Thinking the re-thinking of the world : decolonial challenges to the humanities and social sciences from Africa, Asia and the Middle East / edited by Kai Kresse and Abdoulaye Sounaye

Includes bibliographical references

Introduction: ‘Thinking the Re-Thinking of the World’ as Urgent and Necessary / Kai Kresse, Abdoulaye Sounaye .-- South and North, East and West: Knowledge Circulations and Connections in a Disordered World / Seteney Shami .-- Contesting Northern Hegemony in Knowledge-Making in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences: Research on, for, with, in, and of Africa / Saleem Badat .-- Sovereignty and Ascendancy: South Asian Reflections / Prathama Banerjee.-- Knowledge and Power in Sociology: Colonialism, Empire and the Global South / Anaheed Al-Hardan .-- C. A. Diop’s Decolonising Historiography: A Re-Reading of Precolonial Black Africa Today / Sanya Osha .-- Decentring the Grand Narrative of the Enlightenment: The Transregional Micronarrative of Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kermānī’s Writings in Global Intellectual History / Roman Seidel .-- The Pūrva-Pakṣa of Modern Indian Thought: Plurality of Universals and Humanistic Knowledge / Rakesh Pandey.

As far too many intellectual histories and theoretical contributions from the 'global South' remain under-explored, this volume works towards redressing such imbalance. Experienced authors, from the regions concerned, along different disciplinary lines, and with a focus on different historical timeframes, sketch out their perspectives of envisaged transformations. This includes specific case studies and reflexive accounts from African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. Taking a critical stance on the ongoing dominance of Eurocentrism in academia, the authors present their contributions in relation to current decolonial challenges. Hereby, they consider intellectual, practical and structural aspects and dimensions, to mark and build their respective positions. From their particular vantage points of (trans)disciplinary and transregional engagement, they sketch out potential pathways for addressing the unfinished business of conceptual decolonization. The specific individual positionalities of the contributors, which are shaped by location and regional perspective as much as in disciplinary, biographical, linguistic, religious, and other terms, are hereby kept in view. Drawing on their significant experiences and insights gained in both the global north and global south, the contributors offer original and innovative models of engagement and theorizing frames that seek to restore and critically engage with intellectual practices from particular regions and transregional contexts in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. This volume builds on a lecture series held at ZMO in the winter 2019-2020.