Leaps and Pages: North Africa’s Periodicals of Decolonization from the 1960s and 70s.

In this talk, Idriss Jebari examines the intellectual history of North Africa during a transformative period marked by the struggle for decolonization. Drawing from a rich tapestry of periodicals and critical essays published from the 1960s and 70s, he explains how these documents offer traces of the region’s connections to other struggles around the Global South, and how its thinkers sought to define its path toward decolonization from French colonial legacies. The talk addresses the ideas, people, and publishing infrastructure involved in this historical episode. It also asks; what does it mean to recuperate and reactivate these periodicals today.

Idriss Jebari is a Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin and a historian of Arab thought and North African socio-cultural history. His book: Leaping Decolonization: North Africa in the Global Sixties and Seventies is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.