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- Convenors:
-
Silvia Bruzzi
(University of Naples L'Orientale)
Giulia Daniele (Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon)
Nicola Melis (University of Cagliari, Sardinia)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Disciplinary streams:
- History
Short Abstract
This panel explores the historical links between decolonisation movements in Africa and the struggle for liberation of Palestine. it suggests an Afro-centred lens on Palestine as analytical prism to trace the historical roots of African leading role in transnational solidarity movements.
Long Abstract
This panel explores connections between African decolonisation movements and Palestinian liberation, analysing transnational solidarity through an Afro-centred lens. Grounded in African epistemologies, we examine how these struggles were mutually shaped through literary, political, and intellectual exchanges.
Our panel is structured around three thematic clusters. First, we explore the entangled histories of Africa and Palestine by tracing genealogies of legal concepts condemning colonial violence—genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism. The Herero-Nama extermination (1904–1908) set a precedent for racialised mass violence; recently, Namibia's ICJ condemnation of Germany's intervention on Israel's behalf in the Gaza case reveals how African nations leverage their colonial histories to challenge impunity and inspire solidarity. We examine how these categories travel across time and space.
Second, we examine 'horizontal solidarity' networks linking African intellectuals and anticolonial activists to Palestine, and how these ties bolstered African liberation struggles—from anti-apartheid resistance to Portuguese decolonisation and the Algerian war and beyond.
Third, we apply Mbembe's notion of necropolitics to trace the historical trajectory of African colonial spaces and Palestine as enduring imperial laboratories.
This panel will address the following interrelated questions: How and when did the histories and narratives of the anti-colonial struggles of Africans and Palestinians intersect and interact? What processes and spaces enabled African intellectuals to establish these anti-colonial solidarity networks? And how did culture shape and sustain transnational solidarity between Africa and Palestine?