On Adom Getachew's 'Worldmaking' (for AAIHS roundtable) (original) (raw)
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In this chapter I put forward a transnational critique of the global justice literature. I argue that the transnational character of injustice and the transnational coalitions among those marginalized within Western societies and those in the non-West are two elements that are currently not considered by global justice theorists. This is the case despite the fact that their inclusion raises important normative questions. I support this critique by, first, pointing to the historical erasures of the global justice literature and, second, examining its sources in the Rawlsian genealogy of this scholarship. I note that the concept of association—which both sides on the global justice debate rely upon—must be considered in two further senses: (a) as the mechanism for the establishment of domination, and (b) as an instrument for countering domination and opening novel spaces of politics. Opening the concept in these two directions allows us to consider not only pockets of domination within the West that are indebted to the past of colonialism, settler colonialism, and slavery but also how these roots are a source of political commonalities among Western groups and anti-colonial/post-colonial activists outside of the West. I rely on the history of the coalition between the black civil rights movement and the anti-colonial movement and W. E. B. Du Bois’s writings to make three normative points: (a) that we should displace the elite Western subject from its privileged position as the agent working toward global justice; (b) that we should incorporate into our theorization the transnational spaces of politics inaugurated by the coalitions of the oppressed in the West and non-West, and (c) that we should reframe the conversation on global justice as political rather than moral.
A Neo-Gramscian/Postcolonial Engagement with Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2020
University of Chicago political theorist Adom Getachew's Worldmaking after Empire has arrived at a propitious time in the historical development of international theory. In what follows, I critically engage key arguments and contributions of the book. Emphasis is placed on those aspects of the general arguments that are either ambiguous, or that require further elaboration. Let me say, forthwith, that this is a significant contribution to the political theory of international relations. Worldmaking after Empire argues that for a number of 'figures', 'Ghanaian independence. . .constituted the beginnings of a struggle for racial equality across the world'. 1 The 'figures' named are Martin Luther King Jr.
Invisible Hierarchies: Africa, Race, and Continuities in the World Order
Science & Society, 2005
The failure to acknowledge race as a fundamental feature of today's unequal world order remains a striking weakness of radical as well as conventional analyses of that order. Current global and national socioeconomic hierarchies are not mere residues of a bygone era of primitive accumulation. Just as it should be inconceivable to address the past, present, and future of American society without giving central attention to the role of African American struggles, so analyzing and addressing 21st-century structures of global inequality requires giving central attention to Africa.
I revisit the question of the possibility of political integration of the African continent, which was first proposed by Kwame Nkrumah, and re-proposed by Muamar Gaddaffi. My focus here is not to examine the extent of willingness by African leaders to bring this about, or with the political intrigues surrounding it (though these will be briefly acknowledged), or in contesting Nkrumah’s economic argument (which is commonsensically correct and concurs with mainstream economics), but with a more normative question of the possibility, and thus practicability, of political integration in the light of cultural and ethnic heterogeneity on the continent. I argue that political integration is possible, and support the gradualist viewpoint by drawing lessons from Nicholas Taleb’s concept of antifragility, and pointing to almost as much heterogeneity at individual and simpler society levels as there are in ethnically diverse societies.
Current Anthropology, 2019
New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape across the global north in a militarized form that mimics South Africa's history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South African system of influx and labor control that attempted to manage the "threat" posed by black people by incarcerating them in zones of containment while also enabling the control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, on which the country was dependent. The paper argues, first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market dependent on differential access to mobility; second, that the expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by agents of the global north into the global south renders localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life; and, third, that in response, the global north is massively investing in militarized border regimes to manage the northern movement of people from the global south. The paper argues that "global apartheid" might replace terms such as "transnationalism," "multiculturalism," and "cosmopolitanism" in order to name the structures of control that securitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a new militarized form of apartheid on a global level. 1. As of this writing, the closure decision has been suspended. 2. This paper is a highly abbreviated version of a book project that develops the arguments, theoretical concepts, and ethnographic examples in much greater detail, including the cases of India, East Asia, and China, which are not discussed here due to space limitations. Furthermore, because the article condenses a broadly comparative and nuanced argument, I am aware that it may appear to reify categories like the "global north" and the "global south." I hope readers will understand that these categories are, of course, internally complex and diverse and that my use of broad-brush tactics here is a heuristic necessity.