"Sublimated Colonialism" (PDF download and shameless self-promotion)

Although some of my faithful readers have asked to read parts of my doctoral dissertation (which was completed and defended in 2010), I have generally refused to comply.  For one thing, by the time I finished my dissertation my politics had slightly shifted towards a clearer understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and so, though I was still committed to many of the conclusions of the thesis [which was a philosophical engagement with anti-colonial theory], as well as the maoist and semi-maoist theory I used, in retrospect I feel as if I was often coming to the correct answers by way of the wrong questions.  For another thing, since I am a struggling academic part of what I sell as [admittedly privileged] labour are my ideas and, also being somewhat paranoid, worry about plagiarism––that is someone taking something I struggled to write and profiting off it, a common horror story in academia.  Moreover, since I submitted my dissertation to an academic press several months back and am still waiting to hear if it has been either accepted or rejected, I didn't want to start sending parts of it out to random individuals.

But now a section of the second chapter of my thesis (that I turned into a standalone paper to present at Historical Materialism 2011 in London) has been published by a small peer-reviewed journal, Philosophy Study.  And since Philosophy Study publishes its papers in both dead tree and electronic format, and since it allows open access to its content, this window into my doctoral dissertation can be downloaded as a PDF by anyone who is interested.

Since I am being paid nothing for this paper, this is also an excuse to shamelessly remind readers that they can donate to MLM Mayhem by clicking on the paypal link in the donations page.  In any case, for those who have time to read my long journal article I hope you find it enjoyable.