Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

by Alex Lubin

Overview

In this absorbing transnational history, Alex Lubin reveals the vital connections between African American political thought and the people and nations of the Middle East. Spanning the 1850s through the present, and set against a backdrop of major political and cultural shifts around the world, the book demonstrates how international geopolitics, including the ascendance of liberal internationalism, established the conditions within which blacks imagined their freedom and, conversely, the ways in which various Middle Eastern groups have understood and used the African American freedom struggle to shape their own political movements.

Lubin extends the framework of the black freedom struggle beyond the familiar geographies of the Atlantic world and sheds new light on the linked political, social, and intellectual imaginings of African Americans, Palestinians, Arabs, and Israeli Jews. This history of intellectual exchange, Lubin argues, has forged political connections that extend beyond national and racial boundaries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469612881
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/01/2014
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Alex Lubin is professor and chair of the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Lubin reveals the vital connections between African American political thought and the people and nations of the Middle East. Spanning the 1850s through the present, and set against a backdrop of major political and cultural shifts around the world, the book demonstrates how international geopolitics, including the ascendance of liberal internationalism, established the conditions within which blacks imagined their freedom and, conversely, the ways in which various Middle Eastern groups have understood and used the African American freedom struggle to shape their own political movements.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A fascinating, wide-ranging history . . . Geographies of Liberation traces the complex ways in which the histories of African Americans, Palestinians, and Jews can be seen relationally through shared experiences of exile and exclusion. An important, timely, scrupulously researched and well-written book.” — Malini Johar Schueller, author of U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation and Gender in Literature, 1790-1890 and Locating Race: Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship

“Geographies of Liberation is a revelatory and informative work of intercultural scholarship that demonstrates how African American, Arab, and Jewish political imaginaries cannot be fully thought or understood outside the shared geopolitical context in which they developed across the twentieth century, nor apart from the interdependent, if also conflictual, narratives of race, religion, self-determination, belonging, and exclusion that were forged between them.” — Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy

Editorial Reviews

“Lubin is a politically attuned scholar who avoids didacticism, engages specialists, and can easily draw in the novice.” — Journal of American History

“A fascinating and engaging book.” — American Historical Review

“Lubin has created an engaging, erudite, ironic, and well-historicized account of the intertwined images of peoples united in their political and cultural struggles.” — American Quarterly

From the Publisher