What do struggles over pipelines in Canada, housing estates in France, and shantytowns in Martinique have in common? In Urban Revolutions, Stefan Kipfer shows how these struggles force us to understand the (neo-)colonial aspects of capitalist urbanization in a comparatively and historically nuanced fashion. In so doing, he demonstrates that urban research can offer a rich, if uneven, terrain upon which to develop the relationship between Marxist and anti-colonial intellectual traditions. After a detailed dialogue between Henri Lefebvre and Frantz Fanon, Kipfer engages creole literature in the French Antilles, Indigenous radicalism in North America and political anti-racism in mainland France.
Publication date: September 8, 2023
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Marxism, Anti-Colonialism and Urban Research
1 Beyond Metaphor: Henri Lefebvre and ‘Colonisation’
2 Times and Spaces of Liberation: Frantz Fanon on (De)Colonisation
3 Creolising the Urban Revolution? Texaco and Literary Imaginaries in Martinique
4 Is this Pipeline Urban? Indigenous Resurgence and Extended Urbanisation in Canada
5 Mixing It Up: Demolition and Counter-Revolution in Greater Paris
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
“Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-) Colonialism in Transatlantic Context is the culmination of the anti-colonial, historical-geographical materialist scholarship that Stefan Kipfer has developed over many years. The book examines how Marxist and revolutionary anti-colonial currents can be fused and brought to bear on urban problematics, starting with Henri Lefebvre and Frantz Fanon. What Kipfer terms the 'Lefebvre–Fanon lineage' is then brought into different time–space contexts, where it meets ideas and praxes developed by subalterns in their respective struggles against (neo-) colonial capitalism. In an intellectual voyage that traverses Algeria, the Antilles, France and Canada, Kipfer pieces together a wide range of intellectual currents with an admirable depth and mastery.”
—Prof. Laam Hae, Urban Studies Journal
“The force of Kipfer's tour is evident [...] above all in its revolutionary breadth.”
—Giovanni Picker, Ethnic and Racial Studies