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Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)
00:53:55
An interview with Bernard Forjwuor
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- [00:00]
A
Hello everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hello everybody. This is Nathan Moore, your host on the New Books Network. Today we will be interviewing Bernard Forjuar about his new book titled Critique of Political Decolonization out of Oxford University Press. It was published just this year in 2023. Welcome to the show. Bernard. How did you come to the idea of writing a book about political decolonization and where does it fit in with your academic background and where are you teaching now?
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C
Hi Nathan, thank you for having me. Thanks to New Books Network as well for creating a platform to host this discussion. Let us start with. I teach the University of Notre Dame here at South Bend. This book was originally the ideas that constituted my dissertation at Northwestern University. The ideas, of course, was where the ideas in that dissertation were changed for this particular book. But the inspiration behind this was the many ways I saw the colonial intrusions in post colonial Ghana, in which case the imf, the World bank, were always in Ghana dictating their economic policies. And I began to ask myself a question about the fact that Ghana is a democracy and how is it possible that a democracy, a sovereign nation, will be beholden to this kind of financial institution in its political, economic and sometimes cultural arrangements. So those are the inspirations I began to ask myself. Is it possible that the, the democratic arrangement can also accommodate the Colonial at the same time. So that is inspiration. And then the book took up a life of its own from there.
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B
Why is your experience in Ghana central to the idea of political decolonization?
- [03:45]
C
Yes. Ghana is the first African country in the Sub Saharan to gain its independence. In that sense, it's a very central place to test some of these ideas. Right. And in most literatures out there and studies that people have conducted, Ghana is a very stable democracy, arguably has a very stable democracy. So in that sense it's, it's a. It's the best place to test some of these ideas. And the fact that I grew up in Ghana, studied in Ghana, I was, makes it even more important to look at this particular case within the framework of that particular country.
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B
And have you ever been to Gabon or Sierra Leone and what do you think of those nations?
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C
I've not been to Gabon and Sierra Leone, but the argument I'm making in this book can be applicable to both conditions. Right. I'm sure we'll get into this later. But the idea that the colonial folds itself into the dictate of this kind of democratic determinations of these countries who were independent, I think it's applicable to most postcolonial states. So, yes, of course, Gabon and Sierra Leone reflects very much in the kind of theory I'm trying to develop around the intersection between sovereignty and colonialism that collides into each other.
- [05:48]
B
Do you write about coops in your book Critique of Political Decolonization?
- [05:56]
C
There's a chapter in the book about colonial neoliberalism. There. I talk a little bit about coups, but this argument is meant to demonstrate ways in which the IMF and the World bank conditionalities in these countries are persistently producing conditions that makes it possible for coups to happen. Right. If you want me to go into detail a little bit, this idea that when you borrow money from the IMF and the World bank, which is a structural adjustment program, there are certain conditionalities that are applied to this nation. There's austerity measures. Right. Removal of subsidies from public sectors, liberalizing trade within those countries, devaluation of currencies. All these things creates economic hardship. I think Stiglert has documented some of this hardship that are produced through some of this economic conditions that are placed on these countries. And that makes the environment rife for some of this dismantling of this kind of political arrangements in these countries. Right. So yes, in a bit I focused on coups in my book.
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B
Can you explain for the New Books Network audience what you mean by ontological structure of colonialism.
- [07:49]
C
I came to the question because I felt the idea of colonialism is much more comprehensive than normative scholarship try to represent it. So I took the inspiration from Olufemis Tewu's book How Colonialism Preempted Modernity. There he had three distinct colonial formations that is often not given full credit for. So for him, colonialism one has to do with settlement, the settler colonial arrangement. Colonialism too has to do with exploitation. And then the colonialism three has to do with the combination of both settler colonial arrangements and exploitative colonial arrangements. Colonialism one was specific to places like the U.S. canada and Australia. While the second form of colonialism, which is predominantly exploitative, was specific to cases like most postcolonial African countries and the Caribbean and India, for instance. The third one is actually specific to somewhere like South Africa. So together the idea of colonialism is much more expansive than we also we often made it. And as well, in this formations as well, I was also talking about ways in which colonialism is expressed in direct forms and in other places, indirect forms, indirect forms in British colonial holdings, regardless of which kind of colonialism was taking place there. And Francophone countries were more direct in that sense. So when you, when you put this formations together in this direct and non indirect ways, you have a very complex system of colonialism that was trying to interrogate in the book. So for me, ontological structure of colonialism is trying to account for the many variations that constitute this idea of colonialism.
