Red Africa: Reclaiming Revolutionary Black Politics

In this rigorous debut, political theorist Okoth revisits the philosophies of mid-20th-century African revolutionaries. Pointing out that the 2020 murder of George Floyd led large numbers of radicals in Africa and the U.S. to work together for the first time in decades, Okoth highlights how the internationalist politics of such figures as Eduardo Mondlane, who marshalled global support for the decolonization of Mozambique, would be useful touchstones today. Okoth traces the political movements developed by these thinkers—Third Worldism and Pan-Africanism, both characterized by internationalism and cross-cultural solidarity—from the 1930s and ’40s through the pivotal 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Indonesia (also known at the Bandung Conference), the blow dealt to internationalism by the U.S.-backed 1973 coup d’etat against Salvador Allende in Chile, and the “second wave of African socialism” that emerged in the 1980s. Throughout, Okoth seeks to ward off the worst excesses of what he diagnoses as “Afro-pessimism 2.0” (a riff on the work of philosopher Frank B. Wilderson III), a rival strain of thought that assumes Black people will always be de facto barred from fully participating in politics. This stirring work of applied philosophy echoes the unprecedented optimism felt by its subjects. Activists and readers interested in leftist political history will be enthralled. (Oct.)