Beyond the coloniser’s model of the world: towards reworlding from the Global South

Abstract

The reworlding of the world from the Global South directly challenges the resilient coloniser’s model of the world. The coloniser’s model of the world sustains the contemporary hierarchical and asymmetrical modern world system with Europe and North America at its apex of power. Consequently, reworlding from the Global South materialised as a counter-hegemonic initiative driven by struggles of the wretched of the earth for re-existence, liberation and freedom. The epic Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which embraced ‘Black’ as an identity of a sovereign people opposed to racism, enslavement and colonialism, forms an ideal genealogy of reworlding from the Global South. This article reflects on evolving ideological, identitarian, cultural, intellectual and pan-African formations and initiatives of resisting empire and remaking the world after the empire. What is highlighted are freedom dreams, self-definition initiatives, critiques of the asymmetrically structured modern world and struggles and visions of re-membering and re-humanisation of the dismembered and dehumanised. The Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, among many other initiatives and formations, have carried over the struggles for reworlding the world from the Global South.

Keywords:

• Black radical tradition
• coloniser’s model of the world
• Haitian Revolution
• Global South
• reworlding
• re-existence

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and editors of this special issue for their comments and encouragements, which enabled me to substantially improve this paper from its initial draft. But I take responsibility for all the views expressed in this paper.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflicts of interest with respect to research, authorship and publication of this article.

Notes

1 On this concept, cf. Robinson (2000) and Kelley (2002). It is deployed here as a reference to a wide variety of initiatives and struggles across geospatial terrains of the Global South in search of re-existence, against racism, enslavement, colonialism, capitalism and heteropatriarchal sexism.

2 Wallerstein (2000) acknowledged that the concept of the world system was coined by Oliver C. Cox.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant number EXC 2052/1-390713894).

Notes on contributors

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is Professor/Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South with Emphasis on Africa and Vice-Dean of Research in the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He is Professor Extraordinary at the Centre of Gender and African Studies at the University of the Free State in South Africa, Professor Extraordinary at the Department of Leadership and Transformation at the University of South Africa, and Honorary Professor in the School of Education (Education and Development Studies) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. His latest major publications include Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonization (Routledge, 2018); Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over A New Leaf (Routledge, 2020); Marxism and Decolonization in the 21^st Century: Living Theories and True Ideas (Routledge, 2022), co-edited with Morgan Ndlovu; and Reworlding the World from the Global South: Beyond Coloniality of Internationalism (CODESRIA Books, under review).