Labor Exploitation and Neoliberal Hegemonic Power Structures

By Ayodeji Richard Olugbuyiro  (Department of Spanish & Portuguese)

The “Worlds in Contention Conference” brought together scholars and audiences from various locations to examine and discuss the impacts of neoliberalism on the world, or better still, the worlds. The idea of a pluralized world is apparent in the presentations since they essentially capture two distinct perspectives in terms of the center and the periphery, or what we can consider the oppressor and the oppressed, or from a geographical standpoint, the West, and the rest. The presentations featured varied time periods ranging from the nineteenth century to contemporary times. And this diversity of time periods helps to reveal the history of Western capitalism, from brutal events such as the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, apartheid, racial genocide, and racial segregation, to contemporary problems like global climate change. The talks further demonstrate how this history continues, albeit in a more subtle manner, even under our “very” conscious twenty-first century eyes. 

The various presentations reveal that the ethos and dynamics of colonialism are what mainly metamorphosed into neoliberalism. And reflecting on my research, which is partly on Portuguese colonialism of Africa and contemporary vestiges of neocolonialism in the Portuguese-speaking world, I see diverse parallels that demonstrate the neoliberal character of this colonialism. For example, in my study of twentieth-century combat poetry in the anti-colonial struggle in former Portuguese African colonies, several of the themes denounced in this poetry are similar to those contested in contemporary arguments against neoliberalism. The theme of labor exploitation for one was predominant in this poetry, and interestingly, we see a reappearance of this theme in a few of the presentations at this conference – in what demonstrates the continuity of unjust colonial dynamics.  

The condition of Black laborers under the Portuguese colonial policy of “contratado” [contract worker], where colonized people from its African colonies were forcefully recruited to work in mines in South Africa and São Tomé and Príncipe compares to what Cameron Skye Macaskill`s aptly lamented in her paper, “Racial Capitalism and Blood Diamonds in Southern Africa.” Although two distinct epochs, both situations revolve around the problematic exploitation of Black bodies in the extraction of diamond in southern Africa. While one might expect that the conclusion of colonialism would signify the end of the racial exploitation of Black workers in this region, rather, it is the contrary. Under the Portuguese “contratado” [contract worker] system, the workers worked under severe exploitative circumstances, with many of them losing their lives while digging for export diamonds without compensations. It is no different in contemporary times as Macaskill showed in her presentation. Macaskill further demonstrated how contemporary humanitarianism meant to improve diamond extraction processes such as the Kimberly certification process, and the creation of branded and supposedly ethical diamonds like “Forevermark” are still expressive of racial capitalism, since their notion of a responsible consumer base as a justification for their product inherently leverages on reinforcing stereotypes of racialized violence among African natives that exonerates their historical contribution to the violence attached to diamond extraction in this region.  

Among other papers presenting the theme of labor exploitation were Inés Valdez’s “The Brown Family and Social Reproduction in U.S. Capitalism,” where she critiqued U. S’s immigration policies towards its Hispanic neighbors as discriminatory and as politically schematized to bring about separation of families while guaranteeing itself access to cheap social reproduction for white waged labor. And Megan Ming Francis talk titled, “The Crimes of Freedom,” where she examined the meaning of freedom for Blacks in the post-Civil War south, looking specifically at the writing of new criminal laws (Black codes) that largely targeted freed black men. Francis was able to demonstrate in her presentation how the unjust laws were passed to make Black men unemployable and thus relegated to undesirable jobs without proper working conditions, in an act that simply represented a continuation of the slavery dynamic. 

My broad observations from the presentations are that the neoliberal hegemonic power structure is predominantly white and exploitative of other races and minority groups. Also, within this scheme, even citizenship status is not enough when you are black or brown. For example, in my recent research on Blacks in Portugal, the relations between race, neoliberalism, and injustice are also very conspicuous. While Portugal claims to be a non-racist country branding a rhetoric of lusotropicalism – the myth of being non-racist due to the large amount of miscegenated population in their former colonies in comparison with other European colonizer-nations, the experiences of Blacks in the country continue to be characterized by diverse forms of racial prejudices that subject minority groups to political and economic inequalities that also relegate them to the margins of society.  

In my study of contemporary poetry of Blacks in Portugal in a recently published anthology entitled Djidiu: A Herança do Ouvido (2017) [Djidiu: The legacy of the Ear], where they discuss their racial experiences in the white-dominated Portuguese society. My discovery is that the themes of racism, police brutality, racial paternalism that were present in the colonial poetry of Blacks in Portugal are the same that are present in their contemporary poetry – in what demonstrates how dynamics of colonial relations and oppression have been maintained and are what transposed into neoliberalism. As a result of this reality, I went on to argue in my research that Negritude – a black ideology of racial resistance in literature that some claim had lost its significance due to the conclusion of colonialism, apartheid and racial segregationist policies against Blacks across the globe, was on a resurgence as a result of persisting problems of racial injustice that continue to confront Blacks in Portugal.   

After participating in this conference, I would like to even further my research on the intersections of race, neoliberalism, and injustice in the contemporary relations between Portugal and its five former colonies in Africa. In the future, I would like to study expressions of economic precarity in the literature of Blacks in Portugal. Clearly, the experiences of this group have shown that after centuries of Portuguese colonial exploitation of the African continent and its people, now in postcolonial times, Blacks are not welcome in this former colonial country. The hypocrisy of neoliberalism is demonstrated in the way former colonizer countries, at the conclusion of colonialism continue to exploit minority groups and developing nations through neocolonial gestures and forms of internal colonialism. The theme of this conference is important in the ways it draws attention to relevant problems that are not sufficiently addressed due to the same corrupt global neoliberal hegemony, and the discussions that proceeded from the presentations are very stimulating with regard to advancing the discourse for a more egalitarian and equitable world. 

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