Son[i]a #443

Adom Getachew is a scholar who helps us rethink the stories we tell about empire, freedom, and the making of our world in the political struggles of the twentieth century. A political theorist at the University of Chicago, she has traced the histories and visions of African, Caribbean, and African American thinkers who understood decolonization not simply as the birth of new nations, but as bold and creative projects aimed at remaking global order itself. In her book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, and in her forthcoming work on Garveyism, she follows those who believed that a different world could be sung, spoken, and built into being.

In this podcast, Adom Getachew walks us through the histories of Garveyism, the dynamism of music and political speech, an inward-facing politics of self-transformation, and what decoloniality might mean beyond the mere insertion or inclusion of voices into structures that ultimately re-center existing forms of power. From Garveyite schools of ‘educating allocution’ to the broadcast traditions of anticolonial movements, she explores how power travels not only through institutions and treaties, but through sound—through the ways communities cultivate a collective voice when paper is too costly, borders too rigid, and histories too fractured. Her reflections remind us that political transformation is always collaborative, always practiced in relation, and shaped by those who find ways to speak even when they are not handed a stage.

Sound sources:
01 Marcus Garvey speech, 1921, Public Domain
02 A women griot is singing during a wedding in a small village of Mali (Africa), by Felix Blume.
03 Ghana woman sing traditional song dec 1986 2 007 01.wav, by klankbeeld.
04 VN africa.wav by joangilbardaji.

With the support

_{Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}