Good Muslim, Bad Muslim von Mahmood Mamdani

Faces masked, dressed in black, and forcefully attacking the symbols of capitalism, Black Blocs have been transformed into an anti-globalization media spectacle. But the popular image of the window-smashing thug hides a complex reality.

Francis Dupuis-Déri outlines the origin of this international phenomenon, its dynamics, and its goals, arguing that the use of violence always takes place in an ethical and strategic context.

Translated into English for the first time and completely revised and updated to include the most recent Black Bloc actions at protests in Greece, Germany, Canada, and England, and the Bloc's role in the Occupy movement and the Quebec student strike, Who's Afraid of the Black Blocs? lays out a comprehensive view of the Black Bloc tactic and locates it within the anarchist tradition of direct action.

This book highlights the convergences of the 'anti-colonial' and the 'decolonial', arguing that the anti-colonial is a path to follow to reach a decolonial end. We examine decolonial and anti-colonial futurities through counter-hegemonic knowledge practice. In seeking to reframe the anti-colonial praxis, the book takes up theory and knowledge as weapons of change with an insistence that there is a place for the intellectual warrior in combat on the academic landscape. The book also insists on a theorization of the anti-colonial in ways that do not conflate race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, colonialism and capitalism, but rather, emphasizes a more sophisticated analysis of intersections while maintaining a gaze on the 'colonial dominant'.


This is a compelling collection of insightful essays about the vicious pervasiveness of colonialism, but also about the persistent and creative resistance to colonialism. This gives us much hope that this ugly beast will finally be tamed and neutralized so that the world's wretched can begin or continue healing.
Ama Mazama, Professor of Africology, Temple University, Canada


Situating anti-colonial theory, pedagogy and praxis as a pathway to realize the goal of decolonization, contributors to this project provide diverse interventions that push forward this important groundwork. At a time where the destructive legacies of colonialism and racism are felt globally, this timely collection attends to these challenges and offers ways to imagine alternative futures.
Jasmin Zine, Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada


Theorizing the 'Anti-Colonial' presents a rigorous and thoughtful examination of the multiple forms of violence of colonialism, issuing a powerful call to interrupt colonial practices and investments that sustain this violence today. The book invites readers to confront harmful geographies and practices of colonialism and to build anti-colonial relational responsibilities that can resist the colonial economies in everyday life.
Vanessa Andreotti, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada