Introduction to the symposium on “race and imperialism in International Relations”

The Duck of Minerva hosted a blog symposium on our centenary special issue in International Affairs (Volume 98:2). Below is our guest editors’ introduction to the symposium originally published over at Duck of Minerva on 3 April 2024.

The International Affairs Centenary Special Issue [guest edited with Jenna Marshall] on “Race and Imperialism in International Relations: Theory and Practice” was published two years ago in the aftermath of the global Black Lives Matter movement; it marked an atypical period of introspection by many scholars, departments, and journals of International Relations on the general paucity of attention given to matters of race and imperialism in IR research and teaching.

As Guest Editors, our rationale for the Special Issue was based on the following acknowledgments: First, while there had been a lot of important intellectual, activist, grassroots and even institutional work on race and imperialism, there remained a neglect of race and imperialism in much of mainstream western knowledge production. Second, while some of that neglect was and is due to individual standpoints and a subconscious erasure of matters of race and imperialism, there are also more concerted efforts to retain the status quo and existing dynamics of power – either within the academy or within policy circles. And third, IR specifically as a discipline has been historically complicit in constructing so-called watersheds in which racism and imperialism are relegated to history, whether that’s the creation of the UN, the creation of the EU, or the end of the Cold War, to give some examples.

Thus, rather than have a necessary reckoning with IR’s past, these watersheds allow for a redemption of academia and political practices, facilitating a continuity of an unjust status quo, whether in politics or scholarship.

The shifting goalposts of extremism and the right to protest

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s emergency press conference on Friday 1st March warned against the ‘rise of extremism’ in Britain. He was not referring to the extremism of the UK’s militarism; nor the extremism of MPs in his own party who have mainstreamed and courted the support of far-right groups – the very groups that are largely responsible for increases in both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes. No, he was referring to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, opposing the UK’s militarism, and challenging its export of lethal weapons which kill and maim innocent civilians abroad. When Sunak referred to the need to protect ‘British values’ it was not clear which values he meant, but it sounded like a protection of values of war and division at the expense of values of accountability and freedom to dissent. To make his point, Sunak relied on and reproduced age-old tropes about a sinister fifth column seeking to foment sedition from within.

Cooption of neutrality

“To embark on a project of repair, those involved in knowledge production, dissemination and application—within academia, think tanks, museums, schools, cultural production and policy—first and foremost need to recognize that their work is not detached from the real world, even if they seek to make it so. If the articles in this special issue have shown anything, it is that there can be no realistic and honest demarcation between political and apolitical knowledge: to assert neutrality is like offering a blank slate that will inevitably be written over. It is worth knowing that even with the best intentions, a scholar’s work is likely to be co-opted for political ends; and that one’s erasures and blind spots regarding injustice, even if innocently produced, will be taken as justification for inaction and marginalization of these injustices in the real world.”

Excerpt from the conclusion of our article “The impact of colonialism on policy and knowledge production in International Relations“.

St Andrews Vigil

Members of the St Andrews community held a vigil on 6th November 2023 to provide a “space of solace for all those grieving losses from recent violence in Israel, Gaza and other parts of Palestine.” I was invited to speak about historical context at the vigil. Below is a transcript of my comments.

“Whosoever kills an innocent person, it is as if they have killed the whole of humanity; and whosoever saves a life, it as if they have saved the lives of all humanity”

This is a verse from the 5^th chapter in the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book. It is deeply poignant and meaningful that the verse also mentions this law is a continuation of the same law in the Jewish tradition.

Both traditions, both communities, are connected by so much that is shared. Historically there is more that brings them together than divides them.

Before I go on, I want to affirm this sanctity of life for all humanity, no matter what background, faith, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, sexuality – all human life is precious. I express my grief and sorrow for every person who has had their lives taken in the most brutal of circumstances, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, person of any faith or no faith. I extend my condolences to every person who has lost a loved one, friend, or colleague; to every person, family, and community who is mourning and hurting. We are here because we have all in some way been affected and pained by what we have seen unfold in the past month. Many people have been processing difficult and complex emotions. Many people have been reflecting, learning, and also unlearning, in this time. We must acknowledge the range of emotions and experiences, and have compassion for people in their personal journeys through grief.

