Dr. Adom Getachew on Anticolonial Worldmaking of the Past and Present

The decolonization that spanned across the 20th century dramatically reshaped our world, but what often escapes common knowledge about this period is that anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen did not only envision decolonization as a campaign for national sovereignty but as an effort to fundamentally counter global hierarchies of material wealth and race.  Adom Getachew narrates these transcontinental efforts of Pan-African leaders in her 2019 book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination.  In this interview, GJIA explores the historical insights of her book as well as how contemporary projects for worldmaking can learn from the past century. We additionally discuss further lessons for a world after empire from the volume guest edited by Getachew, Imagining Global Futures.

Read an edited transcription of the interview here.