In The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad declares that “The Third World was not a place. It was a project.”[1] Through carefully tracing the gatherings of Asian, African, and Latin American intellectuals and politicians, including the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels in 1928, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the 1961 Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Belgrade, and the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Prashad delineates a century-long history of unity and cooperation in the Third World, highlighting the efforts of Third World countries to reshape the world and their unfulfilled dreams. However, despite the setbacks in the 1970s, the Third World project planted a seed for the world’s transformation where the Third World pursuit of peace, subsistence, and justice gradually flourished. In The Poorer Nations, a sequel to The Darker Nations, Prashad underlines that the series of Third World institutional developments—the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957, the creation of the Group of 77 (G77) in 1964, the revival of ASEAN in 1967, the proposal of a New International Economic Order by the United Nations in 1973, and the emergence of the BRICS in 2009—constituted the most significant resistance to the unipolar global order of the post-Cold War era. For Prashad, the so-called “Global South,” while inevitably intertwined with neoliberal globalization, represents a voice of justice and “a world of protest” against the Western plunder of global resources and the weakening of democracy and modernity, and demands respect of Third World dignity and rights to development.[2] In other words, despite the rhetoric changes from the Third World to the Global South, the pursuit of peaceful development and democracy remains unchanged. This is also why three decades of globalization after the end of the Cold War, the spirit of Bandung continues to shine as some developing countries are catching up economically with the West.

Without a doubt, China’s development in post-Cold War globalization is the most rapid and outstanding. Despite facing trade wars and other difficult challenges domestically and internationally, China still represents, to a certain extent, a development path alternative to the West, as it provides economic and political impetus for enacting the rise of the Global South and changes in the global order. Regardless of whether one likes or dislikes China, views it as a threat or on the verge of collapse, China’s influence on global politics and economy can hardly be ignored. Its significance extends beyond mere power struggles in the name of US-China rivalry, and entails a profound shift in the axis of civilization and potentially the reconstruction of universal values based on the European enlightenment model. If the rise of China represents not just its own revival but rather the awakening of the Third World/Global South, China’s success or failure then will not depend on the durability of its hegemony but rather on the ultimate success of the global decolonization movement: Can neoliberal globalization be transformed so that competition can serve the purpose of peace and equality? Can global disparity in wealth and resources be changed, replacing individual accumulation with democratic distribution? Can modernity’s structure and meaning be redefined based on global sustainability and equal reciprocity, allowing the Earth to thrive and all beings a fair share of its vitality? Whether it’s the Belt and Road Initiative, the development of mobile communication technology, or the advancement of the Internet of Things and big data commerce, China’s development is inevitably linked to the transformation of the Global South and the international order, even shaping them in some critical ways. As a nation fated to play a key role in the process of global restructuring, China, willingly or not, will face numerous challenges, and thus it must seriously consider its relevance to the Global South. Nearly a century ago in Kobe, Sun Yat-sen raised a set of critical questions about the rise of Japan, asking if Japan will serve the interest of imperialist West or that of the struggling East. It seems that these same questions are now presented to China.

However, recalling the Third World today by no means entails the return to the old path of Cold War confrontation, nor does it intend to revisit outdated notions of dependent development. Instead, it aims to reconsider the meaning of and initiate decolonization under the new condition of China’s rise. The term “decolonization” should not serve to rekindle the anti-Western rhetoric of the Boxer Rebellion a century ago, but seeks to articulate a profound understanding of the contemporary world: After all, five centuries of Western capitalism and territorial expansion indeed shaped the contemporary world we live in, and as far as we can tell,  the operation of modern power is essentially a form of colonization, by which the weak is always overpowered by the strong. Thus, decolonial thinking first of all recognizes that colonial history and consciousness is foundational to our understanding of modern civilization, which internalizes dichotomized responses rooted in evolutionary thinking: either one fully embraces the West and deprecates one’s way of life and history (the so-called “wholesale Westernization”), or one seeks solace and resistance in the already decadent traditions (the so-called “self-Orientalization”). While the former represents a sense of inferiority complexity under colonialism, the latter embodies the arrogance and self-indulgence of anti-colonial nationalism. Both reveal the loss of the self.

Instead, decolonization anticipates that by liberating knowledge and epistemology from western domination, the Third World may loosen the grip of colonial history and structures on them, thereby opening up equal and plural perspectives (where cultural differences do not necessarily imply superiority or inferiority). Decolonization thus involves freeing oneself from the mirror of invented traditions, East or West, and turning oneself towards plural alterities as new frames of references. Moreover, it involves reexamining the values and dogmas that shaped the modern self—not only by reopening the cultures and thoughts that have been foreclosed by Western modern civilization but also by critically examining the historical conditions and discursive power that underpin these cultures and thoughts. This will then allow the past that was once labeled as “feudal and backward” or “counter-revolutionary” by the “modern/progressive” to resurface as critical resources for the redevelopment of Third World subjectivity and thoughts. Through mutual referencing and recognition, the Third World then can construct a development path different from the West, and, in the process, remain vigilant of—and seek to overcome—the coloniality of our own power. While from the Third World to the Global South the alliance of the non-West had faced many setbacks and challenges, in history and reality it still embodies the spirit of decolonization that aims to reconstruct a more humane, sustainable, and vivacious world based on mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation. Considering China’s deepening involvement in the world and its transformative impact, critical attention to and reflection on what China does and think now in relation to the Third World are the precondition for advancing the decolonization project. Putting together this special issue on “Thinking Third World Today” for Renjian Thought is precisely such an attempt.

 

From Inter-Asia Cultural Studies to Bandung School

This special issue did not appear out of thin air, nor could it have been done by a small group of people. It is in fact a product based on the accumulation and dissemination of Third World decolonial thinking in the last half century. Therefore, before discussing the contents of the special issue, it is necessary to provide an account of the intellectual motivation and institutional development in the East Asian context that sustained it to fruition.

