Decolonisation in the 21st Century: (Interventions)

Amid rising global inequality, intensifying geopolitical frictions, and the renewed force of colonial logics, this volume offers a critical interrogation of coloniality, decolonial practices, global capitalism, and the technologies of governance that entrench social and environmental injustice. Bringing together leading scholars from across disciplines and regions, the book traverses a wide range of contemporary terrains—from digital governance and platform capitalism to gig economies, migrant labor, and the racialized violence of displacement. Contributors unpack the historical roots and systemic architectures of domination while foregrounding situated efforts of resistance and decolonial praxis. Through incisive analysis and engaged scholarship, the volume challenges the institutional and ideological exclusions that continue to shape our world, offering compelling insights into how decolonisation might be reimagined as both critique and struggle in the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents:
Part I : Prelude 1: Transit Asia and the geopolitics of decolonisation: Toward a new radical solidarity by Joyce C.H. Liu and Brett Neilson 2: Against decolonisation? Drifting tributaries of colonialism’s legacies by Brett Neilson, Ned Rossiter, and Manuela Bojadžijev Part II : We are Still in the Time of Coloniality: Re-thinking Capitalism, War and Structural Minoritisation 3: All-under-heaven, networked underground: The limits of Tianxia 2.0 by Joyce C.H. Liu 4: Palestine, Gaza. Decolonial imaginaries for a dead-end present by Ruba Salih 5: Policy ghosts and decolonisation: Lessons from Australia by Tess Lea 6: Colonising the sea: Coastal land reclamations, imperialism, and the Anthropocene by Denis Byrne 7: ‘Affording’ racialised labour subjectivity: The case of migrant/minority worker-YouTubers in (neo-)post-colonial Hong Kong by Lisa Yuk-ming Leung Part III : Projects of Decolonisation: Artistic Interventions and Solidarity from the Margins 8: Nonuments: A participatory theatre as alternative historical writing and artistic intervention by Wen-Shu Lai 9: Following the stars: Aquapelagic listening by Karin G. Oen and James Jack 10: Decolonisation and the voices of the ancestors: Organising and creative work in the US and Taiwan by Valerie Soe 11: “Re-coupling site” of social media and the workplace against techno-colonisation: Chinese workers’ self-produced vlogs with class and gender connotations by Peier Chen and Pun Ngai Part IV : Coda: Toward Practical Ethics and Alternative Internationalism 12: Solidarity and the practical ethics of care and protection by Ranabir Samaddar 13: Reframing internationalism: For a politics of freedom and equality in an age of war and transition by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson

About the Author :
Joyce C.H. Liu is a professor of cultural studies, critical theory, and political philosophy and the director of the International Center for Cultural Studies at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Her research spans comparative literature, psychoanalysis, visual culture, and Chinese political thought, with recent work on geopolitics, biopolitics, border politics, internal colonialism, unequal citizenship, decolonization of knowledge, and art activism. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1984, she taught in Taiwan for over four decades, founding key institutes in comparative literature and cultural studies. Author of seven books and over 100 articles, Liu’s landmark works trace the topology of mentalities across the Taiwan–China complex. She also leads major transnational projects on migration, justice, and decolonial knowledge. Brett Neilson is Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. He is the author (with Sandro Mezzadra) of The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World (2024), The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism (2019) and Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labour (2013). Together with Ned Rossiter, Manuela Bojadžijev and others, he is currently working on an Australian Research Council research project on transborder electricity infrastructures.