionary organizations. A decentralized mass government for the global poor and preservant of the status quo. There is a silent admission of complicity in the very existence of the western-led so-called NGO industrial complex. They function, as Freire states, “as an anaesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solution to these problems.” [2] Our analysis will problematise the existence of this “third sector” and its functions as a placating arm of the neoliberal apparatus. It shall also include an exploration of these concrete solutions and the agents of change on the African continent and beyond. It was Rodney who insisted that “[E]very African has the responsibility to understand the [imperialist] system and work for its overthrow." [3]

IMPORTANCE OF DE-MYTHO-LOGISING

With Berlin and Wedding specifically as a point of departure, when we write of the realities of life under neo-colonial subjugation, we want to ensure that our writings meet our audiences not as an abstraction or simply as anecdotes of a world far away for which they can only contribute their attention or perhaps pity. Instead, BURNING? must present to its readers as a problem the reality of the intertwined nature of our struggles. It must present the stories of people not as powerless observers of their own condition, but as active resisters against the uncompromising machinery of capitalist production in its many forms. BURNING? must be a nesting ground for what Ranajit Guha has termed the “small voices of history” which is a natural ascension towards a popular history and away from an intellectual history. It is an invitation to write the active histories of the people at the vanguard against land occupation, cost-of-living crises, labour rights struggles, environmental degradation, forced removal of people and so on.

The tenor of this publication was looked after with great care because we considered it a priority to avoid reproducing a linguistic hegemony which, in our view, excludes most of the people who may otherwise find our thoughts interesting or useful. What does it mean to speak in a language which is, as James Baldwin termed, “clean as a bone”? [4] Far from a disinvitation to creative prose and imaginative expression, or a perception of these as mutually exclusive from a more precise and truth driven language, this was instead, an invitation for our writers to concretize our struggles and place them in a context which makes sense to people to who might otherwise perceive the topic as beyond their reach. As a publication which is focused primarily on political-economic issues, it is important to adopt a demythologising approach as suggested by Rwandan scholar Olivia U. Rutazibwa. [5] To do so, we endeavoured to avoid the many tropes of political and academic writing and its obfuscating tendencies. Ready-made phrases, euphemism, and jargon are tools of the political elite and used in defense of the indefensible. These lines of thinking were the basis of the publication you now hold in your hands.

B U R N I N G ?

Our title is inspired by a line by Robin D.G. Kelley on Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism: "It is not a solution or a strategy or a manual or a little red book with pithy quotes. It is a dancing flame in a bonfire". It is also a provocation; not borne of a cynical and detached observation of the grim state of our world, but rather a nod to a series of happenings which precede us and are sure to survive us. We did not start this bonfire, and it will not end when this cinder eventually turns to ash. It will dance as others have before it, taking inspiration and gaining life from the energies of those around it. This book is conceptualized with the questions which our name provokes and in some cases answers: How urgent is this? What should remain? Where is this coming from? Who is responsible? Is there a way out? 

Durchs Magazin geblättert: 

Die Publikationen in der Reihe SAVVY Books reflektieren und dokumentieren die Aktivitäten und erweitern die Forschungs-, Diskurs-, Performance- und Kurationsprojekte von S A V V Y Contemporary. SAVVY Books zielt darauf ab, die epistemologische Vielfalt zu fördern in Einklang mit Boaventura de Sousa Santos Feststellung, dass „ein anderes Wissen möglich ist“. Indem wir die Grenzen und Fehler der akademischen Disziplinen anerkennen und für Prozesse des Verlernens eintreten, schaffen wir eine Plattform, die außerdisziplinäres Wissen bestärkt und unterstützen das Denken und Schreiben von Autor*innen, Künstler*innen, Philosoph*innen, Wissenschaftler*innen und Aktivist*innen, deren Praktiken westliche Erkenntnistheorien in Frage stellen und sich mit epistemischen Systemen aus Afrika und der afrikanischen Diaspora, dem asiatisch-pazifischen Raum, dem Nahen Osten und Lateinamerika befassen.

Diese Reihe vereint  S A V V Y Contemporary und Archive Books in einer Zusammenarbeit, die auf dem geteilten Interesse an einer Vielzahl von Wissen jenseits des westlichen Kanons beruht. Gemeinsam verschreiben wir uns der Förderung von kritischen Diskussionen und dem Aufbau von neuen Kooperationen und Koalitionen. Wir betrachten die Bücher in dieser Reihe als „Grenzgebiete“, um einen Ausdruck der Chicana-Poetin und Feministin Gloria Anzaldúa zu verwenden, womit wir Räume meinen, in denen „eine neue Geschichte zur Erklärung der Welt und unserer Teilnahme daran“ erarbeitet und erzählt werden kann; Räume, in denen epistemologischer Ungehorsam (Walter Mignolo) und abweichendes Denken ausgeübt werden können.