'Kifa Urongo' Temporalities of Racial Capitalism in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise

In this talk on Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 1994 historical novel, Paradise, I engage the problematic of unfreedom and racial capitalism's temporalities through the characterization of ‘kifa urongo,’ or living death, an appellation given to Yusuf, the novel’s protagonist. I examine how Arab colonialisms and Indian Ocean finance networks that underpin the eastern African caravan trade participated in underwriting regional histories of slavery, racial capitalism, and their contemporary legacies.