SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSALS HERE BY 5 JANUARY 2026.
Visit our online forum for contributors looking to collaborate on proposals here.
South/South Movement is co-organising a festival of ideas on anti-colonial and anti-imperial currents in southeast asia and oceania. Unapologetically, we shift the site of knowledge and (geo)politics towards these geographies. Why? From our perspective, s.e.a. and oceania tend to be bypassed by the tide of “decolonising” discourses within the anglophone, eurocentric “global” academy today.
To trouble this tendency, this festival works towards two broad aims outside business-as-usual conferences organised by traditional academic organisations domiciled in the geopolitical Global North. On the one hand, we will engage with s.e.a. and oceanic struggles against colonial and imperial powers—from within and without, western and non-western, past and present. On the other hand, although we recognise s.e.a. and oceania remain submerged in colonial/imperial regimes of oppression, we refuse to dwell on this geopolitical reality. Crucially, we will emphasise acts of anti-colonial and anti-imperial resistance in both discourse and practice, especially from below and beyond the “postcolonial” nation-state in this part of the world. While we may come from distinct geopolitical contexts, we strive to claim and build this space in the spirit of kapwa (Pilipino for being-with-others) and kōrerorero (Māori for dialoguing). Committed to autonomous knowledge generation, we explicitly prioritise s.e.a. and oceanic positionalities and south-to-south dialogues, given unfortunate tendencies normalising epistemic whiteness and Western expertise within the “decolonial turn” across scholarly communities in our regions.
The festival welcomes a variety of multi-modal contributions, such as academic conference workshops, reading circles, public lectures, and film screenings. To reinforce synergies with existing initiatives of our collective, South/South Movement will host contributions from the festival in a forum on anti-colonial and anti-imperial currents in s.e.a. and oceania, as part of our dialogues series. We offer this co-publication possibility to interested contributors.
Questions we are seeking to tackle include but are not limited to:
- How does coloniality in all its manifestations persist in s.e.a. and oceania today? In what ways is it being contested in politics, academia, and daily life?
- How are our universities perpetuating coloniality? And what forms of resistance challenge this complicity?
- Who are foundational s.e.a. and oceanic anti-colonial and anti-imperial public intellectuals? And how are their (often forgotten) writings being (re)read today?
- Is it possible to reimagine anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism beyond the politics of the “postcolonial” nation-state? If so, in what ways?
- Why are s.e.a. and oceanic states complicit in fuelling the colonial/modern machine?
- How are s.e.a. and oceanic struggles in the past, present, and future entangled with one another and other decolonial struggles globally, not least those of the Palestinian people?
- How are youth protests against rampant corruption and nepotism in “postcolonial” societies like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines interconnected in the context of global capitalist relations?
- Why should we think of china’s “nine-dash-line” as an imperial policy over s.e.a. maritime spaces? And how is this inciting the (military) intervention of so-called “great powers” in the regions?
- How can we counter the hegemony of china and other non-western imperial powers in the regions without “siding” with western colonial powers? How can we oppose western hegemony in the regions without being seduced by the myth of china as a “benevolent” power?
- Viewed from s.e.a. and oceania, what does climate justice mean in discourse and practice?
- What does the world look like from the cosmovisions of indigenous peoples in s.e.a. and oceania?
Format:
- This multimodal festival of ideas will be a series of online and hybrid activities on all Saturdays of May 2026.
- The festival is open to the public. There are no fees.
- We believe in decentralised and community-driven organisation. We ask contributors to self-organise and propose activities that thematically feed into the festival and work through the questions we are raising. We have created an online forum to support potential session organisers in locating participants beyond their current networks.
- We are open to collaborate with fellow collectives and movements. If you would like to bring the festival to your communities or help us in co-organising the festival, please reach out to us at organize@southsouthmovement.org.
Timeline:
Deadline for proposals: 5 January 2026, 23:00 Manila
Announcement of decisions on proposals and the final programme: February 2026
Registration: March to April 2026
Festival of ideas: All Saturdays of May 2026
SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSALS HERE BY 5 JANUARY 2026.
Visit our online forum for contributors looking to collaborate on proposals here.