A Neo-Gramscian/Postcolonial Engagement with Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire
| Author | Randolph B. Persaud |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820935524 |
| Subject Matter | Book Forum |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820935524
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 48(3) 372 –381
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829820935524
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1. Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
2. Ibid., 2.
A Neo-Gramscian/Postcolonial
Engagement with Adom
Getachew’s Worldmaking
after Empire
Randolph B. Persaud
American University, USA
Keywords
empire, postcolonialism, self-determination
University of Chicago political theorist Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire
has arrived at a propitious time in the historical development of international theory. In
what follows, I critically engage key arguments and contributions of the book. Emphasis
is placed on those aspects of the general arguments that are either ambiguous, or that
require further elaboration. Let me say, forthwith, that this is a significant contribution to
the political theory of international relations.
Worldmaking after Empire argues that for a number of ‘figures’, ‘Ghanaian independ-
ence . . .constituted the beginnings of a struggle for racial equality across the world’.1
The ‘figures’ named are Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, A. Philip Randolph,
Ralph Bunche, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, George Padmore, W. Arthur Lewis,
Julius Nyerere, and W.E.B. Du Bois. In a rather peculiar historiographical move here, we
are told that Ghana’s independence took special meaning because it arrived ‘just months
after the successful conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott’.2 The suturing of the
struggle for racial equality in the United States, Africa, and Caribbean does indeed make
sense in terms of an analytical construct, in this case the Black Atlantic. If, however, we
follow the same trajectory of historical developments, namely the global struggle for
Corresponding author:
Randolph B. Persaud, American University, Washington, 20016-8007, USA.
Email: persaud@american.edu
935524MIL0010.1177/0305829820935524Millennium: Journal of International StudiesPersaud
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