With the end of the Cold War and the economic development since the 1970s, East Asia entered a period of intellectual liberation in the 1990s. A large amount of Western knowledge entered East Asia and enabled East Asian intellectual circles to break out of ideological and geographical boundaries to engage with one other. The founding of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement in 2000 signals one such moment and the emergence of a transborder intellectual community. The journal used academic publications as a platform for connecting East Asian intellectual circles, creating an intellectual movement in the name of cultural studies to create a space for inter-referencing and intervention. The founder Kuan-Hsing Chen (professor emeritus of the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan) is a core member and leader of this movement. Over the years, he not only facilitated Taiwan’s connection with East Asian intellectual circles (notably, Japan, Korea, India, and Singapore/Malaysia) but also collaborated with Johnson Tsong-zung Chang and Gao Shiming from the China Academy of Art in 2010 to develop the “West Heavens” Project to promote Indian-Chinese interactions in art and thoughts. Based on this project, they worked with the Shanghai Biennale to organize the “World in Transition, Imagination in Flux: Asian Circle of Thought 2012 Shanghai Summit,” a large-scale academic event that lasted for two weeks and brought together over forty scholars across Asia. With the success of the Shanghai Summit, they established “Inter-Asia School” the following year, a translocal grassroots organization to promote interaction and networking among Asian intellectual circles. Through publication, conferences, and translation, the Inter-Asia School successfully served as a base and bridge to connect Asian intellectual communities. It especially fostered interaction and cooperation among young scholars in Asia, creating a space for them to grow beyond the disciplinary norms of neoliberal institutions.

In 2015, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, the Inter-Asia School organized a conference on “Bandung: Third World 60 Years” in April at the China Academy of Art. Many influential international scholars, including Partha Chatterjee, Mahmood Mamdani, and Samir Amin, were invited and gathered at the CAA’s Xiangshan Campus to revisit the significances of the Bandung Conference and Third-Worldism in the present. One of the conclusions of the conference is that, in response to the changing global conditions where China is making an impact, it is imperative for the Chinese intellectual community to explore the history of Third-Worldism and understand China’s role in it. Especially at a time when China is expanding its global presence through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese intellectual community must seriously consider what changes and challenges China’s rise will bring to the world, particularly to Third World/Global South countries; they must understand that the Chinese intellectual and academic communities have a responsibility for China’s rise and its vision of creating another world. Establishing an academic community and platform to further Third-World thinking, to uncover the obscured imaginings of future and historical possibilities, and to engage in multifaceted comparative studies and academic collaboration, would be necessary. Through this event, the Inter-Asia School turned to the Third World, seeking to expand the knowledge boundaries of the East Asian intellectual circles. The aim is to establish and strengthen connections between East Asia, Africa, Latin America, as well as South and Southeast Asia, in order to create a tri-continental knowledge platform for the Global South.

With these expectations, the China Academy of Art established the Institute for Asian, African, and Latin American Culture and Art in the winter of 2016. Nearly thirty scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America gathered at its Xiangshan Campus to launch this institute nicknamed the Bandung School and kick off the Third World Action Project. They discussed the goals and visions of the institute, and developed corresponding arrangements, structures, and activities. Since its establishment, the Bandung School has been concerned with the interaction between thought and reality, with a focus on the present. It attempts to reflect on the intellectual traditions of Third-Worldism, engage in the actual conditions and challenges of South-South cooperation, and explore the potential of a Global South intellectual system for imagining another world in the present context. In the initial stage, the Bandung School served as a platform for intellectual and academic interactions. Its main function was to introduce Third-Worldism to the Chinese-speaking world, with which possible projects of South-South cooperation in the context of China’s rise can be conceived, and institutional exchanges and cooperation established. Therefore, part of its work focuses on systematically and continuously translating Third World thought, establishing academic exchanges and cooperation domestically and internationally, and intervening in the discussions and imaginaries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America solidarity within and beyond the Chinese-speaking world.

The international workshop on “Thinking the Third World Today: Art, Translation, and the Media” held in June 2018 is the first academic event since the establishment of the CAA’s Bandung School to launch the project. The goal of this workshop is to consider how the Third World was represented in art, translation, and the media and what kind of different intellectual resources were rendered available in this process. The Workshop invited Professor Ruth Simbao of Rhodes University in South Africa to give a keynote speech, along with a list of talented young scholars, curators, translators, and media workers from three continents to deliberate on related issues. The list included: Cheng Ying from Department of Department of Asian and African Languages and Cultures at Peking University, Wang Shuo from the School of New Media Art and Design at Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Tang Xiaolin from the China Academy of Art, Wei Ran from the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhang Weijie from the Department of Spanish Language and Literature at Nanjing University, Malcolm Corrigall from Rhodes University in South Africa, as well as Hsu Fang-Tze, an independent curator from Taiwan and Ph.D. candidate at the National University of Singapore, Show Yingxin from the Malaysian online news portal Malaysiakini, and Amber Lin, a reporter from Taiwan’s CommonWealth Magazine. This workshop aimed to facilitate communications among young scholars from different geopolitical contexts to collectively address the significance and limitations of the Third World perspective so as to articulate diverse ways of thinking about the common problems in different regions. It seeks to unearth the history of Third Worldism from the Third World itself, and to ground these discussions in the concrete intellectual, economic, and socio-political contexts of the regions concerned.

