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This paper focuses on the ambiguous, contradictory and montaged space of Dimbaza in the former Ciskei bantustan of the Eastern Cape, figured simultaneously as homeland resettlement village, betterment rural township, decentralised industrialisation showcase, site of political banishment, international symbol of apartheid difference and as graveyard of the racially discarded, among others. Drawing on empire as the dependent space to command sovereignty, the paper considers Dimbaza in terms of South African empire. While it is suggested that as a means to re-figure the South African political, the bantustan may be read as a mark of a South African empire ‘project’, the paper is more concerned to ‘think with empire as a theoretical concept’. The paper draws on the elements of knowledge susceptible to being assembled by historical imagination – written documents, letters in the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) Collection, contemporary testimonies, and visual sources (including the important film documentary Last Grave at Dimbaza) – and which constitute or resist the native/racial/ethnic/African subject (and thus are seen to exemplify the racial spatial command of the sovereign). We assemble these in relation to seemingly antagonistic historical formulations, particularly ‘colonialism of a special type’ and the politics of exile and liberation. We propose that, rather than returning us to South African ‘empire’ as a totality, the term offers us multiple singularities that allow us to consider the imaginative formulation of the ‘empire of liberation’ as a dependent space that continues to command sovereignty within the ‘native question’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the public debate that happened among Delhi's Sikh community following the formation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh. The detail of this debate was expressed in the early eighteenth century Sikh text, Sri Gur Sobha. The Sri Gur Sobha explains how Delhi's Sikhs became divided into pro-Khalsa and anti-Khalsa factions, and how this conflict resulted in a campaign of persecution against Delhi's Khalsa Sikhs. In this paper I endeavour to analyse exactly why this dispute occurred and how it reflects wider political and socio-economic processes in early modern India and Sikh society. In addition, the paper will explore how the elite Khatri community consequently became an object of hatred in eighteenth century Khalsa Sikh literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines African critical views on empires in the early 20th century. Historians regard modern African challenges to empire and the settler state in South(ern) Africa as a post-Second World War phenomenon; before then, entrenched empire loyalism among black elites held sway. I argue that while loyalism remained influential, black intellectuals and political leaders, from the earliest articulation of African nationalism, began to critique European and South African empires qua empire just as they first began to synchronise their forces across the terrain of a South African state aggressively developing imperial ambitions. In this counter-discourse, Africans adapted, inverted and subverted polite imperial discourse in their press, speeches and praise poetry that eulogised past African empires and criticised, even condemned, Boer and British imperialism. British Empire, South African empire, African empire; all this requires a re-figuring of how historians conceive African response to empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renowned Egyptian journalist and commentator Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (b. 1923) is arguably the doyen of Arab writers critical of the United States. Heikal's career as an author spans more than half a century and his access to regional and international audiences has been greatly enhanced in recent years by his regular appearances on the al-Jazeera television station. Drawing on Heikal's extensive published work, this paper offers a detailed treatment of his views on US politics, society and especially foreign policy in order to highlight the elements constituting the image of the United States that he projects. The article argues that Heikal’'s critical representation of the United States has been central to the discourse of Arab nationalists since the late 1950s and their reconstruction of Arab nationalist ideology along anti-American lines. It further argues that Arab nationalists and Islamists subscribe to essentially the same critical reading of the United States and its foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East. Because intellectuals help shape public opinion, this convergence of views between nationalists and Islamists represents a principal source of the negative image of the United States among Arab publics. Understanding the discourse of Arab intellectuals is thus instrumental for comprehending Arab views of the United States. The Arab Spring, with its tribulations and promises of change, brings an urgent need to properly understand and contextualize the discourse of Arab intellectuals, both nationalists and Islamists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the ways in which new immigrants to South Korea are portrayed and constructed in press media. The influx of labour and marriage migrants from Southeast Asia and China to South Korea since the early 1990s has been significant enough to cause national concerns about diversity and the country's future as a multiethnic society. Mainstream newspapers in South Korea have been a major shaper of the public opinion of diverse groups of immigrants whose presence is becoming increasingly visible in this country with a strong self-image as a mono-ethnic nation. The ways in which these new immigrants, typically lower class, are constructed in public discourses expose the nexus of citizenship, class and ethnicity. Using articles from two major South Korean newspapers between 1990 and 2008 as data, the analysis highlights the economic and historical contexts in which public discourses on new immigrants have been formed and transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By problematizing the relationship between geopolitics and foreign policy, this paper investigates the discursive assumptions of two different geopolitical visions of Turkish foreign policy. It seeks to explain how different political actors spatialize Turkey's geography and represent it as having a “different,” “exceptional,” and “unique” geopolitical position in the international system in order to justify foreign policy. By investigating how geopolitical representations produced in each of the different geopolitical vision serve to enable, restrict, and rationalize a different set of role choices for Turkey in the international system, the article is aiming to provide a critical geopolitical perspective in order to understand the discursive transformation of the geopolitical vision in the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rather than discourse this article argues that the challenge facing anti-racist scholars is to grasp the visceral, atavistic nature of the differential social imaginaries and deep-seated psychological fears of difference and sameness that constitute contemporary racisms and their historical mutations. Is it the case, as Said argued, that essentialized, contrastive racist constructions of Islam and Judaism persist over many centuries or is it possible that current affairs – globally transmitted violent encounters such as 9/11 or the Gaza Cast Lead operation – can transform racist imaginaries about the essential and unchanging nature of protagonists, Jewish and Muslims, and in doing so, unconsciously reverse earlier stereotypes? Depicting three paradigmatic racist folk devils, the paper examines the particular conundrums associated with anti-Zionism and its equation with the ‘new’ anti-Semitism. It concludes by exploring the implications of self-critique in seeking peace between Muslims and Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]