Books in the Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons series

How is decolonial resistance evolving in Lebanon and the Middle East?

This book interrogates the Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery and assesses the historical consequences of this for contemporary European society.*BR**BR*Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen show how the slave trade and slavery intertwined economic, social and cultural elements, including nation-state formation in the Netherlands and across Europe. They explore the mobilisation of European populations in the implementation of policies that facilitated Atlantic slavery and examine how European countries created and expanded laws that perpetuated colonisation. *BR**BR*Addressing key themes such as the incorporation of the formerly enslaved into post-slavery states and contemporary collective efforts to forget and/or remember slavery and its legacy in the Netherlands, this is an essential text for students of European history and postcolonial studies.

Latin America has been a place of radical political inspiration providing an alternative to the neoliberal model. Religion without Redemption looks at the sociology of religion, political philosophy and the history of ideas of the continent, in an attempt to show how Western understanding fails to come close to a correct analysis of how and why political and economic characteristics work as they do.*BR**BR*It focuses on how the centrality of religion for the people of Latin America has influenced how they interact with the changes in the modern economic system. Capitalism has taken on religious characteristics: it has sacred places of worship, such as the shopping mall, as well as its own prophets. This book explains how this form of 'cultural religion' accompanies many aspects of life in a contradictory manner: not only does it fulfil the role of legitimating oppression, it also can be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling thus a subversive side to the status quo.*BR**BR*Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory into the 21st century, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.

Following 9/11, 7/7 and the War on Terror, Islamophobia has become a ubiquitous expression of political racism; its presence is felt in immigration restrictions, critiques of multiculturalism and the co-option of feminism that casts Muslim women as abject figures. *BR**BR*Throughout the book, what emerges is that most of our knowledge of Muslim communities is apprehended through signifiers, as defined by 'liberal' politicians and media: there is the - aforementioned - maligned Muslim female, the ontically pure religious Muslim and the fundamentalist terrorist. Through study of instances where politicians - from Tony Blair and David Cameron, to Geert Wilders and Enoch Powell - activate these racist essentialisms we begin to see how Islamophobia takes form as an expression of racialised governmentality. By mobilising accounts across different national contexts, David Tyrer reveals how Islamophobia is defining relations between states and ethnicised minorities. *BR*

Exploring the tension between Queerness and Islamophobia, and how the elite reinforce the politics of homonationalism.

This book compares Islamic and Western political formulations, highlighting areas of agreement and disparity. Building on this analysis, the author goes on to show that political Islam offers a serious alternative to the dominant political system and ideology of the West.*BR**BR*Sabet argues that rather than leading to a 'Clash of Civlizations' or the assimilation of Islam into the Western system, a positive process of interactive self-reflection between Islam and liberal democracy is the best way forward.*BR**BR*Beginning this process, Sabet highlights key concepts of Islamic political thought and brings them into dialogue with Western modernity. The resulting synthesis is essential reading for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Islamic and Middle Eastern politics, political theory, comparative politics and international relations.

A decolonial critique of the agency of the colonised subject.