Benjamin Zachariah
Introduction: Moving the Posts
Postcolonialism, decoloniality, and its moral and ethical assumptions surround us in our academic lives, and have increasingly made their way into the spheres of policy, art, and civil society. BRICS, now BRICS+, is a group of countries that seeks to engage the world, its economy, and its power dynamics, in new and improved ways. In my introductory remarks, I look at the new and not-so-new developments that have accompanied these trends, and point out the ways that they have sought, in effect, to move the goal posts while the game is still being played. Have they managed to disrupt or enhance claims to social justice and/or anti-Westernism? What, if anything, have they decentered or decolonized?
Benjamin Zachariah is a member of the research staff at the Einstein Forum. He studied at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Trinity College, Cambridge, taught at Sheffield University, has had professorships in Calcutta and Halle, and has held senior research fellowships at various places, including the University of Trier, Heidelberg University, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research interests include the politics of historical knowledge, historical theory and historiography, global fascism, transnational revolutionary networks, nationalisms, and the politics of memory.