The afikra Podcast The afikra عفكرة Channel

The history of North Africa is infinitely complex and barbed with post-colonial tensions. In this conversation, Professor Brahim El Guabli helps to shed light on this region's history through an Amazigh lens. He tells us about the violence of the word "Berber", Morocco's Years of Lead, and qualifying French as a colonial language or not. The episode touches on the Jewish population of Morocco, searching for "other archives" in which absent histories can be found and engaged with, and how to decolonize one's own mind and self through research.

Life as a human rights attorney in Egypt. Tahrir Square in 2011. How protests transforms into revolutions. It's all in this episode of the afikra podcast with professor Atif Said from the University of Illinois Chicago. He talks about rule of Law, liberalism, and what revolutions really mean in the Arab world, challenging its common definitions in reference to (de)coloniality, and offering an understanding that sees "revolution" as a coming together of dreams and reality. Atif also speaks about the symbolism that Tahrir Square gained as a site of revolution, life, death and spectacle versus the realities on the ground. Finally, he touches on the role that digital technologies have in shaping society, advocacy and repression and what the future of revolution might look like.

Architect, researcher, and associate professor at Zayed University, Roberto Fabbri, joined us on the afikra podcast to talk about Kuwait’s architectural transformation between 1949 and 1989 which he co-wrote a book about (with Sara Saragoça Soares and Ricardo Camacho) titled “Modern Architecture Kuwait 1949 - 1989”. In this deep dive into Kuwait’s architecture, Roberto contrasts “old Kuwait” and “new Kuwait”, maps out the modernist period in its context, and highlights the role of consumerism and obsolescence in how cities in the Gulf are understood. He points to a “cycle of demolition” for why cities such as Kuwait are unable to stratify or become preserved build environments that capture the memories of its inhabitants. Finally, we discuss the environmental impact of demolition and what we can learn from the story of Kuwait.

In this episode of the afikra podcast, Professor Michael Christoper Low – director of the Middle East Center at The University of Utah – explains how Mecca and its burgeoning influx of pilgrims from around the world — transported by the recently invented steamships — became ground zero for cholera. He maps out how this situated the Hejaz within broader colonial interests. We reflect on perceptions and understandings of Mecca — placing it in a "trans-imperial" space — and Michael underscores that to understand the Arabian Peninsula we need to go beyond studying the Middle East and include the Indian Ocean and British Empire.

In this Ehkili episode with Zahra Hankir we discuss her book "Eyeliner: A Cultural History", the cultural significance of eyeliner, and the process of putting together an intersectional and cross-cultural study of its history. Zahra highlights eyeliner’s role as a cultural artifact, its use for protective, aesthetic and religious purposes, and how her book tries to decolonize the misunderstandings of the Arab world by centering its cultures and histories. We also touch on cultural preservation and erasure, particularly in the context of what is happening in Palestine.

M'hamed Oualdi – professor of history at Paris' Sciences Po University – joins us on the afikra podcast to delve into the often obscured and forgotten history of slavery in North Africa. Starting with his book "A Slave Between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa", he talks about why there's a pointed absence of awareness around the Arab world's own history of slavery, and details the history of slavery in Mamluk Tunisia and Egypt, the role of nationalism in erasing this period, and the position of anti-black racism in fueling the North African trade.