Meanings of Bandung

The Bandung Conference was the seminal event of the twentieth century that announced, envisaged and mobilized for the prospect of a decolonial global order. It was the first meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by any nation.

This book focuses on Bandung not only as a political and institutional platform, but also as a cultural and spiritual moment, in which formerly colonized peoples came together as global subjects who, with multiple entanglements and aspirations, co-imagined and deliberated on a just settlement to the colonial global order. It conceives of Bandung not just as a concrete political moment but also as an affective touchstone for inquiring into the meaning of the decolonial project more generally. In sum, the book attends to what remains woefully under-studied: Bandung as the enunciation of a different globalism, an alternative web of relationships across multiple borders, and an-other archive of sensibilities, desires as well as fears.

Qu?nh N. Ph?m is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her publications include “Enduring Bonds: Politics and Life Outside Freedom as Autonomy,” Alternatives and co-authored articles with Himadeep Muppidi in Arlene Tickner and David Blaney, Claiming the International (Routledge), Tarak Barkawi and Keith Stanski, Orientalism and War (Columbia University Press), and Naeem Inayatullah, Autobiographical International Relations: I, IR (Routledge).

Robbie Shilliam is author of The Black Pacific (Bloomsbury Academic Press) and German Thought and International Relations (Palgrave). He is co-convener of the BISA Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working group, a correspondent of the Transnational Decolonial Institute, and co-editor of the book series Kilombo: International Relations and Colonial Questions (Rowman & Littlefield International).