Through intense exchanges and discussions at the workshop, we made the following observations. First, under the impetus of the Belt and Road Initiative, research on Africa and Latin America has seen significant improvements in China. Several research centers and research teams have been established with the focus on these regions’ interaction with China. However, these research centers and think tanks mainly adopt the methods in area studies and understand China-Africa and China-Latin America relations through the lens of international relations, diplomacy, and trade. There is less research conducted from an intellectual and humanities perspective, let alone attempting to understand the development of the three continents within a framework of solidarity. Second, although the research on Africa, Latin America, and various Asian regions has grown rapidly in China, and there have been significant increase in the number of translated work, there is still a lack of proper organization and reflection on existing research outcomes, to analyze selected representations and question the politics of translation, since issues ranging from the selection of topic, the quality of translation, to the logic of the market will influence our understanding of these regions’ cultures and societies. In other words, questions about the “Chinese subjectivity” in China’s engagement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will be essential for figuring out the politics of relation in China’s Global South imaginary. This topic remains largely unexplored, and delving into it requires Chinese intellectuals to take a critical attitude towards China’s involvement in the Third World. Third, overseas Chinse have played an important role in China’s interactions with the world. Yet, apart from specific fields such as overseas Chinese studies, they are not within the focus of mainstream Asian, African, and Latin American studies. They are either cast to the limbo as an assimilated minority, or exaggerated—often with ill intentions—as a form of Chinese infiltration. Hence, it is important to focus on overseas Chinese communities’ histories, thoughts, and interactions with the locals in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and reconsider them in the context of China’s expansion in the Third World. Doing so will broaden our scope of critical scrutiny and deepen our understanding of the Third World’s imagining of China. Fourth, despite recent changes in the disciplines, Asian studies, African studies, and Latin American studies remain area studies formations, unable or reluctant to address translocal interactions and transcultural experience. It is true that as continents, these regions are internally diverse and complex, and the continental lens may be too reductive to attend to internal nuances and thus render oversimplified and superficial analyses. However, to break apart from the national focus of the area studies model, and to explore interconnectedness, solidarity, and comparison across continents, nations, and areas that the Third World project envisions, we should also include intercontinental thinking as a revisionist lens to maintain a balance in research. How to be attentive to local differences while also thinking intercontinentally will be our challenge and mandate.

In planning this special issue, we particularly hoped that it would not merely represent the outcomes of the workshop but also serve as a bridge for introducing Third World thoughts to Chinese readers. The goal is however not about translating Third World works into Chinese so as to enrich the Chinese understanding of Asian, African, and Latin American history, thought, and society, but about addressing the collision and roughness in the South-to-South exchange of thoughts and arts. In doing so, we intend to deeply reflect on the issue of subjectivity implied in the very act of translation and consider how translation—with all of its imperfections—can transform our Western-dependent knowledge system. The latter is especially crucial because knowledge production also takes place in historical and systematic contexts. Just as the development and transformation of anthropology are deeply intertwined with the rise and decline of colonialism, the current interest in the Third World in the Chinese-speaking world, if it exists at all, is also inseparable from the geopolitics of China’s rise. Therefore, it is not only essential to know and understand Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the past and the present, but also to be alert of the conditions and contexts in which knowledge about them are rendered to us. Knowing that then may allow us to propose questions and directions that can change the existing academic system and intellectual status quo. For instance, we need to ask why and what kind of global art mechanisms (such as biennials, auctions, and modern art) have become the space in which contemporary Chinese and African arts and artists meet? How can our research reveal the operation and arrangement of these mechanisms, and how, if needed, can they be properly transformed? What lessons and insights can former Chilean President Salvador Allende’s Project Cybersyn bring to today’s Internet economy, numerical control, and digital aesthetics? Additionally, how do Chinese state-owned enterprises contemplate their roles in the global transactions and local operations of financial and technological infrastructures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? What roles do the state, diplomacy, and international economic and trade systems play in this regard? How do people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America think about the significance of China’s rise? How will China’s mobile payment technology, social media platforms, and “stability maintenance” systems impact the development of Third World societies? What possibilities might they bring, and what problems could they cause? Additionally, transnational migrations (such as Third World people living in the Chinese-speaking world and Chinese people living in the Third World) and the transnational production and marketing of products (including cultural products like audiovisual media and literature) are also important issues that can reshape our imaginations of the Third World today. In other words, what Third World decolonial thinking in China and elsewhere needs is not reproducing the paradigm of area studies or listing all the achievements of non-aligned diplomacy and trade. Rather, what is needed are alternative ways of figuring the world in reality and forging the senses and sensibilities needed for another world to come.

 

The Politics of Relation and the Coloniality of Power

The special issue includes two parts. Part I “Thematic Essays” are the revisions of the essays originally presented at the workshop. Part II “Thoughts in Translation” are the pieces of Third World thinking translated into Chinese. The former focuses on the complex entanglements between China and Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Topics range from representation in mainstream media, interventions in contemporary art, translation of literature and exchange of arts and artists, to the difficulty of identification faced by Malaysian Chinese under China’s rise. These discussions form a diverse range of the politics of relation, aiming to address the inequalities within the Global South while seeking mutual understanding and solidarity that are the bedrock of Third World idealism.

Simbao’s essay “Reaching Sideways Beyond Bandung: Audacious Solidarities and Contingent ‘China-Africa’ Scripts in Contemporary Visual Art” offers a critical point of entry for this special issue. It demonstrates how we can address and contemplate China’s relationship with the world on the basis of the Bandung spirit. It neither forsakes the spirit of solidarity and respect emphasized back then nor ignores the complexity of the current situation. It advocates for a practice of “sideways reaching” to explore the potential for alliances and interactions between Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, Simbao reminds us, the goal of sideways reaching is not to repeat the cliché of solidarity but to reveal bottom-up interactions of the Third World, rooted in the experiences of the people. The term “sideways” on the one hand refers to bypassing the control of the state and mainstream media to attend to and develop alternative forms of interaction, and manifests in art and literature on the other as an interface of exchange by which practices of solidarity and respect can be imagined and implemented in the everyday interactions between people rather than between nations. “Sideways” thus richly implies the contradictions and difficulties that exist in interactions, which sometimes cannot be confronted head-on but must be creatively addressed from the side. Cheng Ying’s and Wang Shuo’s essays respectively demonstrate how “sideways reaching” works in the African artists’ appropriations of Chinese products. Such appropriations reflect African artists’ observations and feelings about China-Africa relations, highlighting how the sideway practices of contemporary art can confront the various contradictions created by globalization. Whether it’s Chinese woven bags or exported Chinese products, their transnational circulation signifies crucial changes in China-Africa relations. They also suggest that the material basis of China-Africa solidarity cannot be solely explained by international relations or trade statistics but must also rely on sensible mutual understanding toward self-transformation. This is also the core argument in Wang Chih-ming’s discussion of Chinese travel writing and imagination of Africa. Through linking China in Africa with China’s Africa, Wang reveals that political economy is a form of connection subsumed by subjective perceptions, and cultural representations of Africa in films and travel writings offer a rich archive for understanding and examining contemporary China-Africa relations, as another form of “sideways reaching.”

