Special issue: the global sixties in the Global South

Abstract

ABSTRACT This Introduction provides a conceptual framework and preview of the five articles contained in the Special Issue, ”Global Sixties in the Global South.” The articles derive from a two-day, interdisciplinary conference held at Stony Brook University in Spring 2022 and reflect scholarship by both younger and more established scholars who explore diverse topics from African, Asian, and Latin American perspectives. After a brief historiographic overview and discussion of the semantic relationship between ”Global Sixties” and ”Global South,” the Introduction makes the case for the importance of interdisciplinary dialogue as the basis for Global Sixties scholarship. The Introduction further argues how the articles that make up the Special Issue reveal the contradictions inherent to solidarities across disparate lands, the cultural valence of place, the continued if refracted operation of imperialisms, the messiness of ideological schisms, and the corruption inherent to power dynamics that suffused revolutionary consciousness and Third World ambitions alike. Ultimately, we argue that ”Global Sixties in the Global South” provides a framework that reveals a world deeply entangled across geopolitics, political economy, and culture in ways that account for both the meta-narratives of revolution and ideology and the micro-histories of personal intimacy and affective relations.