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B
In your critique of political decolonization, you write about performance. What do you mean by performance?
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C
Performance in. Okay, I was playing this in this way. My investigation was in part inspired by an encounter I also had at the University of Gatling, where I watched this play, A Land of Million Magicians. It was written and directed by Mohammed Ben Abdullah. Very, very fascinating play. And it offered a critique, a very interesting critique of the IMF and the World bank and their intrusions and their capacity to create very uncomfortable conditions for people in a place called Nima. In that play there. That play made a very big impression on me. And for so long I was trying to find a way to explain it. And not until I. I had the opportunity to write the dissertation that I had to draw from my interdisciplinary background to put this kind of ideas into it. So in that sense, the idea of the stage and the ways in which the stone was were quite important for me. But on the other hand, somebody like Jacques Derrida, for instance, explaining the Declaration of Independence in the US had to use the idea of performativity to explain it. And by performativity, he meant that the Declaration of Independence performs that which it says, right? So it's not up to conversation. It says what it means, it performs what it means. It's not constitutive. In which case you can say that, well, the Declaration of Independence is a proposition and we can either reject or accept it is making the performance. So for me, if the foundations of nations like the Declaration of Independence, the Grant of Independence announces their own presence in this kind of performative way, I think it's useful to think about that and the implications for that kind of idea. So that is how the idea of performativity came into my conversation.
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B
Is there a section about apartheid? Is that an isolated event in history?
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C
It's. Let me give you a background to this idea and how I. I get into that. Okay, so for instance, the idea of self determination, for instance, it was structured by the UN as antithetical to colonialism, right? That's fine. So the chatter they the UN chart on decolonization, for instance, affirm self determination as an ethical to that in that sense, it collapsed. Remember what I talked about when I talk about the ontological structure of colonialism? It collapsed the varying expressions of colonialism into just one specific form, which is the settler colonial arrangement. So in that sense, the UN Declaration of Independence excluded from every other consideration other forms of colonialism that exist elsewhere. So Resolution 1514 and Resolution 1541, for instance, affirm self determination or self governance as a way out of the colonial bind. Putting that aside for a minute, at the same time, the UN also made sure that the idea of colonialism is quite distinct from what it calls apartheid, specifically Resolution 2625 made that distinction. And for me, that is quite important. Important in. In the sense that if apartheid, which is also colonial formation, is excluded from what colonialism means, it means that it cannot be resolved by this UN Declaration as such. Right? So immediately, all other conditions that resembled a case of apartheid cannot be remedied under the UN declarations, the UN Charter. Sorry, but if you look carefully at the structure of the ontological structure of colonialism in that sense, you realize that by excluding South Africa and apartheid system from this kind of consideration, it also excludes other settler colonial arrangements, Right? Because in those cases, we. We framed the question of independence as internal also or a racial condition. In essence, we affirm the colonizer or the settler colonial people as part of the body politic in those kind of conditions. So if in fact the idea of Self determination is constituted to negate the, the colonial in its settler form. Apartheid eliminated that possibility and I said so. Now the, the instrument that has to be used to remedy colonialism, which is self determination, is not redundant because it doesn't. It cannot negate the colonial in its exploitative form because that is not how it was structured to it to do, to exist. Okay, so let me put it another way. If, for instance, you have a settler colonial arrangement and that country has to be liberated through self determination, it means that the people, the original people, the natives of that land, will have to retain authority over there, their own. Their own land, and the settlers will have to leave. By in structuring apartheid as different from colonialism, it made it possible for the people who occupy the land as colonizers as part of the body polity. And this made sure that the colonial persisted within those frameworks. I hope that makes sense.
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B
And in what ways are your arguments either contesting or agreeing with ongoing discourse in your academic discipline?
