Welcome

Welcome to Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise, a web dossier published two times a year by the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities at Duke University. We are very excited to present the Fall/Winter 2006 dossier, "Post-continental Philosophy, " convened by Nelson Maldonado-Torres of the University of California at Berkeley.

When the print journal Nepantla: Views from South ceased publication in 2003, the editors convened an editorial collective that conceived of a new forum for carrying on the intellectual project begun by that journal. Hence, Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise (WKO), which continues the tradition of Nepantla while taking the project to a new format on the Web, which by definition transforms its nature—especially in accessibility to all who can sign on from a computer.

In inaugurating this new project, we should re-mention an idea that was present at the birth of Nepantla, an idea articulated by the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, that "the South is a metaphor for global suffering under global capitalism." We are committed to the geopolitical implications of the South in this sense but want now also to stress a critical cosmopolitan (post-Kantian and pluriversal) orientation that resonates with the Zapatistas' goal of creating "a world in which many worlds will coexist" as well as with the motto of the World Social Forum, that "another world is possible."

Such a project could not be aspired to within the monotopical or universal cosmology often referred to as "Occidentalism" or as the "unfinished project of modernity." Modernity carries both the seeds of emancipation, liberation, and decolonization and the seeds of what Enrique Dussel, the Argentinian philosopher, called the "genocidal reason." The "unfinished project of modernity" needs to open up to self-critique as well as to critique from the perspective of its darker side, coloniality. The "unfinished project of modernity" shall be opened up beyond imperial languages and knowledges, beyond the macro-narratives of Western modernity (Christianity, Liberalism, Socialism) up to languages beyond the Occident and beyond modernity, to other knowledges, to other worlds that will, of necessity, enter into conflictive dialogue with the hegemony of Occidentalism. "Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise" intends to be a contribution to imagining and constructing that "beyond" in which "other worlds are possible."

As we welcome all who find their way here, we would like to thank all those who contributed to Nepantla, whether as authors or subscribers. We hope you will join us in this next phase of our journey.

Please proceed by clicking on the links on the left.

—WKO Editorial Collective

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