Probing in its diagnosis, creative in its constructive spirit, against the alternative of mass extinction, Fourlas offers historical, mythic, and philosophical resources to forge anti-colonial solidarities that are as necessary as they are potentially far-reaching. Illuminating the nature of Middle Eastern racialization and the internalized Orientalism of insular MENA micro-communal, racialized-nationalist commitments, the book portrays a future that must be deliberately and tirelessly built through processes of relearning that center the renovation of reconciliatory practices indigenous to the between space of the Afro-Euro-Asian MENA region prior to its MENAfication. The “Decolonizing the Ancients” chapter is a must-read for all scholars of the history of ideas. I hope it will be taught and reprinted widely!
— Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement
In Anti-Colonial Solidarity, George Fourlas seeks a way out of the morass that is our enduring colonial, racist, and Orientalist present. What he discovers is that real human freedom—the only kind that’s worth imagining and striving for—will never be found in call-out culture, in narrow nationalisms, or in appeals to the state for equality. Possibilities for real freedom, as Middle Eastern and North African peoples know only too well, can only be created when we work for justice with all of our selves and with each of our others.
— Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America
Philosophy of race has been expanding beyond black-white relations in novel ways. Fourlas’ book is a compelling example in its sophisticated treatment of the sociopolitical condition and identities of MENA peoples. In making his case, Fourlas unsettles many conceptual habits by centralizing anticolonial solidarity, not just intranational concerns, prioritizing the concept of reconciliation, not merely justice, and reconceptualizing, not just “provincializing,” Europe.
— David H. Kim, University of San Francisco