- [17:57]
C
There are many arguments. So let me structure it this way. I'm not making a neocolonial claim in that sense, because for somebody like Kwame Nkrumah, he made a distinction between de jure colonialism and de facto colonialism. For him, the de jure colonialism is the political colonialism that was eradicated by political independence. So for him, the political is liberated, is extricated from the colonial in that sense. But. But he also was careful to show ways in which the colonial exists in this kind of de facto conditions. So for him, the political arena does not include the question of colonialism, even if we can find ways in which the colonial still intrudes there through the economic processes, the cultural processes. So that is not the same claim I'm making here. What I'm trying to say is that the political has within it a structure of colonialism that has to be interrogated. I'm also not making a post colonial claim over here, at least not fully. The presupposition in most post colonial scholarship is that the political independence actually constitutes a political decolonization. So that is not a contested fact at all. But they also are careful to show the legacies of colonialism that still persists today. But the original assumption is that political independence was a radical project that eliminated the colonial from the political arena. I'm not trying to make that kind of argument. And thirdly, I'm also not trying to make the argument often articulated by the Latin American Subaltern Studies. The idea of coloniality for them is distinct from colonialism the assumption there is that and they borrowed the idea of neocolonialism dying Atikli that there is a de jour political condition in which the political was liberated from the colonial constraints. I'm also not making that. What I'm trying to say here is that political independence and political decolonization are quite distinct category of things. So if you're looking at Ghana, for instance, in which the colonial took the form of exploitation predominantly because the British had no intention of permanently settling in that country, what they were trying to do was to create conditions for further exploitation even after independence. And I showed this in my work ways in which the British committed millions and millions of dollars to fund some of those ideas they were having. If you look at the deliberations in British Parliament during the when the act that will constitute the grant of independence in Ghana came to the British Parliament, the kind of conversations that they had, they had the intention of structuring a colonial that will persist after political independence. So for me, political independence is a useful act, is a very important act that affirms the authority of the people, but that in many sense does not constitute a negation of the exploitative structure of colonialism. So that is how different my argument is from other arguments that have been made in that direction.
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A
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C
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A
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C
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C
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B
What about your methodology? Is there a special method that you were employing?
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C
My method is quite, quite eclectic. I benefited a lot from that kind of interdisciplinary approach looking at some of these questions. So I use critique. What Foucault, Michel Foucault calls the critical practice as a tool to engage this. Remember that Foucault wrote two very important chapters that are very important for people who do critical theory or critical work. The first one is what is critique? There he argued that critique is challenging the authority of dogmatism. Right. So this is the moment of the Enlightenment, in which the authority of the Church was contested as oppressive. So for him, the extrication, the challenge of that kind of system was quite important for the formation of critique in the other work, which is what is Enlightenment? By the time he got there, he was convinced that Enlightenment itself represented what critique means. I'm not buying that argument, but I think the structure of critique that he was using was quite impressive. The ways in which we are interrogating things to see how things are put together and stuff like, quite useful for me. But I'm also rejecting the idea that critique has to always affirm the Enlightenment, even if somebody like Hegel, for instance, believe that an Enlightenment affirms the inhumanity or the animalistic lives of Africans, for instance. So for me, if some. If I'm using this framework of critique and I had to come back to affirm Hegel in that sense, I mean, it would be counterintuitive. I think Judith Butler's idea that critique should lead to this moment of desubjugation or poisons, I think was quite useful to me that the end goal of critique should be this moment of freedom and not necessarily enlightenment. So this also allowed me the opportunity to also question some of these ideas that are very normative, like self determination, self governance, liberal democracy and other stuff. So that is the methodological approach I'm using. I'm also very careful to show ways in which theory in my work is not just to affirm any particular theoretical positions per se, but use theory to do the work of methods. Right. So I pick. I use a very eclectic framework of theories where I was using them when useful and rejecting them when they are not. I think this way it allowed me that kind of flexibility to escape the constraints of normativity. I think that is the approach I use in my work. And it's also very. It's not the same way we do theoretical work per se, because I use a lot of archival work as well to create a historical background to which I'm drawing my critical reference. At the same time.
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B
What scholars or persons more generally influenced your approach that you haven't mentioned already?
