For the anti-colonial leader, poet, and agronomist Amílcar Cabral, the long and difficult campaigns for liberation on the part of Portugal’s imperial subjects in Africa showed that emancipatory struggles—like those in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé—must grapple with how to avoid the risks of hollow sovereignty. The solution, for Cabral, was a principled study of reality and a theory of revolutionary change so thoroughly integrated with practice that the two became inseparable. In this way, Cabral’s work speaks to enduring problems of revolutionary politics: how theory can guide action without hardening into dogma; how intellectuals relate to mass movements without substituting themselves for them; how culture can function as a material force of resistance rather than a static marker; how national unity can be forged without erasing internal social contradictions; how movements can pursue liberation without reproducing new forms of domination. Revisiting Cabral today allows us to reassess what it takes to build durable, emancipatory political projects under conditions of imperial and neocolonial power. What can we learn from his insistence that liberation is not a slogan but a method grounded in the unity of thought and action?
In this course, we will examine Amílcar Cabral’s theoretical contributions and practical leadership in anticolonial and national liberation movements in the mid-to-late 20th century. We’ll consider Cabral’s analysis of the pace of historical processes, development, and neocolonialism, and his proposals on strategy, organization, and armed struggle. We’ll wrap up by discussing how Cabral sees class formation under colonialism and neocolonialism, with a particular focus on the role of intellectuals, “class suicide,” and warnings about pseudo-independence. Throughout, we’ll ask: How did Portuguese colonialism and early experiences of independence shape Cabral’s analysis? To what extent does this analysis challenge Marxist orthodoxy? What made the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde) distinctive among liberation movements? How does Cabral rethink class in colonized societies, and how does he anticipate processes akin to elite capture? We’ll read from Cabral’s lectures and speeches, and additional readings will draw from the work of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Kwame Nkrumah, Aimé Césaire, Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Senghor, Ernesto Che Guevara, Cedric Robinson, Paulo Freire, Robert J. Young, Adom Getachew, among others.
