The Coming South: Struggles, Epistemologies, Solidarity

The Coming South: Struggles, Epistemologies, Solidarity is a three-day online symposium on 17, 18 and 19 December 2020.

Find the full symposium programme here.

The symposium responds to the deepening divides that sustain the polarisation and hierarchy justifying the Global North - Global South world order. This world order is made manifest not just in global geopolitics but also in the micro-environments of urban spaces, defining formal and informal relationships that range from those between nation states to those between local communities. Generations of political militants, intellectuals and activists have engaged with these issues - issues that are only exacerbated today, during the pandemic, and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 which has demonstrated and worsened a number of other crises as the status quo of globalisation.

Questions are asked about the value of "western epistemologies" to the struggles of the subaltern, but what actually counts as a western epistemology, and what does this adjective - "western" - perhaps hide from view? What and who is "the South" today? Is there just one, or are there in fact a number of Souths that organise the hierarchy of the global division of labour and the struggles that are tied to it? And finally, what is solidarity in this context - is it a mere declaration of intent, or can it be sustained as a long-term sharing of transformative social objectives that resist the current state of affairs? The conference brings together a range of experiences and reflections to address these questions.

Confirmed contributors

Athena Athanasiou, Marco Baravalle, Tings Chak, Angela Dimitrakaki, Yaiza Hernández Velázquez, Kevin Ochieng Okoth, Marina Otero Verzier, Miguel Peres dos Santos, Vijay Prashad, RAAD, Jonas Staal, Paulo Tavares, Françoise Vergès.