Zhang Weijie’s essay compares two well-known Latin American writers Eduardo Galeano and Mario Vargas Llosa as references for reflecting on China’s own development. Tang Xiaolin’s essay introduces an unknown history of the exchanges between art circles in China and Mexico. Both articles remind us that the significance of the national form and realism—two important principles of Third World artistic practice—is far more profound than we commonly understand because they are not purely derived from or corresponding to Western aesthetic principles but rather emerged from the needs and political vision of Third World revolutions. This enables us to realize that Third World interactions during the era of the Bandung Conference was not just a convenient slogan, but solid actions for changing the world. It also reminds us that the current China-Latin America relations may require more consideration from the perspective of cultural intertextuality and alternative development, in order to understand why identity, land, and sovereignty remain core issues of decolonization. Show Yingxin’s and Hsu Fang-Tze’s essays aptly highlight how in Malaysia and the Philippines respectively the anxiety of identity is foundational to decolonial thinking, and how identity remains embedded in the discourses of power and cultural resources. Show’s historical analysis of Malaysian Chinese’ identity anxiety highlights that China is both a resource and burden for Chinese Malaysians. On the one hand, Chinese culture offers them a unique subjectivity, different from the Malay culture around them; on the other hand, this subjectivity arrests them right on the cultural borders between Malaysia and China, leaving them rootless, if not doubly rooted. Importantly, the discussion of Chinese Malaysian subjectivity not only concerns Chinese Malaysians themselves, but also reflects the subtle relational politics between China and its diasporas and the modern construction of Chinese nationhood. Their double identity can either contribute to Third World solidarity or become an unbearable burden for them in their pursuit of subjectivity. While in a different context, Hsu’s discussion of Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik’s life and work also reveals the difficulty of subjectivity. By highlighting the parallel yet asymmetric relationship between English and Tagalog, Hsu demonstrates how the Filipino subjectivity in the struggle against colonization repeatedly emerges in the subtle, almost unrecognizable voice in the haunting language of the other. This “possessed” state of subjectivity, characterized by the anxiety for articulation, for giving a local spin in the language of the other, indicates the unfinished business of colonial history and the coloniality of cultural hegemony.

The six articles introduced in “Thought in Translation” are critiques and analyses of the politics of relation and the coloniality of power. All of them (expect the last article) are foundational works in postcolonial studies and have been widely cited. However, they have not been officially translated into Chinese and introduced to Chinese-speaking readership. For Chinese readers, not having them in Chinese is certainly a great loss. Yet, our aim in putting together these selected translations goes beyond mere introduction; rather, we hope the reader will find the issues they raise engaging, because such topics as the coloniality of power, knowledge imperialism, and alternative practices remain relevant today. As Anibal Quijano points out, since the conquest of America, the coloniality of power has centered on racialized labor division and Eurocentrism. The former focuses on acquisition of resources and capital accumulation while the latter centers on the duality of primitivity and civilization. The coloniality of power manifests in the construction of European (universal) modernity wherein colonialism is its underlying structure. It also implies that the operation of capitalism does not rely on liberalism alone but on the violence under its guise to control the concentration of labor, resources, and products. Quijano’s research derives from Latin American intellectuals’ critique of globalization in the 1980s. His observation is not only widely accepted by Western intellectuals but also remains relevant to the current neoliberal globalization.

Quijano’s critique of Eurocentrism found strong resonance in Asia and Africa. Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s article, included in Decolonising the Mind, specifically criticizes Eurocentrism through the debate on the curricular reform of English department in an African university. “The Quest for Relevance” emphasizes that the cultivation of African humanities must dismantle the hegemony of Western civilization and turn to the creation of the African and Third World civilization. Only through doing so can the African knowledge, subjectivity, and even taste and preference avoid becoming a mere copy of the West. This does not mean that the West is no longer important; rather, it calls for critical attention to the West and modernity in Africa while searching for local resources for the reconstruction of African subjectivity. In recording debates about the curricular reform of an African university, Thiong’o initiates imaginations of cultural decolonization for the entire postcolonial generation and the world. Philippine scholar Vintage Constantino’s and Malaysian scholar Syed Hussein Alatas’s articles can also be viewed in this light. The former traces how Filipinos were influenced by American colonial education, leading to the loss of their ability to recognize their own subjectivity. The latter proposes an analysis of knowledge imperialism and offers directions to overcome it. Constantino stresses on the importance of education and language to the decolonization movement. Alatas points out that the overcoming of knowledge imperialism must begin with overthrowing the comprador bourgeoisie that transports Western knowledge.

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s “Toward a Third Cinema” and British cybernetics scholar Stafford Beer’s lecture “Cybernetics of National Development Evolved from Work in Chile” offer two important examples of decolonization from practical experiences. The first example is the development of Third Cinema in Latin America. The second example is Chile’s president Salvador Allende’s experiment in economy: Cybersyn. These two examples demonstrate that the Third World countries have never resigned themselves to their fate but constantly searched for ways to break free from the throes of colonialism through innovative knowledge and practice. Whether watching movies in the Third World can be deemed as a form of underground screening and organizing the masses, and whether cybernetic management can be implemented for democratizing economy and reforming industrial history, the flames of Third World resistance are still shining bright. This is because the wretched of the earth are still anticipating democratic changes to deliver them to a better life. As Beer mentions in his lecture, the point about cybernetics is neither material enjoyment nor new ways of casting ballots, which may not necessarily represent “progress,” but concerns how people can seize the means of production to achieve “happiness.” As a political project and futural vision, the Third World promises more than achieving equality and dignity for the darker and poorer nations that were once represented by the Bandung Conference. While that remains to be an important goal and starting point, the Third World also promises the pursuit of meaning and value of life as concrete measures of “happiness.” The road toward this goal is long and arduous, but we must brave on and walk side by side.

[1] Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations, The New Press, 2007, p. xv.
[2] Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations, Verso, 2012, p. 9.