Special Relationship Forged in the Pyre of International Law

The US administration has irreversibly staked its reputation on one of the most extreme Israeli governments in the state’s 75 year history (though fellow scholars of Israel-Palestine might argue the distinction from some previous governments is a matter of degrees rather than a fundamental one). Multiple members of the knesset or the military have publicly used dehumanising language, not only towards Hamas as some commentators have suggested, but towards all Palestinians in Gaza. More than 800 scholars of International law warned on 15 October that Israel’s self-declared policy of revenge, in which it sought ‘damage, not accuracy’, carried the “possibility of the crime of genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations also issued a statement on 2 November that they were “convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide”. But others – scholars, practitioners, and human rights organisations – have been even more direct: Raz Segal, an Israeli historian of genocide, wrote that the assault on Gaza can be understood “as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes”; on the 28 October, Craig Mokhiber stood down from his role as director of the UN high commissioner for human rights echoing the same words: “This is a textbook case of genocide”, no longer a potential one. In addition to this gravest of charges there has been a long list of violations to international law, as laid out in detail in a letter signed by over 400 prominent lawyers in the UK.

Racial hierarchies, civilizational anxiety and Fanonian internalization

With the rise of nativism, nationalism, and the global far-right, often masquerading under an opportunistic and distorted claim to ‘decolonisation’ and anti-imperialism, a postcolonial critique – especially when drawn from someone like Fanon who was so robust in his criticism of native, neo-colonial, interlocutors – is all the more relevant and applicable. Below is an extract from my article in security Dialogue . I draw on Fanon’s theory of internalisation to conceptualise a postcolonial critique of non-western (including anti-imperialist) states who racialise and subjugate their own minoritised communities via a process of fleeing and transferral.

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Fanon’s work sheds light on the psychological processes behind the construction of [..] racial hierarchies and explores how they are reproduced even among the colonized. Starting with the imperial metropole, Fanon asserts unequivocally in Black Skin, White Masks that the colonizer is the progenitor of racial hierarchies:

The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: it is the racist who creates his inferior. (Fanon, 2008: 69, emphasis in original)

Fanon’s identification of ‘white superiority’ – that is, the psychological need for the colonizers to feel dominant and the need to impose that superiority complex on those they subjugate – is not merely psychoanalytical speculation. Rather, it describes the active intellectual efforts by Europeans to construct a hierarchical, civilizational schema since the 17th century.

Reflections on “Kant, Race, and Racism – Views from Somewhere”

I was invited to reflect on Huaping Lu-Adler’s new book, Kant, Race, and Racism – Views from somewhere (OUP, 2023). My interest in Kant stems from my research on race, hospitality, and the colonial implications of the European project. More broadly, I am interested in knowledge production and historicising ideas, especially those rooted in the enlightenment. And of course, none looms larger in the canon in terms of impact and inspiration than Immanuel Kant.

I want to begin by acknowledging the importance of Lu-Adler’s book. We are indebted to the work by philosophers of race and Kant scholars who, in the past couple of decades, have drawn attention to his theories on race; but as Lu-Adler notes in her introduction, now that Kant’s raciology is by and large known, the common refrain seems to be: ‘yes, Kant was racist – what now?’ or, in effect, so what?

Historicism beyond Orientalism and Realism in Middle East Studies

“All social interactions are affected by what has gone before, and in the understanding of the present the past cannot be escaped.” (Hobden, 1998: 24). Failure to conduct historical analysis—particularly with a case that has longterm roots—risks supporting, albeit unwittingly, a political position that legitimates the contemporary status quo. To take the present [or even the recent] as the starting point of analysis serves to overlook and downplay the contested, politicized nature of historical narratives; viewing historical changes as though they have become embedded norms, part of the established political landscape that actors need to work within, without applying historical scrutiny, is a normative position in and of itself — When the status quo is not historicized and is taken as a structural norm, the capacity and potential for change are not given due acknowledgment.

Islamicate Movements and Anti-Colonial Connectivity

My article “Anti-colonial connectivity between Islamicate movements in the Middle East and South Asia: the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamati Islam” (26:1, pp 55-76) is now out in the excellent new Special Issue of Postcolonial Studies, Anti-colonial connectivity & the Politics of Solidarity, edited by Alina Sajed and Timothy Seidel.

