The Raft of the Medusa: Five Voices on Colonies, Nations and Histories

Dennis Blake is a visual arts teacher with the Halton Board of
Education.

This interesting little book consists largely of transcripts of video
interviews with five left-wing intellectuals: Ackbar Abbas, Thierry
Hentsch, Amin Maalouf, Marlene Nourbese Philip, and Sara Sulcri. Also
included in the book is an interview with Marwan Hassam, who discusses
the video, and a short essay by Charles Acland entitled “Hybridity and
the Subversion of Frontiers: The Vampire and the Raft.”

The video transcripts cover a wide range (geographically and
historically) of political issues, from the Crusades to modern Quebec.
Not surprisingly, most of the arguments concern themselves with
definitional issues. The interview subjects peel back the apparent
wisdom of received Eurocentric culture in order to bring new and
meaningful facets to the discourse of colonial and postcolonial
experience. The level of discussion is consistently high, a refreshing
change from the shallow rhetoric typically found in television and print
journalism.

The wide range of its commentary defies narrow categorization, but this
work would benefit all students of modern political movement.