Editor’s Introduction: Memory, the Postcolony, and the Origins of the Global South

• Main Author: Claudio, Lisandro E.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2013
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/stjgs/vol1/iss1/1; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/stjgs/article/1027/viewcontent/STJGS_201.1_201_20Editorial_20__20Claudio.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Excerpt: The global south, rather than a fixed geographic location, is better understood as a metaphor for global and interstate inequality. It can be located in between objective circumstances of global injustice and the subjective responses of people to these. On the one hand, realities like the unfair world trade regime lay the conditions for political struggle and social change. On the other hand, responses to these conditions create the political and social movements for whom the term “global south” becomes relevant. As a provisional project, intellectuals and activists on the ground are continually redefining the global south. It would be remiss for an academic publication to limit the term’s political and intellectual potentialities by defining it a priori, because it evolves alongside multi-scalar political developments (from local to global). As such, like its antecedent terms, the term “global south” may one day lose its currency. However, as long as global and international inequalities of wealth and political power exist, terms like it will remain relevant. Hence this journal —which is not only a journal about the global south, but one published within it—aiming to represent its diverse voices.