Kate Spowage
@katespowage.bsky.social
Critical interdisciplinary sociolinguist working on the politics of language, capitalism, and colonialism. Shamelessly plugging Language as Statecraft, which thinks about all those things. Lecturer at the University of Leeds. Own views, reposts ≠ agreement
Reposted by Kate Spowage
11. Regaining the freedom we’ve lost is much harder and less likely than defending the freedom we already possess. We must do all we can to stop governments with autocratic tendencies from winning elections and reasserting the old order. Lose it once, and it might be gone forever.
November 7, 2025 at 6:42 AM
11. Regaining the freedom we’ve lost is much harder and less likely than defending the freedom we already possess. We must do all we can to stop governments with autocratic tendencies from winning elections and reasserting the old order. Lose it once, and it might be gone forever.
Naming it for Mitterrand serves a national story that is, at best, fuzzy on the details of colonial and postcolonial politics. But the library is full of decolonial and other counterhegemonic material. There's something about the limits of a toponymic critique there - important though it is.
September 19, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Naming it for Mitterrand serves a national story that is, at best, fuzzy on the details of colonial and postcolonial politics. But the library is full of decolonial and other counterhegemonic material. There's something about the limits of a toponymic critique there - important though it is.
Also, amid some great leftist art on display, the library is named for Président Mitterrand, who allegedly intervened on the side of the Akazu in Rwanda in 1994, probably for geostrategic reasons but supposedly to protect Francophonie in East Africa (bit.ly/BFS76). Strange, multivalent space...
Beyond “Fashoda Syndrome”: The Rwandan Civil War and the Politics of La Francophonie in Africa
This article uses a case study to interrogate the politics of French in Africa. It examines French involvement in the Rwandan Civil War (1990–1994), and argues that by conceptualising institutions ...
bit.ly
September 19, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Also, amid some great leftist art on display, the library is named for Président Mitterrand, who allegedly intervened on the side of the Akazu in Rwanda in 1994, probably for geostrategic reasons but supposedly to protect Francophonie in East Africa (bit.ly/BFS76). Strange, multivalent space...
They also have this genuinely excellent rendering of intellectual labour and it's subsumption to capital (but maybe now I am overdetermining things) 🤙 #CognitiveCapitalism
September 19, 2025 at 9:45 AM
They also have this genuinely excellent rendering of intellectual labour and it's subsumption to capital (but maybe now I am overdetermining things) 🤙 #CognitiveCapitalism
If the fact that something is at the heart of government rhetoric means it should be a funding priority, future governments might well put anti-immigration, anti-lgbt, anti-green research on the agenda. Look at the history of racial science. Research priorities should be independent of government.
August 29, 2025 at 6:29 AM
If the fact that something is at the heart of government rhetoric means it should be a funding priority, future governments might well put anti-immigration, anti-lgbt, anti-green research on the agenda. Look at the history of racial science. Research priorities should be independent of government.