Colonização de ontem e imigração de hoje

crítica pós-colonial de Abdelmalek Sayad ao Estado-nação

Abstract

This article examines late sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad’s critical analyses of the nation-state. Produced during the 1980s and 1990s, Sayad’s critique of the nation-state consisted of two major elements: the first was to deconstruct the exclusionary and by extension paradoxical logic of the nation-state; the second was to reveal how colonialism shaped the dynamics of power embedded into the republican system. Sayad’s writings are compared to other socioanalyses of the nation-state produced at the same time in France in order to shed light on the uniqueness and far-reaching nature of Sayad’s critique. His opposition to the nation-state as a socio-political construct was total, and by extension, so was his opposition to French neo-republicanism. The article also suggests that Sayad’s engagement in the debate over immigration and the nation was the product of his long-term anti-colonial intellectual agenda.