War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror

Cosponsored by the NYU Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora.

This talk explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance in Kenya today, asking what a view from East Africa can tell us about the shifting configurations and lived realities of post 9/11 imperial warfare. 

Examining the cultural politics of security, Al-Bulushi illustrates that the Kenyan war against the militant group Al-Shabaab has become a means to produce new imaginaries and subjectivities about Kenya's place in the world. Meanwhile, Kenya's alignment with the U.S. government provides cover for the criminalization and policing of the country's Muslim minority population.
 

Samar Al-Bulushi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. She is the author of War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024). Her analysis on militarism and imperialism in Africa has been featured in The Intercept, Al-Jazeera, Teen Vogue, Jacobin, Africa is a Country and Democracy Now!.