On the 2nd of August 2020, General Shams al-Din al-Kabashi of Sudan’s transitional Sovereign Council was the victim of a series of verbal racial attacks. As protestors grew weary from the slow-paced reforms of the transitional Sovereign Council, they expressed their discontent by hurling racial slurs at him for his failure to deliver on his promised reforms and dismantle the regime of the ousted president Omar al-Bashir. The protestors’ racism banked on Shams’ al-Din’s roots and his darker skin as someone who came from the Southern Nubian mountain region as opposed to the lighter skinned citizens of the North. This presents a curious paradox whereby revolutionary activism in the Arab world today becomes imbricated with latent, and sometimes explicit, racism. 

Today’s racial tensions have been often interpreted as the legacy of the long history of arabization of some segments of Sudan’s population as well as its role in providing slaves for the rulers of Cairo. But is the image of the Bilad al-Sudan borderland as merely a racialized zone operative today? Gubara has challenged us to reconceptualize racial difference as one that is not timeless but informed by the intersection of profession, geography and power. To borrow from her: “The most insightful interventions have looked with suspicion upon the universalist aspirations of the term slavery itself, seeking to detach it, primarily, from its connection to the concepts of race, on the one hand, and freedom on the other.” Mamdani has also challenged the idea that ‘Islamic Slavery’ was a reproduction of Atlantic slavery. These interventions can inform how we conceive of our present racialized moment.

Borderlines seeks thoughtful and innovative contributions that help us rethink the historical construction and transformation of racial difference in Sudan, its entanglement with other axes of social, economic, and cultural politics and its contemporary manifestations and implications. We are particularly interested in studies that take on a transregional focus connecting Ottoman, Arab-Afro and trans-Saharan African borderlands, and that engage with recent debates situated at the intersection of African and Middle Eastern Studies. Works on contemporary as well as historical phenomena and developments tied to questions of slavery, revolution, and artistic production are particularly welcomed. We are also interested in publishing translations of literary texts that engage with cinema and art as well as studies of primary-sources that interrogate the vicissitudes and production of racial difference in the borderland region of Bilad al-Sudan and beyond.

—

Please send 400 word pitches to journalborderlines@gmail.com with the subject: Bilad al-Sudan

Pitches should not exceed 400 words. We accept essays, translations, academic book reviews, interviews, and are open for other formats that adequately address the topic. For examples, please consult the borderlines website and archive. Contributions should not exceed 3000 words.