In this episode, I’m joined by political theorist Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019), to discuss the politics of ‘anticolonial worldmaking’ that swept across the Third World throughout the latter half of the 20th century, when Global South leaders envisioned new ways of radically reshaping the international order into one founded on principles of international justice and sovereign equality. We explore what became of this worldmaking political project, its contemporary legacies and reverberations, and what lessons we can draw from it as we work to build a more equitable world order in the 21st century.
About the show:
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!
Sources and helpful links:
Adom Getachew — Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019)
Vijay Prashad — The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007)
Vladimir Lenin — The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916)
Mark Mazower — No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton University Press, 2009)
Howard French — The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Andrée Blouin — My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria (Verso, 2025)
Sukarno — Opening Address at the Bandung Conference (April 1955)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/