  

In The Darker Nations, Vijay Prashad declares that “The Third World was not a place. It was a project.”[1] Through carefully tracing the gatherings of Asian, African, and Latin American intellectuals and politicians, including the League against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels in 1928, the 1955 Bandung Conference, the 1961 Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Belgrade, and the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Prashad delineates a century-long history of unity and cooperation in the Third World, highlighting the efforts of Third World countries to reshape the world and their unfulfilled dreams. However, despite the setbacks in the 1970s, the Third World project planted a seed for the world’s transformation where the Third World pursuit of peace, subsistence, and justice gradually flourished. In The Poorer Nations, a sequel to The Darker Nations, Prashad underlines that the series of Third World institutional developments—the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957, the creation of the Group of 77 (G77) in 1964, the revival of ASEAN in 1967, the proposal of a New International Economic Order by the United Nations in 1973, and the emergence of the BRICS in 2009—constituted the most significant resistance to the unipolar global order of the post-Cold War era. For Prashad, the so-called “Global South,” while inevitably intertwined with neoliberal globalization, represents a voice of justice and “a world of protest” against the Western plunder of global resources and the weakening of democracy and modernity, and demands respect of Third World dignity and rights to development.[2] In other words, despite the rhetoric changes from the Third World to the Global South, the pursuit of peaceful development and democracy remains unchanged. This is also why three decades of globalization after the end of the Cold War, the spirit of Bandung continues to shine as some developing countries are catching up economically with the West.

Without a doubt, China’s development in post-Cold War globalization is the most rapid and outstanding. Despite facing trade wars and other difficult challenges domestically and internationally, China still represents, to a certain extent, a development path alternative to the West, as it provides economic and political impetus for enacting the rise of the Global South and changes in the global order. Regardless of whether one likes or dislikes China, views it as a threat or on the verge of collapse, China’s influence on global politics and economy can hardly be ignored. Its significance extends beyond mere power struggles in the name of US-China rivalry, and entails a profound shift in the axis of civilization and potentially the reconstruction of universal values based on the European enlightenment model. If the rise of China represents not just its own revival but rather the awakening of the Third World/Global South, China’s success or failure then will not depend on the durability of its hegemony but rather on the ultimate success of the global decolonization movement: Can neoliberal globalization be transformed so that competition can serve the purpose of peace and equality? Can global disparity in wealth and resources be changed, replacing individual accumulation with democratic distribution? Can modernity’s structure and meaning be redefined based on global sustainability and equal reciprocity, allowing the Earth to thrive and all beings a fair share of its vitality? Whether it’s the Belt and Road Initiative, the development of mobile communication technology, or the advancement of the Internet of Things and big data commerce, China’s development is inevitably linked to the transformation of the Global South and the international order, even shaping them in some critical ways. As a nation fated to play a key role in the process of global restructuring, China, willingly or not, will face numerous challenges, and thus it must seriously consider its relevance to the Global South. Nearly a century ago in Kobe, Sun Yat-sen raised a set of critical questions about the rise of Japan, asking if Japan will serve the interest of imperialist West or that of the struggling East. It seems that these same questions are now presented to China.

However, recalling the Third World today by no means entails the return to the old path of Cold War confrontation, nor does it intend to revisit outdated notions of dependent development. Instead, it aims to reconsider the meaning of and initiate decolonization under the new condition of China’s rise. The term “decolonization” should not serve to rekindle the anti-Western rhetoric of the Boxer Rebellion a century ago, but seeks to articulate a profound understanding of the contemporary world: After all, five centuries of Western capitalism and territorial expansion indeed shaped the contemporary world we live in, and as far as we can tell,  the operation of modern power is essentially a form of colonization, by which the weak is always overpowered by the strong. Thus, decolonial thinking first of all recognizes that colonial history and consciousness is foundational to our understanding of modern civilization, which internalizes dichotomized responses rooted in evolutionary thinking: either one fully embraces the West and deprecates one’s way of life and history (the so-called “wholesale Westernization”), or one seeks solace and resistance in the already decadent traditions (the so-called “self-Orientalization”). While the former represents a sense of inferiority complexity under colonialism, the latter embodies the arrogance and self-indulgence of anti-colonial nationalism. Both reveal the loss of the self.

Instead, decolonization anticipates that by liberating knowledge and epistemology from western domination, the Third World may loosen the grip of colonial history and structures on them, thereby opening up equal and plural perspectives (where cultural differences do not necessarily imply superiority or inferiority). Decolonization thus involves freeing oneself from the mirror of invented traditions, East or West, and turning oneself towards plural alterities as new frames of references. Moreover, it involves reexamining the values and dogmas that shaped the modern self—not only by reopening the cultures and thoughts that have been foreclosed by Western modern civilization but also by critically examining the historical conditions and discursive power that underpin these cultures and thoughts. This will then allow the past that was once labeled as “feudal and backward” or “counter-revolutionary” by the “modern/progressive” to resurface as critical resources for the redevelopment of Third World subjectivity and thoughts. Through mutual referencing and recognition, the Third World then can construct a development path different from the West, and, in the process, remain vigilant of—and seek to overcome—the coloniality of our own power. While from the Third World to the Global South the alliance of the non-West had faced many setbacks and challenges, in history and reality it still embodies the spirit of decolonization that aims to reconstruct a more humane, sustainable, and vivacious world based on mutual understanding, respect, and cooperation. Considering China’s deepening involvement in the world and its transformative impact, critical attention to and reflection on what China does and think now in relation to the Third World are the precondition for advancing the decolonization project. Putting together this special issue on “Thinking Third World Today” for Renjian Thought is precisely such an attempt.

 

From Inter-Asia Cultural Studies to Bandung School

This special issue did not appear out of thin air, nor could it have been done by a small group of people. It is in fact a product based on the accumulation and dissemination of Third World decolonial thinking in the last half century. Therefore, before discussing the contents of the special issue, it is necessary to provide an account of the intellectual motivation and institutional development in the East Asian context that sustained it to fruition.