In my article, I explore the following:

• How does anti-colonial activity transcend the nation-state, and how does that affect anti-colonial movements and postcolonial thought?
• What is the substance of that connectivity, if territories and people are geographically separated; and how is it retained?
• How does that connectivity and solidarity evolve through time and location?

In exploring these questions, the article contributes to a subversive anti-colonial archive. I drew from memoirs, pamphlets, transcripts of speeches, books from independent publishing houses, magazines, oral testimonies, and British archives. The article seeks to reinstate narratives that have been side-lined or forgotten (particularly in secular narratives of anti-colonialism). It is a reminder of non-hegemonic history, i.e. History ‘from below’ or from the epistemic margins – not only the margins of mainstream IR but also of secular postcolonial studies. Additionally, the article is a recognition of the vibrant and messy ways in which anti-colonial struggles and solidarities constitute (and are constituted by) global and local processes.

Turkey and Syria Earthquake: Man-Made Disaster and the Weaponisation of Aid

Two 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes hit the South of Turkey and North-west of Syria on Monday 6 February. To put the intensity of the earthquake into context, the highest magnitude on record was a level 9 earthquake (in Chile in 1960). Of course the impact and scale of destruction from any earthquake is magnified when it takes place in an urban and highly populated area. Add to that the backdrop of non-existent or negligent governance, poor infrastructure, large numbers of already displaced people in badly structured housing, bitingly cold weather conditions, and the political ramifications of war and corruption, and you have a total catastrophe.

All of the above applies to the areas that have been affected by the recent earthquake. Over 20,000 people have now died. A staggering death toll, one that is sadly likely to rise. [Edit: estimated at over 40,000 on 14 February]

While the initial trigger for this disaster was a natural one, all the negative conditions that preceded the earthquake and the state responses in the aftermath make this a man-made disaster. If we look at the areas hit by the earthquakes in both Turkey and Syria (Kahramanmaras in Turkey; Aleppo and Idlib in Syria) these are areas predominantly populated by refugees, such as in the camps of Gazientep, or Internally Displaced People (IDPs), in most cases fleeing the actions of the Syrian government. Since the start of the war in Syria, over 6 million people have been internally displaced in the country, with at least 3 million of all IPDs moving to non-regime territories in the North-west. Having forced people to flee their homes due to continuous aerial bombardment, siege tactics, and political repression and incarceration, the regime continued to inflict punishment on these areas by closing access to humanitarian aid paid for by the international community.

Conflict Resolution or Decolonisation? Framing the Palestinian Issue

30 September marks the anniversary of the killing of Muhammad Al-Durrah, the 12 year old Palestinian boy who sought shelter behind his father from Israeli gun-fire – this was and remains one of the most haunting images of the second intifada in 2000. In a devastating parallel, another child was killed on the same date 22 years later – this time 7 year old Rayan Suleiman, who suffered a cardiac arrest after being chased by Israeli soldiers while he was on his way home from school.

These daily injustices – and deaths – inflicted on the Palestinians cannot be addressed by international actors and institutions without a more robust and incisive acknowledgement of the root cause, and a commitment to holding the source of the oppression accountable.

In recent years, as the call for Palestinian rights has grown louder and harder to ignore, international silence and obfuscation has shifted cautiously to recognising Palestinian suffering but within the more neutral and less contentious framing of humanitarianism.

But, as I argued in a recent panel on the subject, a humanitarian approach to the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ in academic, political, and NGO discourse is insufficient; instead, a political approach – i.e. one that confronts the power dynamics and the deliberate political choices that have perpetuated the oppression of Palestinians – is needed.*

Colonial Constructions of the Middle East and South Asia

Map of West and South Asia, 1943. Areas in pink are British-controlled territories.

Below is the video of our Chatham House webinar, exploring the ways in which regions of the Middle East and South Asia have been conceived, represented, and orientalised through colonial discourse, imagery, policies, and material structures.

Islam is Not Your Metaphor

In an essay published in The Nation in 1980, Edward Said wrote:

“From at least the end of the eighteenth century until our own day, modern Occidental reactions to Islam have been dominated by a type of thinking that may still be called Orientalist. The general basis of Orientalist thought is an imaginative geography dividing the word into two unequal parts, the larger and “different” one called the Orient, the other, also known as our world, called the Occident or the West. Such divisions always take place when one society or culture thinks about another one, different from it, but it is interesting that even when the Orient has uniformly been considered an inferior part of the world, it has always been endowed both with far greater size and with a greater potential for power than the West. Insofar as Islam has always been seen as belonging to the Orient, its particular fate within the general structure of Orientalism has been to be looked at with a very special hostility and fear. There are, of course, many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons for this, but all of these reasons derive from a sense that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity.”

