In this innovative and exciting book, Paige Arthur recasts the story of twentiethcentury intellectual life by retrieving its global contexts and shattering convenient myths... Sartre's anticolonialism proves in Arthur's sophisticated rendition far richer and more complex than snide dismissals of his 'totalitarian' impulses have allowed.
- Samuel Moyn, Columbia University,
Arthur's insightful and careful exposition of Sartre's anti-colonial trajectory from 1945 constitutes a powerful corrective to revisionist interpretation of his 'Third Worldism.'
Times Literary Supplement
In this fine book Paige Arthur systematically examines from a fresh perspective a second political engagement of Sartre's: as a critic of colonialism and neo-colonialism and as a supporter of Third World liberation struggles.
- Joseph G. Peschek, New Political Science
Closely following the postwar movements for decolonization, and then supporting the war of independence in Algeria, Sartre proposed an influential and uncompromising view of imperialism. Analyzing the Western attitude to the 'subhuman' colonial subject, he offered an account of the social constraints that applied to both ruler and ruled, and came to argue that political violence-on both sides-was a systematic consequence of the colonial order. Arthur's rich and nuanced book locates Sartre within the political discussions of his time, whilst also looking forward to contemporary debates about new forms of imperialism and resistance.