Race, Rights and Rebels

Reviews / Votes

Race, Rights and Rebels is a tour de force in decolonial studies. It unmasks imperial reason and bad faith hidden within modernist tropes of human rights and development and reveals how these celebrated discourses sustain the modernist death project. With this work, Suarez-Krabbe establishes herself as one of the most consistent and compelling advocates of decolonial historical realism's 'good faith' and a decolonial humanist fighting for genuine pluriversalism. I have nothing but praise and admiration for this theoretically sophisticated and excellent work. -- Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, author of "The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life" (2016) and "Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization" (2018) In this beautifully written book, Suarez-Krabbe incisively critiques the colonial genealogies of human rights and development. But she does more. By carefully working with indigenous traditions of the Columbian Caribbean, Suarez-Krabbe considers ways of being and knowing that address differently the seminal problems of the colonial "death project", as termed by the Nasa people. The book is ethically engaged, deeply challenging, and therefore a must-read for scholars of human rights, development and beyond. -- Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary University of London, Reader in International Relations This book is a brilliant exercise in decolonizing the social sciences. It takes off from what has already been accomplished by decolonial scholarship to move forward into more innovative and uncharted territories. Julia Suarez-Krabbe takes as her intellectual and existential guides the sages of indigenous peoples from Colombia. This is a path-breaking book on a decolonial vision and analysis of mestizaje, the best I have read in years. It is self-reflective to such a point that its lucidity is as illuminating as it is disturbing. -- Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Wisconsin-Madison