New Book on the Syrian Conflict

After 5 years working on it – with delays caused by the pandemic and the fluctuations of war which needed to be incorporated into the analyses – our book on the Syrian conflict is now published. Having suffered over a decade of war with immense human cost, Syria nevertheless also carries stories of hope – this book seeks to reflect these diverse trajectories.

While attention is understandably focused on the horrific war in Ukraine, it is worth remembering that Syria was used as a testing ground by Russia before this recent invasion.

Coverage of Ukraine Crisis: Silences and Hierarchies

With Russia invading Ukraine, yet another people have catastrophically been dragged into the long history of dispossession and suffering caused by imperialism. Parallel to the conflict, there has been a lot of thoughtful commentary on the double standards of western media. Its sympathetic coverage towards Ukraine has been compared to its notable lack of empathy towards other people and conflicts around the globe. Some have suggested now is not the time to scrutinise these disparities. But the visceral impact the commentary has had on people, and the way it has affected the capacity for deeper solidarities, deserves to be heard and understood – especially at this critical moment.

UK University Strikes and Teach-Outs

There is a mounting crisis in the UK University sector relating to unequal pay, unsustainable workloads, job insecurity, decline in wages, and massive cuts to pensions. The structural problems relating to the neoliberalisation of university education for over a decade became acute during the pandemic, with workload expectations on staff reaching unacceptable levels. This in turn has negative consequences for students’ education. So university staff – lecturers and professional services staff – have turned to industrial action as a last resort, withdrawing their labour and sacrificing their wages. As some have noted, this is now beyond the initial issue of pension cuts, and is a struggle over the ‘soul of higher education’.

Racism, Orientalism, and the History of International Relations

I contributed to the International Affairs Blog on ‘Racism and the History of International Relations’ in which I outlined the way racism has historically manifested in western foreign policies in the Middle East. Excerpt below:

‘Race and Imperialism in International Relations: Theory and Practice’ – International Affairs 100th Anniversary Special Issue

After months of preparation and work, we are grateful and happy to see our special issue on Race and Imperialism in International Relations now published. Links to all 15 articles provided below:

The Biden Administration and US Foreign Policy in the Middle East

As we approach the end of Biden’s first year in office, it’s a good time to compare his record (so far) with anticipations and concerns at the start of his presidency. The St Andrews School of IR held a panel on the foreign policy of the then new Biden Administration on 5 February 2021. Below is a transcript of my talk on Biden’s policy towards the Middle East and my answers during the Q+A about: foreign policy making; Syria; Russia; Turkey; US hegemony, and white supremacy.

The Arab uprisings a decade on: recalling the discourse and imagery of optimism

2021 marked a decade since the start of the Arab uprisings in 2011. With most of the uprisings evolving into conflict or authoritarian entrenchment, it’s easy to overlook the early optimism in the initial days and weeks after the protests began. In this blogpost I highlight narratives and images from that early phase, which often reflected a belief in ‘waves of democratization’ spreading from a western epicentre. In a forthcoming [Edit: now published] article in the International Affairs 100th Anniversary Special Issue, I explore in more depth the orientalist roots of that discourse in the West, and its implications for western policy towards the region.

Writing in a Pandemic, Polarised Topics, and Peer Review

The journey with my latest peer-reviewed article on racial militarism has felt particularly long.* It’s a journey that has coincided almost exactly with COVID-19, from the beginning of the pandemic to now. As with most people, any work attempted in this period, especially writing, has been especially hard.

BRISMES 2022 “Exploring and Contesting the (re)production of coloniality in the Middle East: Borders, Transnationalism, and Resistance”

With calls for ‘decolonising the curriculum’ and wider awareness about colonialism growing inside and outside academia, the next BRISMES conference will tackle these themes head on.

Message for Students Starting University

The new academic year is about to start for most British universities with a new cohort of undergraduate and postgraduate students entering academia. Below is a slightly adapted version of a welcome address I gave last year for new students. Drawing on the experiences of current students and recent graduates (and my own), I offer six tips for students starting university in these uncertain times.

