White Ferocity: From Non-Whites to Non-Aryans Concealed Genocides from 1492 to Date

CODESRIA BOOKS

White Ferocity: From Non-Whites to Non-Aryans Concealed Genocides from 1492 to Date. CODESRIA, Dakar, 2020, ISBN : 978-2-86978-723-0

Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe’s book La Férocité blanche: Des non-blancs aux non-aryens, génocides occultés de 1492 à nos jours was first published in March 2001. A German translation was published soon after. CODESRIA is honoured to release the first publication of the book in English. It is indeed our privilege to announce the publication and release by CODESRIA of this English translation which includes a detailed preface and recommendation from the late Samir Amin, CODESRIA’s first Executive Secretary. This book deserves attention today, perhaps more than two decades ago when it was first published.

We are witnessing a reincarnation in the shameless celebration of ‘empire’ in all its manifestations and the resurgence of academics regurgitating already discredited notions of a “balance sheet” approach to imperialism; the reawakening of fascist tendencies and the minimization of fascism to one “exceptional” case of Nazi German and limited to the time of Hitler. There is revisionism in the air and a reading of Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe’s book draws us to the reality of how perverse Nazism and Fascism have been as part of a Western project to dominate the rest of the world. The book reminds us that these tendencies have a long history and the task ahead is how to handle the question of memory and how the production of knowledge will help set records straight and frame the right questions for a proper understanding of the biggest calamities ever to confront humanity.

The publication of the original edition in French was momentous; this English edition coming from an African knowledge producing institution is more momentous and relevant. The 135th anniversary of the Berlin conference that prefaced Africa’s colonial conquest was marked in November 2019. On the other hand, the year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ending of the Second World War, and the ending of the Holocaust. The silences which mark the genocide resulting from colonial conquest and the ‘ noisy’ proclamations of Auschwitz and the holocaust as an exceptional case of genocide in human history, are the contradictions that Rosa Amelia.