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C
Oh, there are a lot of them. I think Adam Getachu, his work on world making after Empire was quite interesting. Very, very engaging. And I took some of the questions she posed in that book very, very seriously. At the end of the day, we disagreed on what colonialism means and whether self determination could solve the problem of colonialism in Africa. She believes that self determination and the nationalist movement in Africa actually transformed the world system I would not disagree with that. I think there was a fundamental shift in the international system. But my argument is that not all transformations are negations of the colonial. And I think about it this way. If you give birth to a child and the child grows up into a teenager, you don't announce in an obituary that the child is dead. The child has just evolved. So transformation can be an evolution in the colonial process. And so this is the kind of things I was trying to challenge there. But the work was really, really useful for me to think about the history of self determination, specifically in Africa. Gary Wilder's book on Freedom Times was also very useful. He also, he also argued in a similar way to what Gettychi was arguing and that he. He talks about cosmopolitanism in ways in which it was quite useful for me. But like, get at you. The assumption that change within the international system constitute decolonization for me was not, Was, was not obvious. Right. We had to interrogate that. I think one of the interesting had the book and inspiration for me was Olufemi Tewu's Against Decolonization. Remember that my concept of colonialism was based in part on his first book, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity. But in this second book, he seems to have departed from that kind of concept entirely. So in the Against Decolonization, for instance, he was affirming that agency of Africans should be taken seriously. And that moment of agency constituted decolonization. Colonization. Agency is just like self determination. And for me, colonialism can transcend the boundary of agency. And I showed that in the book ways in which the idea of indirect rule, for instance, simultaneously affirmed the agency of this local political arrangements, while at the same time those local independent political arrangements were circumscribed, their authority were circumscribed by an overriding colonial determination. So you have here classic case of where agency operates and at the same time the colonial supersedes that kind of authority. So I'm in conversation with all these ideas showing ways in which we should be thinking differently about colonialism and its impact even now.
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B
Were there any challenges or limitations for you that you encountered?
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C
Of course, the challenges. I think that the challenges I think most people face when they're doing this kind of work is the structure of normativity. Remember, I have to use the same concept that are normatively defined. I think about it this way, right? Something like the words for instance, like student, for instance. Within it is a structure of governance that we don't really pay attention to. So when you classify somebody As a student, you're also constraining their ability to perform in any other capacity except for the capacity as a student. Right. So every language, every word has a system, system of governance built into it. So the ways in which the un, for instance, defined colonialism forced other forms of colonialism outside the framework of colonialism itself. So if you're using colonialism without paying attention or drawing in other ways in which the colonial exist and persuading people to expand the framework within which you are thinking about colonialism, it will be very challenging to make some of these arguments I'm making. So the first constraint on me is language itself, the language I had to use to express what I want to express. Also, the theories I'm trying to use themselves have normative histories that I have to be very careful about. Right. I'm talking about democracy, I'm talking about freedom, I'm talking about justice. They have very specific histories that are very Eurocentric. I'm trying to contest them at the same time as I use them. So I have to do this kind of double dance to show their limitation, expand them where necessary, reject them when they're not useful. So, yeah, those are very challenging things to do in this kind of work that I was able to produce.
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B
How extensively do you engage with historical or contemporary sources? And so what's the credibility of your research materials?
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C
Yeah, I was very careful to establish the historical framework within which I'm working because, like I said, some of these theories have a very Eurocentric origins and implications that if you have to deconstruct or interrogate or even critique them, you have to set up a historical framework to force a different understanding of those concepts. So for me, a chapter on indirect rule was very, very important, which was based on the history of indirect rule, the ways in which ideas of governance of colonial or the colony was structured to implicate the idea of self determination and colony and colonialism. Self determination and colonialism simultaneously, for instance, challenges our ideas and ways in which we separate the two in contemporary literature as separate, as discrete. So the historical allowed me the possibility to argue differently from the ways in which normative ideas are structured. The chapter on colonial neoliberalism also I looked at very contemporary cases, ways in which, for instance, illicit capital flight from developing countries, seeds at $1 trillion for instance, every year, and yet we talk about these countries as poor. How is it the inconsistency in that? I was also showing ways in which this exploitation further intensified the colonial. Even in this kind of contemporary mode, we should not forget though that a country like Congo for instance, which is the largest deposit of cotaine and cobalt in the world and they are driving the green economy, is also the most poorest country in the world. How is that even conceivable? That somebody, a country that is this resourced in natural resources is at the same time poor? Except of course, we have to look at the ways in which the structure of exploitation is put in place and how it successfully replicates the colonial in some of these places. So yeah, I look at both historical evidence and contemporary cases as well to make that kind of argument.