Knowledge, Power, and Race

I was invited to deliver a TEDx talk on 23 February 2021 – you can read the text version below:

“Knowledge is Power”

Most likely everyone has heard of that phrase. But what does it mean exactly? It is the idea that knowing things, or having an education, allows a person to have more control over their life; it is the idea that knowledge opens up doors, and helps you to make more informed, accurate, decisions and choices. It might give you economic power – having an education might pave the way to gaining a job after university; knowledge of what is fair and just might give you moral power; knowledge is also valuable in politics, it can give you power to advocate for or challenge state or corporate policies. ..But what if the knowledge we have is selective, or even inaccurate – how does that affect our ability to address the most pressing issues in society?

One of the reasons why knowledge might be limited and only convey a partial viewpoint is because knowledge is also shaped by power.

Disrupting and undisciplining Middle East Studies

Below is a transcript of my contribution on the plenary roundtable at the 2021 BRISMES conference on 7 July 2021, titled “Disrupting, Refusing and Transgressing Knowledge Production in Middle East Studies”. – I discussed the need to expand what & who we mean by the ‘Middle East’, positionality, and resisting academia’s lionisation of the self.

Analysis | Israel’s occupation and expulsion of Palestinians in Jerusalem violate International Law

Originally Published here in Ceasefire Magazine on Tuesday 11 May 2021

As Palestinian civilians continue to resist Israel’s ongoing military occupation, world governments and media must confront their own complicity in Israel’s persistent violations of international law, writes Jasmine K. Gani.

Ten years on: US and EU positions on the future of Syria

Originally presented at Centre for Syrian Studies Workshop “Ten years on the Syrian Uprising: Road Map to Peace? Challenges and Opportunities” on 2 April 2021 (workshop organiser Ola Rifai)

US Limited Capacity

Up to this point, the United States has lost a lot of its leverage over the Syrian conflict, in part because of what was seen as indecisiveness by the Obama administration regarding intervention, and then the inconsistency and unreliability of the Trump administration. This left Biden with three key factors to consider when he took over the US Presidency – these were:

Call for Contributors: Racialised and Colonial Power Dynamics of Academic-Practitioner Knowledge Exchange

International Affairs 100th Anniversary Special Issue Proposal

Co-editors Jasmine K Gani and Jenna Marshall

Title: Racialised and Colonial Power Dynamics of Academic-Practitioner Knowledge Exchange

Rationale:  

This Special Issue builds on the Journal’s acknowledgement that some of its earlier works “draw on unacceptable assumptions and theories about world politics – not least during the colonial era.” Conventional arguments advanced within its disciplinary knowledge are said to be built on erasures, colonial amnesia, and denials of race and racism. Resultantly, understandings of international affairs continue in the absence of the non-European world, women, “low politics”, and the global economy – this, despite the fact that as a field of study, its earliest debates centered on practitioners’ ruminations on questions of imperial administration.

Call for Papers: “Culture as Decolonial Resistance and Power”

Call for Papers: Culture as Decolonial Resistance and Power

Extended Deadline for Abstracts: 6 July 2020

International Relations (IR) has seen a ‘cultural turn’ in recent years, with scholars paying greater attention to norms, identities, and the ‘soft power’ of states, institutions, and world orders. Aesthetics and art in world politics has also, rightly, grown as a sub-field. While hegemonic cultures and ‘cultural production’ have garnered a lot of interest, non-hegemonic cultures have historically been relegated to the private sphere, exoticised, or misunderstood in IR and related disciplines. Moreover, attempts to mediate the aesthetics of postcolonial diasporas, racialised communities, or the Global South through a hegemonic/colonial gaze are fraught with problems.

Turkey has good reason to be wary of a US withdrawal from Syria

Originally published here in Middle East Eye on 18 January 2019

Rather than fighting a weakened YPG and SDF, Ankara will more likely face a direct conflict with the Syrian regime, drawing Turkish forces ever deeper into Syrian territory. By Jasmine Gani

When the US first announced its withdrawal from Syria, this appeared to signal good news for Turkey, enabling it to directly challenge the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeastern Syria. This apparent advantage for Turkey was underscored by the US approval to potentially sell a $3.5bn Patriot missile system to Turkey, in a bid to counter a Turkish-Russian arms deal.