SOAS Research Online

Abstract

While decolonisation has in recent years become increasingly popular in everyday and academic discourses, it has thus far failed to deliver the radical ruptures and revolutionary transformations of the world order envisioned by anticolonial practitioners and intellectuals. In great part, this is because exploitative politico-economic relations reminiscent of imperialism are upheld under the guise of globalisation, the free-market and development. This Decolonial Manifesto is a call for action to dismantle current power structures and bring about fairer and decentred processes of producing, legitimising and distributing knowledge over and above challenging western hegemony in general. While a series of pragmatic points of action aim to directly overcome the deep-rooted issues pervading academic publishing (including rotational editorship, open access publishing, multilingual written, audio and visual contributions among others), these are to be collocated within larger narratives challenging race- and class-informed marginalisations, capitalist and neoliberal market-structures, unethical patriarchal setups, ableist discourses and the relentless destruction of planet Earth. Such a project is necessarily open-ended, collaborative and disruptive, and promises subversive and enriching spaces for change.