A Time to Kill: Third World Assassinations and the Anxiety of Domination

The decades between 1960s and 1980s were punctuated by intense anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, the rise of Third World internationalism (both in terms of formal and informal connections), the articulation of viable economic alternatives to those imposed by the West, but also a massive wave of counterrevolution with bloody coups, assassinations, and interventions. Symbolically, the long 1960s started with Patrice Lumumba's assassination and ended in 1980 with Walter Rodney's assassination, and the defeat of the NIEO (New International Economic Order). While numerous analyses have engaged with these assassinations as historical events, this article seeks to provide a theoretical engagement with the phenomenon of Third World assassinations. The author's engagement with this phenomenon aims to broaden the idea, put forth by Quynh Pham and Himadeep Muppidi, of the “anxiety of domination.” Drawing on Edward Said, James Baldwin, and Eqbal Ahmad, the article seeks to situate theoretically Third World assassinations within a larger paradigm of colonial/imperial anxiety: these acts of annihilation happened not simply because these individuals were on the opposite ideological divide but because their political vision exceeded the grasp of domination and intelligibility of imperial/colonial power and challenged in fundamental ways the imperially sanctioned “epistemic conformity.”