With the end of the Cold War and the economic development since the 1970s, East Asia entered a period of intellectual liberation in the 1990s. A large amount of Western knowledge entered East Asia and enabled East Asian intellectual circles to break out of ideological and geographical boundaries to engage with one other. The founding of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movement in 2000 signals one such moment and the emergence of a transborder intellectual community. The journal used academic publications as a platform for connecting East Asian intellectual circles, creating an intellectual movement in the name of cultural studies to create a space for inter-referencing and intervention. The founder Kuan-Hsing Chen (professor emeritus of the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan) is a core member and leader of this movement. Over the years, he not only facilitated Taiwan’s connection with East Asian intellectual circles (notably, Japan, Korea, India, and Singapore/Malaysia) but also collaborated with Johnson Tsong-zung Chang and Gao Shiming from the China Academy of Art in 2010 to develop the “West Heavens” Project to promote Indian-Chinese interactions in art and thoughts. Based on this project, they worked with the Shanghai Biennale to organize the “World in Transition, Imagination in Flux: Asian Circle of Thought 2012 Shanghai Summit,” a large-scale academic event that lasted for two weeks and brought together over forty scholars across Asia. With the success of the Shanghai Summit, they established “Inter-Asia School” the following year, a translocal grassroots organization to promote interaction and networking among Asian intellectual circles. Through publication, conferences, and translation, the Inter-Asia School successfully served as a base and bridge to connect Asian intellectual communities. It especially fostered interaction and cooperation among young scholars in Asia, creating a space for them to grow beyond the disciplinary norms of neoliberal institutions.

In 2015, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, the Inter-Asia School organized a conference on “Bandung: Third World 60 Years” in April at the China Academy of Art. Many influential international scholars, including Partha Chatterjee, Mahmood Mamdani, and Samir Amin, were invited and gathered at the CAA’s Xiangshan Campus to revisit the significances of the Bandung Conference and Third-Worldism in the present. One of the conclusions of the conference is that, in response to the changing global conditions where China is making an impact, it is imperative for the Chinese intellectual community to explore the history of Third-Worldism and understand China’s role in it. Especially at a time when China is expanding its global presence through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese intellectual community must seriously consider what changes and challenges China’s rise will bring to the world, particularly to Third World/Global South countries; they must understand that the Chinese intellectual and academic communities have a responsibility for China’s rise and its vision of creating another world. Establishing an academic community and platform to further Third-World thinking, to uncover the obscured imaginings of future and historical possibilities, and to engage in multifaceted comparative studies and academic collaboration, would be necessary. Through this event, the Inter-Asia School turned to the Third World, seeking to expand the knowledge boundaries of the East Asian intellectual circles. The aim is to establish and strengthen connections between East Asia, Africa, Latin America, as well as South and Southeast Asia, in order to create a tri-continental knowledge platform for the Global South.

With these expectations, the China Academy of Art established the Institute for Asian, African, and Latin American Culture and Art in the winter of 2016. Nearly thirty scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America gathered at its Xiangshan Campus to launch this institute nicknamed the Bandung School and kick off the Third World Action Project. They discussed the goals and visions of the institute, and developed corresponding arrangements, structures, and activities. Since its establishment, the Bandung School has been concerned with the interaction between thought and reality, with a focus on the present. It attempts to reflect on the intellectual traditions of Third-Worldism, engage in the actual conditions and challenges of South-South cooperation, and explore the potential of a Global South intellectual system for imagining another world in the present context. In the initial stage, the Bandung School served as a platform for intellectual and academic interactions. Its main function was to introduce Third-Worldism to the Chinese-speaking world, with which possible projects of South-South cooperation in the context of China’s rise can be conceived, and institutional exchanges and cooperation established. Therefore, part of its work focuses on systematically and continuously translating Third World thought, establishing academic exchanges and cooperation domestically and internationally, and intervening in the discussions and imaginaries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America solidarity within and beyond the Chinese-speaking world.

The international workshop on “Thinking the Third World Today: Art, Translation, and the Media” held in June 2018 is the first academic event since the establishment of the CAA’s Bandung School to launch the project. The goal of this workshop is to consider how the Third World was represented in art, translation, and the media and what kind of different intellectual resources were rendered available in this process. The Workshop invited Professor Ruth Simbao of Rhodes University in South Africa to give a keynote speech, along with a list of talented young scholars, curators, translators, and media workers from three continents to deliberate on related issues. The list included: Cheng Ying from Department of Department of Asian and African Languages and Cultures at Peking University, Wang Shuo from the School of New Media Art and Design at Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Tang Xiaolin from the China Academy of Art, Wei Ran from the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhang Weijie from the Department of Spanish Language and Literature at Nanjing University, Malcolm Corrigall from Rhodes University in South Africa, as well as Hsu Fang-Tze, an independent curator from Taiwan and Ph.D. candidate at the National University of Singapore, Show Yingxin from the Malaysian online news portal Malaysiakini, and Amber Lin, a reporter from Taiwan’s CommonWealth Magazine. This workshop aimed to facilitate communications among young scholars from different geopolitical contexts to collectively address the significance and limitations of the Third World perspective so as to articulate diverse ways of thinking about the common problems in different regions. It seeks to unearth the history of Third Worldism from the Third World itself, and to ground these discussions in the concrete intellectual, economic, and socio-political contexts of the regions concerned.

