TROUBLEMAKERS28 Touko 2025

Ep30: Postcolonialism with Somdeep Sen

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.” — Frantz Fanon

What does liberation mean when the very language of freedom is shaped by empire?

In this episode, we speak with Somdeep Sen, political scientist and author of Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas Between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial, about what it means to struggle for freedom in a postcolonial world. Drawing from personal experience and deep theoretical work, Sen challenges the universalist narratives of human rights, democracy, and justice that often underpin activist discourse.

We ask hard questions:

Can we be liberated within systems that define what liberation should look like?
What happens when activism reuses the same symbolic frameworks as the powers it resists?
How can we hear subaltern voices outside the scripts we've written for them?

Postcolonial theory complicates easy binaries of oppressor and oppressed. It insists that resistance must also question its own assumptions, ideologies, and categories. It urges us to find what Homi Bhabha calls the “third space” — an ambiguous, non-deterministic zone where new forms of struggle, identity, and solidarity can emerge.

Sen challenges us to move beyond performative politics and imagine a liberation that is not defined by the coloniser’s table, but by shared values, radical imagination, and transnational solidarity.

Resources & Show Links:

Decolonizing Palestine – by Somdeep Sen (Book)
Beautiful Trouble Toolbox - Postcolonialism

Host: Phil Wilmot Guest: Somdeep Sen Producer & Audio Production: Rodgers George Intro/Outro Jingles: Mwaduga Salum & Beautiful Trouble

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(72)

Ep 53: No One Is Coming to Save You, with Nalishebo Sinyama

What makes someone walk to the utility company with a placard instead of posting complaints online? Nalishebo Sinyama has been answering that since 2019, when a load shedding protest in her Lusaka sub...

7 Elo 42min

TM Smoke Signals: Silence! A poem by Sylvie Baziga

TM Smoke Signals: Silence, by Sylvie Baziga A spoken word piece by Sylvie Baziga on the slow deaths that leave no bullet holes: the swallowed cry, the smothered dream, the word never spoken because sp...

24 Heinä 2min

Ep52: The Moral Political Economy, with Joe Kobuthi

Host: Thompson Luzendi (Zambia) Guest: Joe Kobuthi - philosopher, public theologian, political analyst, and curator of The Elephant Pan-African magazine. The rules of the house were written by someone...

17 Heinä 32min

TM Smoke Signals: From Protest to Power, with Boniface Mwangi

Human rights defender, activist, and presidential candidate for the Republic of Kenya, Boniface Mwangi joins Smoke Signals for a direct, unfiltered conversation on what it will actually take for Kenya...

10 Heinä 11min

TM Smoke Signals: Même Bêtise, by Frank Amani

A spoken word piece by Frank Amani on the cycles we inherit and refuse to break. Same Stupidity confronts the ways human beings repeat patterns across generations, dressing up the same vicious circle ...

3 Heinä 4min

Troublemakers Ep51: Put your target in a decision dilemma, with Willy Nkya

Guest: Wilson (Willynkya), film & TV producer, content creator, and influencer based in Tanzania Rodgers sits down with Willynkya to unpack "Put Your Target in a Decision Dilemma" (Andrew Boyd & Joshu...

26 Kesä 38min

TM Smoke Signals: Africa will be saved: A poem by Opolot Emmanuel Solomon

In this powerful spoken-word piece, poet Opolot Emmanuel Solomon paints a vision of an Africa that has moved beyond division, dependency, conflict, and limitation. Through repetition, imagination, and...

19 Kesä 2min

Ep 50: The Stop EACOP Project with Ziada

What does “development” really mean—and who is forced to pay for it? Meet the Guest Ziada is a climate and gender justice advocate working at the frontlines of renewable energy and community resistanc...

15 Touko 25min