International relations

Anti-Colonial Worldmaking and Alternative Futures

Module code: 046IRA
Level 6
30 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Seminar
Assessment modes: Coursework, Essay

This course examines a long tradition of anti-colonial worldmaking and it explores how anti-colonial and other traditions vision and seek to build alternative futures. Amid the throes of the liberal world order and a racial capitalist system that has had devastating consequences, leaving behind a legacy of colonial genocides, perpetual wars, mass incarceration, and environmental catastrophe, we turn to look at Indigenous, abolitionist, Queer, and eco-anarchist theories and practices of worldmaking. Using speculative fiction and assessments that invite us to look beyond prevailing systems, we think with these traditions and their efforts to build alternative livable worlds and futures.

Module learning outcomes

• Identify and evaluate prevailing systems of power and how they impact our lives and/or the earth.
• Reflect on the connections between one’s own lived experiences and the theoretical concepts traditions examined in the module.
• Apply the theoretical concepts and claims examined in the module to one or more empirical examples.
• Critically evaluate the limits of current structures and systems of powers.
• Analyse the way one or more of the traditions examined in the course envision alternative worlds; i.e. ways of being, relations and conditions for collective life.