Author: Beyan Negash
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Weaponizing Silence, Vulgarizing Languages
(Editor’s note: this article was first published on July 26, 2023; it’s being republished as a reference.) When one’s faith in humanity was beginning to wane with the seemingly endless streams of vitriols from social media, intelligently thought-out discussion in a podcast restores that faith quite a bit*. Prior to the podcast, too, Negarit 28,29,
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Critical Thinking and Critical Dialogue in A Plural Society like Eritrea
Critical Thinking and Critical Dialogue in A Plural Society like Eritrea Call it serendipity or call it a delightful coincidence, right at the time when the discussion at Awate.com is revolving around discourse and its discursive elements, dialogue and its attendant tentacles, there comes a presenter who seems to be telling us to consider something
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Can Eritreans have A Genuine Dialogue?
If “epistemology deals with systems of knowing” as Delgado Bernal (2002) stipulates, to which it is not that difficult to readily concur and its “interconnected[ness] to critical discourse can’t be that far off either. It would then stand to reason that intersectionality from one methodological practice used in a field of endeavor will find an
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Eritrea: From NHnana Elamanan to Liberation to Ber Al-Aman
Eritrea: From NHnana Elamanan (1971) to Liberation (1991) to Bar Al Aman (2021) The men of philosophy and of literature from centuries past encapsulate history as an “essential struggle between two sets of forces, the forces of liberty and the forces of despotism” (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 1977) but weren’t as quick to draw cause
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The Rise and Fall of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)
It was unimaginable for the Ethiopian people to accept “a blatant miscarriage of justice” – specifically over the awarding of Badme to Eritrea. Badme was symbolically important and the casus belli for the two years’ war. The decision is thus a recipe for continued instability, and even recurring wars… nothing worthwhile can, therefore, be expected
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Critical Discourse Analysis
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
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Filling and Feeling the Failing West
Co-authors, Haile S. and Beyan Negash Africans owning and charting their future of hopes and dreams can be understood better when seen through the lens of master and slave narrative that had been made to exist eons back. Consider the history of Africans who were enslaved across the Atlantic shores into the new world. Clint
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Inter-Ethiopian Peace Talks
As many arrows, loos’d several ways, Come to one mark, as many ways meet in one town, As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea, As many lines close in the dial’s centre, So may a thousand actions, once afoot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne Without defeat! Shakespeare’s Play: Henry
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A Possible Political Collusion Course
Tigray’s TPLF, Eritrea’s EPLF, and Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party at a Possible Political Collusion Course: Whatever the Outcome, it will Redefine the Horn of Africa for Decades to Come. Respectful, rigorous, and intellectually engaging confrontation of ideas is always a welcome gesture; one that focuses on ideas rather than on a person; one that focuses on
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So Long Dear Friend
[This memory is the memory of Ibrahim Negash, translated from Tigrinya into English by his younger brother Beyan Negash.] No matter how inevitable. No matter how old. No matter how young. No matter how or when it arrives. The passing of an individual hits hard. When it is the passing of a childhood friend, two doors
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The Curse of Perpetual Civil Wars
The ghost of the ongoing civil war in our region will be a curse that will haunt us for generations to come. Historical figures are invoked bereft of their historical contexts by those who think they are the only heirs to these historical figures; little do they realize be it the region’s historical figures or
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Eritrea, Tigray, and Ethiopia: Where to from Here?
Passions in the current war (Eritrea and Ethiopia on one side) and Tigray on the other are running high akin to the war of the 1998 to 2000 where the majority in diaspora were settled on the notion of my country, right or wrong. When passions run this high it is rather difficult to distance
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A Conversation between Two Professors: A Tigrayan and An Eritrean
At the outset, Prof. Tedros Kiros declares that, in its fifteen years of existence, African Ascent Television Program never had an interview conducted in Tigrinya language, the mother tongue of the host. As such, the viewer can see the elation visibly in his demeanor. What made it unique, the guest, Prof. Tekle Woldemikael, is the
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Tigray Forces Enter Mekelle City
For a critical media consumer, various media outlets are meant to serve as a way to arrive at the truth as rapidly as possible. As well, to learn more about a particular subject matter of interest. Today, I woke up to write an article on the subject of genocide in Gambella, Ethiopia under the watchful
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Discourse on Eritrea-Tigray Through Personal Praxis
[Editor’s note: Reflections is Beyan Negash’s new column. He selected, edited and presents the following article written by Said on the Awate Forum.] Intro: For decades our region suffered exceptionally, a grim reality. Those who write simply as an expression of fierce resistance to all kinds of tyrannies related to the Horn of Africa do
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Undercurrents of the Eritrean-Tigrai Relation
The contemporary sociopolitical history of Ethiopia, Tigray, and Eritrea is informed by two undercurrents that appear to impact these tripartite entities devastatingly as each attempt to outmaneuver the other in that elusive race toward political hegemonic prominence. Chose to use a recent Tigrinya song that captures the foolishness of the war(s), interspersing it within the
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Eritrea’s Bittersweet Memory of A 30-Year Struggle
Eritrea has bittersweet memory of a 30-year struggle that was eked out by the botched 30-years of Governance. In 1935, little did Italy know that its decision to invade Ethiopia would lead to a World War II. Little did Italy know, too, that the Eritrean Askaris it hired to do the invasion of Ethiopia would also abandon
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Eritreans’ Hopefulness & Tigrayans’ Romanticizing HiwHat (ምቁንጃው ህውሓት)
[Correction: we apologize for the technical mistake on the wrong Byline, it’s not Awate Team. The author is actually Beyan Negash/The Editor] “In the long vista of the years to roll, Let me not see our country’s honour fade: O let me see our land retain her soul, Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom’s shade. From
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Eritrean Government in Exile: A Possible Third School of Thought
The emergence of literary national identity, Transcendentalism can be an instructive model as Eritreans are grappling toward the formation of a government in exile. In the 1820s and 1830s Transcendentalism helped marshal an emergent American culture in the definition of its literary national identity. Prior to Transcendentalism, thinkers looked at Europe’s past to create literary
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Eritrea’s Socio-Politics of Slash and Burn
Back in 1990, The New York Times had an opinion piece titled, “The Politics of Slash and Burn”. The gist of the article speaks to the beginning of down spiraling political discourse in the US where Republican candidates were encouraged to use words like ”Sick.” ”Traitors.” ”Bizarre.” ”Self-serving.” ”Shallow.” ”Corrupt.” ”Pathetic.” ”Shame” when describing their opponents.