Global Citizens and Sudanese Subjects: Reading Mamdani’s Saviours and Survivors

摘要

MAHMOODMAMDANI’S NEW BOOK, Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, politics,nand the War on Terror1 follows the recent flurry of popular and academic attentionngiven to the politics of the Sudan–Darfur conflict2 and has generatedna substantial reaction. Criticisms of the book aired during recent televisedndiscussions3 have ranged from accusations that the author is a stooge of thenSudanese regime to condemnations of the book’s failure to evoke the tragicnsuffering of Darfurians (a feat achieved eloquently elsewhere).4 Mamdani’snbook has been criticized for exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Darfurnin order to perpetuate an obsolete, anti-colonial, anti-imperial and anti-nWestern agenda. It was in this vein that Nicholas Kristof recently describednSaviours and Survivors’ tone as ‘dyspeptic’.5 While this level of hostilityncan be understood given the controversial nature of the topic, it does not