SOAS Research Online

Abstract

We are in a moment of profound overlapping crises. The landscape of politics and entitlement is being rapidly remade. As movements against colonial legacies and state violence coincide with the rise of authoritarian regimes, it is the lens of racism, and the politics of race, that offers the sharpest focus. In Empire's Endgame, eight leading scholars make a powerful intervention in debates around racial capitalism and political crisis in Britain. While the 'hostile environment' policy and Brexit referendum have thrown the centrality of race into sharp relief, discussions of racism have too often focused on individual behaviours. Foregrounding instead the wider political and economic context, the authors trace the ways in which the legacies of empire have been reshaped by global capitalism, the digital environment and the instability of the nation-state. Engaging with movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, Empire's Endgame offers both an original perspective on race, media, the state and criminalisation, and a political vision that includes rather than expels in the face of crisis.