Through intense exchanges and discussions at the workshop, we made the following observations. First, under the impetus of the Belt and Road Initiative, research on Africa and Latin America has seen significant improvements in China. Several research centers and research teams have been established with the focus on these regions’ interaction with China. However, these research centers and think tanks mainly adopt the methods in area studies and understand China-Africa and China-Latin America relations through the lens of international relations, diplomacy, and trade. There is less research conducted from an intellectual and humanities perspective, let alone attempting to understand the development of the three continents within a framework of solidarity. Second, although the research on Africa, Latin America, and various Asian regions has grown rapidly in China, and there have been significant increase in the number of translated work, there is still a lack of proper organization and reflection on existing research outcomes, to analyze selected representations and question the politics of translation, since issues ranging from the selection of topic, the quality of translation, to the logic of the market will influence our understanding of these regions’ cultures and societies. In other words, questions about the “Chinese subjectivity” in China’s engagement in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will be essential for figuring out the politics of relation in China’s Global South imaginary. This topic remains largely unexplored, and delving into it requires Chinese intellectuals to take a critical attitude towards China’s involvement in the Third World. Third, overseas Chinse have played an important role in China’s interactions with the world. Yet, apart from specific fields such as overseas Chinese studies, they are not within the focus of mainstream Asian, African, and Latin American studies. They are either cast to the limbo as an assimilated minority, or exaggerated—often with ill intentions—as a form of Chinese infiltration. Hence, it is important to focus on overseas Chinese communities’ histories, thoughts, and interactions with the locals in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and reconsider them in the context of China’s expansion in the Third World. Doing so will broaden our scope of critical scrutiny and deepen our understanding of the Third World’s imagining of China. Fourth, despite recent changes in the disciplines, Asian studies, African studies, and Latin American studies remain area studies formations, unable or reluctant to address translocal interactions and transcultural experience. It is true that as continents, these regions are internally diverse and complex, and the continental lens may be too reductive to attend to internal nuances and thus render oversimplified and superficial analyses. However, to break apart from the national focus of the area studies model, and to explore interconnectedness, solidarity, and comparison across continents, nations, and areas that the Third World project envisions, we should also include intercontinental thinking as a revisionist lens to maintain a balance in research. How to be attentive to local differences while also thinking intercontinentally will be our challenge and mandate.

In planning this special issue, we particularly hoped that it would not merely represent the outcomes of the workshop but also serve as a bridge for introducing Third World thoughts to Chinese readers. The goal is however not about translating Third World works into Chinese so as to enrich the Chinese understanding of Asian, African, and Latin American history, thought, and society, but about addressing the collision and roughness in the South-to-South exchange of thoughts and arts. In doing so, we intend to deeply reflect on the issue of subjectivity implied in the very act of translation and consider how translation—with all of its imperfections—can transform our Western-dependent knowledge system. The latter is especially crucial because knowledge production also takes place in historical and systematic contexts. Just as the development and transformation of anthropology are deeply intertwined with the rise and decline of colonialism, the current interest in the Third World in the Chinese-speaking world, if it exists at all, is also inseparable from the geopolitics of China’s rise. Therefore, it is not only essential to know and understand Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the past and the present, but also to be alert of the conditions and contexts in which knowledge about them are rendered to us. Knowing that then may allow us to propose questions and directions that can change the existing academic system and intellectual status quo. For instance, we need to ask why and what kind of global art mechanisms (such as biennials, auctions, and modern art) have become the space in which contemporary Chinese and African arts and artists meet? How can our research reveal the operation and arrangement of these mechanisms, and how, if needed, can they be properly transformed? What lessons and insights can former Chilean President Salvador Allende’s Project Cybersyn bring to today’s Internet economy, numerical control, and digital aesthetics? Additionally, how do Chinese state-owned enterprises contemplate their roles in the global transactions and local operations of financial and technological infrastructures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? What roles do the state, diplomacy, and international economic and trade systems play in this regard? How do people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America think about the significance of China’s rise? How will China’s mobile payment technology, social media platforms, and “stability maintenance” systems impact the development of Third World societies? What possibilities might they bring, and what problems could they cause? Additionally, transnational migrations (such as Third World people living in the Chinese-speaking world and Chinese people living in the Third World) and the transnational production and marketing of products (including cultural products like audiovisual media and literature) are also important issues that can reshape our imaginations of the Third World today. In other words, what Third World decolonial thinking in China and elsewhere needs is not reproducing the paradigm of area studies or listing all the achievements of non-aligned diplomacy and trade. Rather, what is needed are alternative ways of figuring the world in reality and forging the senses and sensibilities needed for another world to come.

 

The Politics of Relation and the Coloniality of Power

The special issue includes two parts. Part I “Thematic Essays” are the revisions of the essays originally presented at the workshop. Part II “Thoughts in Translation” are the pieces of Third World thinking translated into Chinese. The former focuses on the complex entanglements between China and Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Topics range from representation in mainstream media, interventions in contemporary art, translation of literature and exchange of arts and artists, to the difficulty of identification faced by Malaysian Chinese under China’s rise. These discussions form a diverse range of the politics of relation, aiming to address the inequalities within the Global South while seeking mutual understanding and solidarity that are the bedrock of Third World idealism.

Simbao’s essay “Reaching Sideways Beyond Bandung: Audacious Solidarities and Contingent ‘China-Africa’ Scripts in Contemporary Visual Art” offers a critical point of entry for this special issue. It demonstrates how we can address and contemplate China’s relationship with the world on the basis of the Bandung spirit. It neither forsakes the spirit of solidarity and respect emphasized back then nor ignores the complexity of the current situation. It advocates for a practice of “sideways reaching” to explore the potential for alliances and interactions between Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, Simbao reminds us, the goal of sideways reaching is not to repeat the cliché of solidarity but to reveal bottom-up interactions of the Third World, rooted in the experiences of the people. The term “sideways” on the one hand refers to bypassing the control of the state and mainstream media to attend to and develop alternative forms of interaction, and manifests in art and literature on the other as an interface of exchange by which practices of solidarity and respect can be imagined and implemented in the everyday interactions between people rather than between nations. “Sideways” thus richly implies the contradictions and difficulties that exist in interactions, which sometimes cannot be confronted head-on but must be creatively addressed from the side. Cheng Ying’s and Wang Shuo’s essays respectively demonstrate how “sideways reaching” works in the African artists’ appropriations of Chinese products. Such appropriations reflect African artists’ observations and feelings about China-Africa relations, highlighting how the sideway practices of contemporary art can confront the various contradictions created by globalization. Whether it’s Chinese woven bags or exported Chinese products, their transnational circulation signifies crucial changes in China-Africa relations. They also suggest that the material basis of China-Africa solidarity cannot be solely explained by international relations or trade statistics but must also rely on sensible mutual understanding toward self-transformation. This is also the core argument in Wang Chih-ming’s discussion of Chinese travel writing and imagination of Africa. Through linking China in Africa with China’s Africa, Wang reveals that political economy is a form of connection subsumed by subjective perceptions, and cultural representations of Africa in films and travel writings offer a rich archive for understanding and examining contemporary China-Africa relations, as another form of “sideways reaching.”

