Lotus and its afterlives: Memory, pedagogy and anticolonial solidarity

Abstract

In this article we examine the Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings journal as an insurgent space that reflected Afro-Asian solidarity. We argue that Lotus constituted “infrastructures of dissent” and “infrastructures of solidarity” which were constructed between different anti-colonial movements. Though Lotus was widely circulated through different geographies, debated and discussed, there remains very little scholarly attention around its origins, impact, and the forms of solidarity it aspired to engender. There have been a number of studies on the “Bandung Spirit” and the “Tricontinental” conferences, yet there is generally less attention to the networks of artists, authors, exhibits, and magazines that discussed and debated forging insurgent solidarities under difficult circumstances. The article thus explores how cultural production was used by Afro-Asian artists to enact “creative solidarity” and the ways Lotus provided a means for cultural producers to share knowledge, theorize, and build relations across anti-colonial struggles, albeit in a space not outside the political dynamics and contradictions of the moment. We also conceptualize Lotus as an anti-colonial archive and suggest that such archives can be used pedagogically in efforts to decolonize curriculum, through a histories from below approach, to remember those occluded from history.