Political, cultural and intellectual South-North circulations in the post-Bandung era: towards a connected history of the Commonwealth
Circulations politiques, culturelles et intellectuelles Sud-Nord dans la période post-Bandung : vers une histoire connectée du Commonwealth
Published on Friday, January 16, 2026
Abstract
By choosing to focus on South-North circulations, this seminar is dedicated to the deconstruction of the “British Empire” as a homogeneous category to write and think about the intellectual, artistic, and political histories of the people who circulate and inhabit this polity known as the Commonwealth of Nations in the post-Bandung era. Working from the assumption that committed artists, intellectuals and political activists from the Global South have networked and connected within this space, we seek to interrogate the counter-hegemonic nature of the knowledge, theories and artistic practices produced during the post-Bandung era.
Announcement
Argument
For the past fifty years, decentring national and imperial narratives has been on the research agenda of most postcolonial, subaltern or third space intellectuals (Whitchurch, 2012) regardless of their geopolitical locations across the globe. Greater inspection of the histories of colonialism and imperialism revealed, amongst other things, the complex effects of the international division of labour between the global North and the global South (Gupta et al., 2018) on knowledge production, forms of governance, socio-economic models, and cultural representations. Nonetheless some critics of postcolonial theory argue that countering the universalizing power of Western particularism within the former colonies led to the reproduction of similar binaries and asymmetrical logics (Spivak, 1999; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Grosfoguel, 2007). According to these critics, postcolonial approaches only managed to recentre colonial Empires in the histories of former colonized spaces while ignoring, among other things, the effects of “longue durée”. Incidentally, the colonial relationship was indirectly reduced to the unilateral exchanges between a “centre” and “periphery”, downplaying the political, cultural and intellectual circulations from the peripheries to the centre (Magubane, 2004) or between peripheries. In that respect, postcolonial intellectuals would have failed the test of de-territorializing knowledge (Mignolo, 1987).
By choosing to focus on South-North circulations, this seminar is dedicated to the deconstruction of the “British Empire” as a homogeneous category to write and think about the intellectual, artistic, and political histories of the people who circulate and inhabit this polity known as the Commonwealth of Nations in the post-Bandung era (Chakrabarty, 2005; Lee, 2019). Working from the assumption that committed artists, intellectuals and political activists from the Global South have networked and connected within this space (Wainwright, 2011; Tomaselli, Mboti and Rønning, 2013; Craggs and Wintle, 2016), we seek to interrogate the counter-hegemonic nature of the knowledge, theories and artistic practices produced during the post-Bandung era. We thus call for the study of the circulation and transfers of political and cultural ideas but also the intellectual trajectories of individuals, collectives and institutions. Our main objective is to uncover new perspectives on transnational networks, histories and cultural productions, opening the way for connected histories of the Commonwealth (Torrent, 2019) through the study of South-North circulations and South-South connections within Northern spaces.
Programme
6 February 2026
Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers (Centre de colloques, room 3.06, 3rd floor)
"Counter-hegemonic musical circulations"
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David Bousquet (Université Bourgogne Europe) : "Colonizin Englan in reverse": the conceptual and ideological legacy of Jamaican popular music in the UK as a counter-hegemonic discourse of social and racial emancipation.
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Charlotte Grabli (CNRS/CHSMC): Tours, festivals, studios: Cuba in the musical circuits of African decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s.
10 April 2026
Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers (Centre de colloques, room 3.01)
"Commonwealth Alternatives"
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Mélanie Torrent (UPJV) : Commonwealth futures and the travails of a Second Bandung in Algiers (1965): negotiating Afro-Asian solidarity in London and beyond.
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Esther Waugh (Sorbonne Nouvelle): Commonwealth alternatives: how above-ground and clandestine transnational networks during the anti-apartheid struggle contributed to South Africa’s liberation.
29 May 2026
Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers (Centre de colloques, room 3.05)
"South Atlantic Circulations"
- Camila Cabral-Areas (Université de la Réunion): L’Afrique du Sud dans le cinéma d’actualité cubain : circulation et détournement d’archives.
- Laura Efron (National University of Quilmes, Argentina/University of Free State, South Africa): Radical Thinking in Circulation: South African Translations of Latin American Revolutionary Ideas.
Attendance
The seminar’s sessions take place on Friday mornings, from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.
It is possible to attend the sessions online: please e-mail us at anais.makhzoum@u-picardie.fr ; camille.martinerie@univ-paris13.fr or lauriane.simony@cyu.fr in order to receive the Zoom link.
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Society > Geography > Migration, immigration, minorities
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural history
- Society > Political studies > Political history
- Periods > Modern > Twentieth century
- Society > Political studies > International relations
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural identities
- Society > Political studies > Political institutions
Places
- Centre des Colloques, Campus Condorcet
Aubervilliers, France (93)
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Friday, February 06, 2026
- Friday, April 10, 2026
- Friday, May 29, 2026
Keywords
- connected history, Commonwealth, circulations
Contact(s)
- Anaïs Makhzoum
courriel : anais [dot] makhzoum [at] u-picardie [dot] fr - Camille Martinerie
courriel : camille [dot] martinerie [at] univ-paris13 [dot] fr - Lauriane Simony
courriel : lauriane [dot] simony [at] cyu [dot] fr
Information source
- Anaïs Makhzoum
courriel : anais [dot] makhzoum [at] u-picardie [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Political, cultural and intellectual South-North circulations in the post-Bandung era: towards a connected history of the Commonwealth », Seminar, Calenda, Published on Friday, January 16, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/15ilt
