With this issue, we offer a critique of our own framework of knowledge production. We noticed how the concept of “Global South” has been turned into a handy word…
With this issue, we offer a critique of our own framework of knowledge production. We noticed how the concept of “Global South” has been turned into a handy word to lazily designate two-thirds of the world’s earthly area and 90% of its population, thus flattening the millions of specificities that characterize this grouping. It also often embodies an entity that only exists dependent on its alter ego, the Global North. As such, it denies any form of agency to the peoples designated as “the South” independently from their relationship to the “North,” as we examine in the case of the war in the eastern Congo (Josaphat Musamba). The South/North binary also designates borders as lines (rather than as regimes operating on both sides of these lines) and essentializes the difference between sides. Can Blackness and Indigeneity in Abya Yala be read without a fundamental split at the settler colonial line that separates North and Central-South Americas (Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga)? Can 20th century Korea’s history show us that the line that currently separates the north (usually presented as part of the Global South) and the south (usually presented as part of the Global North) particularly illustrates the North/South framework’s lack of complexity (Lina Eunji Chang and Andrei-Sergei Kim)? What kind of colonial violence the Non-Aligned Movement invisibilizes in West Papua (Quito Swan), in Kashmir (Čhoakkeladd) or Western Sahara (Buhari Lehbib) and, in contrast, what kind of solidarities it allowed from Yugoslavia (Dubravka Sekulić and Sanja Horvatinčić)? And, crucially, how can we honor the complexity of politics by being able to hold two contradictory truths together as Micol Meghnagi reminds us in the context of Gaddafi’s Libya and Pan-Arabism. As for the cover artwork, it is a painting by Guianese Parisian artist Johanna Mirabel.
You can also read Léopold Lambert’s full introduction to the issue here.
In the News from the Fronts section, we offer a vision of queer and indigenous communities coming together againt neoliberal and homophobic forces in Dakar (Adama Mike Huchard), a perspective on the Assad’s legacy and new complex dynamics at work in Syria (Jwana Aziz), and the political conditions of Turks’ lives in Bulgaria (Zekie Emin and Emine Sadka). For our “Learning With Our Elders” section, we have the great honor of hearing from Lakota organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk about the American Indian Movement in the 1970s.
If you prefer reading it in French, you can also order the francophone version.
84 pages
Deliverable worldwide
Editor-in-Chief: Léopold Lambert
Head of Communications: Shivangi Mariam Raj
Office Manager : Assia TamerdjentContributing copy editor: Carol Que and Shivangi Mariam Raj
Translators: Chanelle Adams (en), Lyor Askénazi (fr), Rosanna Puyol Boralevi (fr), Virginie Bobin Line Ajan (fr), and Léopold Lambert (fr/en)
Graphic Design: Adapted from a model designed by Akakir Studio