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B
Are there alternative theoretical lenses, particularly in or outside of West Africa, that could be applied to enhance your analysis of political decolonization?
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C
I would say there is none. I haven't come across cross any kind of innovative ideas on decolonization or political decolonization that is persuasive. That does not mean they are none. Then there's nothing there. I'm sure there there are, but it's difficult to find anything. Right. So I like what the Latin American supporting studies are doing, but the fact that their work is based on this kind of fundamental presupposition that the political, or what do you call the de juro political decolonization has already accomplished, I think it makes it difficult to accept some of these arguments over there, but very much useful. Does it make sense?
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B
Yes, very much so. Okay, so now what about the practical implications of your arguments, whether for policymakers or everyday life?
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C
Yeah, I think this is quite important. So for me, I think where these ideas will be useful is the ways in which we have to think differently about democracy. Right. Often when we talk about democracy, what we mean is liberal democracy. And somebody like McPherson, what is liberal democracy, made it clear that the idea of liberal democracy is a fusion of two warring concepts. The classical liberal view, which affirms capitalism, for instance, and democracy, on the other hand, which affirms the collective determination of a people. So if what we are practicing in Africa is liberal democracy, it means that democracy has to rise and fall within capitalism, which to me is not. It's not democratic at all because the determination of the people is already constrained. And if that determination is constrained, its capacity as a radical process is eliminated. And if you look at the history of capitalism, and there are a lot of literatures that are coming out right now on racial capitalism that suggests that argues strongly that colonial implications for capitalism. And I've also talked about the ways in which illicit capital 5 from Africa has damaged political societies and stuff like that. So if liberal democracy is what we are practicing, and it's an affirmation of capitalism, then I don't see how we can get out of this bind. So I think war my work is doing is supplying the language to interrogate the ways in which the democracy is organized in Africa. I think there's a part in the book where I talk about a way of structuring democracy in which the relationship between the people and their politics will be mutually affirmative in such a way that there will not be any intrusion from the outside. Right. So Ghanaians for instance, will have to find a way to dictate their own economic, political, social policies without the influence from outside. And some of this influence comes in the form of those conditionalities. These financial institutions are placed on these countries. Right. They have to open their borders for certain things, even if that thing affects their capacity to be economic independent. Those things I think will be important to think deeply into how we want to structure our democracy which affirms the people in this kind of self reflexive way rather than open democracy up for this kind of intrusions.
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B
Do you see opportunities for further interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of political decolonization?
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C
Of course. I think the advantage I bring, I profited from this kind of interdisciplinary approach. I look at it this way. Let me give it another, an analogy that I think will be useful. If you're trained to use a hammer very, very well, you will tend to see the world as a nail that can just be hammered down and the problem solved. But I also argue that what if the problem you encounter is not, is not a nail, it's an egg. Now you see, if you apply the hammer to the, to the egg, you destroy the problem. Right. There are certain questions that can be answered very well within disciplinary framework like political science and, and stuff like that, but in themselves does not give you a very comprehensive answer to those kind of questions. Questions tackling the question from these multiple angles allow you the flexibility to ask very interesting questions. And I think that is what is useful here. So you, you see my work moving between constitutional theory, political theory, history, economics, political science in many places. I also use literature and other places, places trying to create a way of thinking differently about this problem. So yes, I'm always looking out for multiple ways of understanding the same reality. Right. I use logic a lot as well in the book as well to showcase the complexity of the problem. So yeah, interdisciplinarity is central to this particular book.
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B
Who do you believe is the primary audience for critique of political decolonization and how accessible is it For a diverse readership.
