A state without borders; borders without states w/ Hicham Safieddine

I had the honor to host Dr. Hicham Safieddine, a brilliant Lebanese scholar and historian at the University of British Columbia. 

His work has included a detailed study of the emergence and transformation of global and national monetary regimes and financial systems under capitalist expansion, debt, war, colonial conquest, national liberation and revolution. He also works on the history of economic thought, as well as modern Arab and Islamic thought, with an emphasis on the age of anti-colonial national liberation in the mid-20th century. 

In this episode, we discuss Hicham’s conception of the border regime that defines the geographies of zionist settler-colonialism. He put forth the conception of “a state without borders, borders without states” to help us hone in on an adequate framing to what’s happening in our homelands today.

Then, we discuss what the new phase of US empire in terms of Trump’s ethnic cleansing plans for Gaza as well as all the tools of US empire he inherits, which have been used, albeit in variegated ways, all over the Global South throughout history. I ask Hicham to dissect and discern all the imperial tools that the US has at its disposal to assert and reassert its hegemony.

Finally, we tackle the silencing and censorship we see in and out of the academy, specifically leaning on Hicham’s experiences at UBC as well as having taught and lived in the UK previously. As usual, we end with a note of critical hope. I ask Hicham what keeps him going, and I’m pleased that he felt comfortable enough to share it with me, despite the fact that he has personally been impacted by zionist violence. 

Please check out Hicham’s work, starting here:

Banking on the State: The Financial Foundations of Lebanon

Mahdi Amel, Arab Marxism and National Liberation: Selected Writings