Salah M. Hassan

In his text, Salah M. Hassan proposes a new reception of African Marxism, in which he also aims to free Marx from Eurocentrism. During the process of decolonization and the liberation of Africa and other parts of the Third World in the twentieth century-which roughly coincided with the founding of documenta-Marxist ideology became a leading intellectual culture. As examples of the innovative force and creativity of African/Black Marxism, which is relatively ignored by today's research, Hassan brings together texts by two key figures: the political defence speech "By Virtue of Marxism, Your Honor" (1956) by Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub (1927-1971), the founder of the Sudanese Communist Party, who was executed in 1971 with other leading members of the party; and the "Letter to Maurice Thorez" (1956) by Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), the Martinique philosopher, poet, and critic, in which he lays out his reasons for his eventual exit from the French Communist Party.
Salah M. Hassan is Goldwin Smith Professor, Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities, and Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; he is a member of the Honorary Advisory Committee of dOCUMENTA (13).