Zhang Weijie’s essay compares two well-known Latin American writers Eduardo Galeano and Mario Vargas Llosa as references for reflecting on China’s own development. Tang Xiaolin’s essay introduces an unknown history of the exchanges between art circles in China and Mexico. Both articles remind us that the significance of the national form and realism—two important principles of Third World artistic practice—is far more profound than we commonly understand because they are not purely derived from or corresponding to Western aesthetic principles but rather emerged from the needs and political vision of Third World revolutions. This enables us to realize that Third World interactions during the era of the Bandung Conference was not just a convenient slogan, but solid actions for changing the world. It also reminds us that the current China-Latin America relations may require more consideration from the perspective of cultural intertextuality and alternative development, in order to understand why identity, land, and sovereignty remain core issues of decolonization. Show Yingxin’s and Hsu Fang-Tze’s essays aptly highlight how in Malaysia and the Philippines respectively the anxiety of identity is foundational to decolonial thinking, and how identity remains embedded in the discourses of power and cultural resources. Show’s historical analysis of Malaysian Chinese’ identity anxiety highlights that China is both a resource and burden for Chinese Malaysians. On the one hand, Chinese culture offers them a unique subjectivity, different from the Malay culture around them; on the other hand, this subjectivity arrests them right on the cultural borders between Malaysia and China, leaving them rootless, if not doubly rooted. Importantly, the discussion of Chinese Malaysian subjectivity not only concerns Chinese Malaysians themselves, but also reflects the subtle relational politics between China and its diasporas and the modern construction of Chinese nationhood. Their double identity can either contribute to Third World solidarity or become an unbearable burden for them in their pursuit of subjectivity. While in a different context, Hsu’s discussion of Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik’s life and work also reveals the difficulty of subjectivity. By highlighting the parallel yet asymmetric relationship between English and Tagalog, Hsu demonstrates how the Filipino subjectivity in the struggle against colonization repeatedly emerges in the subtle, almost unrecognizable voice in the haunting language of the other. This “possessed” state of subjectivity, characterized by the anxiety for articulation, for giving a local spin in the language of the other, indicates the unfinished business of colonial history and the coloniality of cultural hegemony.

The six articles introduced in “Thought in Translation” are critiques and analyses of the politics of relation and the coloniality of power. All of them (expect the last article) are foundational works in postcolonial studies and have been widely cited. However, they have not been officially translated into Chinese and introduced to Chinese-speaking readership. For Chinese readers, not having them in Chinese is certainly a great loss. Yet, our aim in putting together these selected translations goes beyond mere introduction; rather, we hope the reader will find the issues they raise engaging, because such topics as the coloniality of power, knowledge imperialism, and alternative practices remain relevant today. As Anibal Quijano points out, since the conquest of America, the coloniality of power has centered on racialized labor division and Eurocentrism. The former focuses on acquisition of resources and capital accumulation while the latter centers on the duality of primitivity and civilization. The coloniality of power manifests in the construction of European (universal) modernity wherein colonialism is its underlying structure. It also implies that the operation of capitalism does not rely on liberalism alone but on the violence under its guise to control the concentration of labor, resources, and products. Quijano’s research derives from Latin American intellectuals’ critique of globalization in the 1980s. His observation is not only widely accepted by Western intellectuals but also remains relevant to the current neoliberal globalization.

Quijano’s critique of Eurocentrism found strong resonance in Asia and Africa. Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s article, included in Decolonising the Mind, specifically criticizes Eurocentrism through the debate on the curricular reform of English department in an African university. “The Quest for Relevance” emphasizes that the cultivation of African humanities must dismantle the hegemony of Western civilization and turn to the creation of the African and Third World civilization. Only through doing so can the African knowledge, subjectivity, and even taste and preference avoid becoming a mere copy of the West. This does not mean that the West is no longer important; rather, it calls for critical attention to the West and modernity in Africa while searching for local resources for the reconstruction of African subjectivity. In recording debates about the curricular reform of an African university, Thiong’o initiates imaginations of cultural decolonization for the entire postcolonial generation and the world. Philippine scholar Vintage Constantino’s and Malaysian scholar Syed Hussein Alatas’s articles can also be viewed in this light. The former traces how Filipinos were influenced by American colonial education, leading to the loss of their ability to recognize their own subjectivity. The latter proposes an analysis of knowledge imperialism and offers directions to overcome it. Constantino stresses on the importance of education and language to the decolonization movement. Alatas points out that the overcoming of knowledge imperialism must begin with overthrowing the comprador bourgeoisie that transports Western knowledge.

Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s “Toward a Third Cinema” and British cybernetics scholar Stafford Beer’s lecture “Cybernetics of National Development Evolved from Work in Chile” offer two important examples of decolonization from practical experiences. The first example is the development of Third Cinema in Latin America. The second example is Chile’s president Salvador Allende’s experiment in economy: Cybersyn. These two examples demonstrate that the Third World countries have never resigned themselves to their fate but constantly searched for ways to break free from the throes of colonialism through innovative knowledge and practice. Whether watching movies in the Third World can be deemed as a form of underground screening and organizing the masses, and whether cybernetic management can be implemented for democratizing economy and reforming industrial history, the flames of Third World resistance are still shining bright. This is because the wretched of the earth are still anticipating democratic changes to deliver them to a better life. As Beer mentions in his lecture, the point about cybernetics is neither material enjoyment nor new ways of casting ballots, which may not necessarily represent “progress,” but concerns how people can seize the means of production to achieve “happiness.” As a political project and futural vision, the Third World promises more than achieving equality and dignity for the darker and poorer nations that were once represented by the Bandung Conference. While that remains to be an important goal and starting point, the Third World also promises the pursuit of meaning and value of life as concrete measures of “happiness.” The road toward this goal is long and arduous, but we must brave on and walk side by side.

[1] Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations, The New Press, 2007, p. xv.
[2] Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations, Verso, 2012, p. 9.