The Dissenter's Library: Some Suggested Readings

Prepared by Vinay Lal (2005)

Here is a very short list of some books, mainly by writers and thinkers from the South, which are sharply critical of modern knowledge frameworks, offer a radically different account of modernity, are important landmarks of anti-colonialism, or are important works in contemporary world literature. This is very much a personal list and not even remotely exhaustive; some of the omissions, particularly of scholars from the Euro-American sphere, are obvious. Every effort has been made to include works that derive from different 'disciplines', blur genres, and speak to a wide array of concerns. The original date of publication is given, not of the English translation.

Aime Cesaire (Martinique), Discourse on Colonialism (1955)

Ali Shariati (Iran), Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique (1980)

Amitav Ghosh (India), In an Antique Land (1992)

Ashis Nandy (India), The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (1982), The Romance of the Tropics and the Fate of Dissent in the Tropics (2003)

Ashis Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity (1988)

C L R James (Trinidad/UK), The Black Jacobins (1938) and Beyond a Boundary (1963)

Claude Alvares (India), Science, Development and Violence (1992)

C. Douglas Lummis (Japan/US), Radical Democracy (1996)

Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), Memory of Fire (3 vols., 1980)

Frantz Fanon (Martinique/Algeria), Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Frederique Apffel-Marglin (ed.), The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development (1998)

Gustavo Esteva (Mexico), Escaping Education: Living as Learning at the Grassroots (1998)

Ivan Illich (Mexico), Deschooling Society (1971), Toward a History of Needs (1977), and Shadow Work (1981)

James Baldwin (US; African-American), The Fire Next Time (1963)

Janet Abu-Lughod (Egypt/US), Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (1989)

Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Glimpses of World History (1934)

Jit Singh Uberoi (India), Science and Culture (1978)

K. M. Panikkar (India), Asia and Western Dominance (1959)

Keri Hulme (Maori), The Bone People (1985)

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Maori) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999)

Majid Rahnema (ed.) (Iran/France), The Post-Development Reader (1997)

Mohandas K. Gandhi (India), Hind Swaraj (1909) and Autobiography (1925)

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya), Decolonising the Mind (1986)

Nuruddin Farah (Sudan), Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (3 vols): Sweet & Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983)

Paulo Freire (Brazil), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia), The Buru Quartet (4 vols): This Earth of Mankind (1980), Child of All Nations (1980), Footsteps (1985), and House of Glass (1988)

Sandra Harding (US), The 'Racial' Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future (1993)

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Mexico), Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings (2001)

Vinay Lal (India/US) and Ashis Nandy (eds.), The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for the 21st Century (2005)

Walter Rodney (Guyana), A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (1981)

Wolfgang Sachs (ed.) (Germany), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power (1992)

Ziauddin Sardar (Pakistan/UK), Ashis Nandy, and Merryl Wyn Davies (Wales), Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism (1993)