Decolonization and the decolonized

The new citizen -- The great disillusion -- A paradoxical poverty -- Corruption -- Imposters and potentates -- Tyrants, zealots, and soldiers -- Diversions, excuses, and myths -- A convenient conflict -- The failure of the intellectuals -- Fiction and reality -- Cultural lethargy -- The clerics' plot -- From repression to violence -- A nation born too late -- Nations without law -- A sick society -- Going abroad -- The immigrant -- The blessings of exile -- Failure twice over -- A new refrain -- The ghetto -- Head scarves and metissage -- Humiliation -- From humiliation to resentment -- The solidarity of the vanquished -- Composite identity -- Abandoning the myth of return -- The immigrant's son -- The zombie -- From exclusion to delinquency -- Questioning integration -- Reciprocal dependence -- The languors of Europe -- Hope for the decolonized? -- Toward a new world. In this time of global instability and widespread violence, Albert Memmi—author of the highly influential and groundbreaking work The Colonizer and the Colonized—turns his attention to the present-day situation of formerly colonized peoples. In Decolonization and the Decolonized, Memmi expands his intellectual engagement with the subject and examines the manifold causes of the failure of decolonization efforts throughout the world.As outspoken and controversial as ever, Memmi initiates a much-needed discussion of the ex-colonized and refuses to idealize those who are too often painted as hapless victims. He shows how, in light of a radically changed world, it would be problematic—and even irresponsible—to continue to deploy concepts that were useful and valid during the period of anticolonial struggle.Decolonization and the Decolonized contributes to the most current debates on Islamophobia in France, the “new” anti-Semitism, and the unrelenting poverty gripping the African continent. Memmi, who is Jewish, was born and raised in Tunis, and focuses primarily on what he calls the Arab-Muslim condition, while also incorporating comparisons with South America, Asia, Black Africa, and the United States. In Decolonization and the Decolonized, Memmi has written that rare book—a manifesto informed by intellect and animated by passion—that will propel public analysis of the most urgent global issues to a new level.Albert Memmi is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Paris, Nanterre, and the author of Racism (Minnesota, 1997).Robert Bononno, a teacher and translator, lives in New York City.