How to Liberate Marx from His Eurocentrism: Notes on African/Black Marxism

<p>When approached about the idea of contributing to dOCUMENTA (13)’s notebook series, I proposed to its Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the idea of focusing on African Marxism. I thought it would be interesting as a way of liberating Marx from his Eurocentrism. I also thought it would be relevant to dOCUMENTA (13) because it revisits the exhibition’s founding years, which coincided with decolonization in Africa and other parts of the Third World, and with corollary landmark events that shifted world politics and created a new international order.</p> <p>Among these events was the 1955 Bandung conference in Indonesia, where non-aligned and newly independent nations from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East met and defiantly declared an independent course at the climax of the Cold War. Bandung remains an incomplete project, but as an event it certainly signaled the potential of ending Western hegemony, and the possibility of a more pluralistic world. Extending such potential to the domain of knowledge production allows us to think of modernity and modern thought as more than just a post-Enlightenment Western project. This made possible the critique of Western modernity and facilitated the move toward less Eurocentric modes of thinking in the humanities and social sciences within and outside the academy. Today, it is impossible to think about the mid-twentieth century and decolonization without remembering gatherings such as the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in 1956 in Paris or the Second Congress in 1959 in Rome. Organized by the Paris-based quarterly Présence Africaine, these two meetings hosted discussions of issues ranging from decolonization to slavery and signaled the rise of new schools of thought and movements such as Négritude, Pan-Africanism, and African Socialism…</p>