Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination

"It’s been a bad decade for politics, but a great decade for political theory. Three standouts for me were Shatema Threadcraft’s Intimate Justice, Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire, and Kathi Weeks’s The Problem With Work."—Amia Srinivasan, The Chronicle of Higher Education

"[A] marvellous book . . . tracing a new narrative of the nature and significance of anti-colonial thought and politics over the middle decades of the 20th century. Challenging the standard view of decolonisation as a moment of European-style nationbuilding, Getatchew offers instead an account of anti-colonial theory and practice as "worldmaking"."—Jonathan Egid, New Humanist

"A compelling look at how Black internationalist thought evolved throughout the postcolonial period and how its successes and failures . . . continue to shape global politics today. "—Jennifer Williams, Foreign Policy

“Worldmaking after Empire is a breathtaking achievement on the history and theory of global justice. Anticolonialism, it turns out, mattered not for its emphatic nationalism so much as for its subaltern cosmopolitanism. The resources of the traditions Adom Getachew pioneeringly reconstructs are far from being exhausted even today."—Samuel Moyn, Yale University

“This beautifully written and tremendously important book charts new territory and moves political theory in essential and innovative new directions.”—Jeanne Morefield, Whitman College

“Fundamentally shifting the conversation about anticolonial thought and practice, Worldmaking after Empire is a work of profound intellectual and historical recovery and a landmark contribution to the study of the twentieth-century global order. Essential reading, this masterful book speaks beautifully to our own contemporary debates over globalization, inequality, and international politics, and serves as a powerful reminder of the paths not taken.”—Aziz Rana, author of Two Faces of American Freedom

“What can ‘worldmaking’ be after empire? In this profound and elegant book, Adom Getachew challenges the conventional narrative of anticolonial self-determination, showing that, in its best hands, decolonization was also an effort to critique and reimagine the moral-political languages of international order in the hope of transforming postimperial possibilities. In its understated luminosity and unsettling restraint, this book sharpens our sense of what is at stake in rehistoricizing the postcolonial present.”—David Scott, Columbia University