- [43:33]
C
The book was originally written for multiple audiences First. I wrote it for people who are interested in the application of this critical practice to some of these settled arguments. Right. So for instance, the idea of self determination, for instance, is settled in normative theory as a negation of colonialism. So people who are willing to learn how to use the critical practice to challenge this of kind. Kind of settled argument, to see how this argument came to be settled. For instance, I love Jacques Derrida's idea of undecidability because if you look at the genealogy of some of this concept, there was a moment in their history where the meaning of that thing was not that settled. It has to be settled. And the. And the way in which we settled some of these arguments was through the demonstration of power or colonial authority to settle certain arguments. So people who are. Who are willing to engage with this kind of critical process, I think will benefit from this. It also will benefit people in Latin American Subaltern Studies who are thinking deeply about the. The decolonial turn in this interesting way was a benefit from this. If not for anything, it will offer a perspective that perhaps has not been considered within those framework. I also think that people in post colonial studies will benefit greatly from this. And I'm not just saying that scholars alone, but students, both graduate students and undergrads, who will benefit from that. The book is quite accessible, I think, is very theoretical as well, but very accessible.
- [45:47]
B
What areas require further or future exploration? And do you plan on doing some of that future research?
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C
Yes, there are a lot of questions. The book table for further investigation. Right. So the book is very successful, I think, in the ways in which I was challenging the meaning of colonialism. By the same time, I didn't really address the question of decolonization itself. I raised some few questions in places that suggest my thinking on that. But I think that question of decolonization is what I'm taking up in my second book project. I'm thinking about decolonization within the framework of democracy. And that will also reorient the democratic theory differently than is often projected. So that question in particular should be taken up seriously because the implications are quite profound. So that is an area I'm working on right now. And I think the idea of the decolonization also requires some counterfactuals. Right. Where we had to rebuild what could have been if there were no colonial interventions in Africa, for instance. We will have to think speculatively about decolonization. And I think that those are the things I think people should take seriously. The present is not decolonized. I think if there's anything I want people to walk away from in this book is that colonialism is not dead. It has evolved. But the nature of its evolution should not be dismissed just because Africans can exercise autonomy over their. Seemingly exercise the autonomy over their own politics. Right? Because even this kind of agency or self determination is constrained, constrained by international pressures, constrained by capitalism and other things. So how do we think about decolonization differently? I think that is where I'm going with what I'm doing right now.
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B
What other geopolitical events or current social movements does your work critique of political decolonization address?
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C
I think what is happening in Congo, for instance, is interesting for me, the exploitation of natural resources. Over there was this book I came across, Wasted Lives, which was quite, quite interesting in that, in the book the argument is this, that unlike agriculture, mining is exploitation of the land in a way that the resources that are extracted from the land is not immediately replaced. Or even if this resources can be replaced, it would take centuries to replace them. So when you dig and the cobra, the cold hand from the ground and stuff like that, you're not just exploiting the people now, but you also exploit in their future, right? And if the only reason why they can even live a meaningful life right now, even in the, in the US in the face of all this exploitation, can you imagine what, what will happen to them if they don't have this kind of resources to fall back on? So I am impressed with some of the scholarship in the area of environmental colonialism, environmental justice, that are advocating for a renewed engagement with some of the activities. I think my work both benefits from that kind of argument and could benefit social movements that are mobilized around those kind of concerns as well.
- [50:44]
B
And what about seminars or appearances outside of the New Books Network about the critique of political decolonization? What do you have planned?
- [50:56]
C
Next semester will be a bit busy and I'm also looking for opportunities to talk about the book with other people who might be interested in some of these ideas. I'll be at Northwestern this year discussing my work with the Global Theory Workshop over there. I'll be at Ohio University, Ohio State University, Indiana University, talking about the book. Likely will be at Rice University as well. So I'll be in multiple spaces talking about the ideas in the book. And I'm also open to having conversation in other places as well. So by all means, people should reach out if they want to talk more about those ideas.
- [51:44]
B
Any final thoughts for the New Books Network?
- [51:49]
C
I think this is a very, very lively and engaging space to challenge assumptions and be exposed to works that are out there. I like the space. I always come to the new book that way, to gather new thoughts on things, and I'm happy that I had the opportunity to talk about my book on this network. So I'm grateful.
- [52:21]
B
You listened to an original podcast recording of the New Books Network and your host, Nathan Moore. Our audience can thank Bernard Forgewar for discussing his new publication titled Critique of Political Decolonization out of Oxford University Press. Subscribe to get more episodes like this one from the New Books Network.