Panel 12: Mobility in a Post-Bandung World: from Anticolonial Solidarity to Postcolonial Exchanges (EN)

Chair:

Daniela Spina, CHAM-NOVA FCSH

Elisa Scaraggi, IHC-NOVA FCSH

Noemi Alfieri, CHAM-NOVA FCSH

This panel aims to gather contributions on how international mobility circuits and their textual representation changed after the outbreak of the Cold War and the creation of new alliances after the Bandung Conference (1955). Orsini, Srivastava, and Zecchini (2022) observed that, at the time, print cultures were considered so influential as to be able “to wage and advance certain struggles and ideas,” highlighting not only their capacity to disseminate anticolonial and anticapitalist propaganda but also the role of magazines, literary prizes, student scholarships, and other cultural activities in building a solidarity system aimed at facilitating intellectual transits.

These networks blossomed and endured the decline of empires, often becoming a way of sealing alliances between European powers and new postcolonial countries. Among many examples, we can reflect on how socialist countries such as Cuba, the USSR, or the GDR supported the education of young African and Asian students, which had an impact on the unfolding of domestic conflicts, as it happened during the civil war in Angola, Mozambique, or Sri Lanka. Rather than seeking consensus, the panel wants to encourage debate and discussion on whether these new circuits merely replace old imperial patterns of mobility, or if they constitute brand new forms of international exchange.

The organisers will welcome papers on any form of text, such as correspondence between intellectuals, archival material, periodicals, poetry, and fiction that may shed light on how intellectual mobility has shifted from colonial to early postcolonial times, with a special focus on, but not limited to, African and Asian countries.

Keywords: Bandung Conference; Cold War; Anticolonial Solidarity; Africa; Asia