The Funambulist

04/08/2026

In October 2019, we had published a podcast episode with Lakota organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk and her daughter, Marcella Gilbert—a graduate of the We Will Remember Survival Schools—about the American Indian Movement (AIM) that started in 1968 in Minneapolis, on Dakota and Ojibwe land. In April 2026, Léopold met with both of them again, this time in the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in the Oceti Sakowin homelands themselves. He recorded the following passage where Madonna describes the daily organizing practice of AIM in 1973, when the two-month-long occupation of Wounded Knee in the Oglala Lakota Nation (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) started. She contrasts external narratives—those that saw Indigenous activists as violent savages, just like those glorifying their actions from afar—with the mundanity of reality. More generally, she reflects on that particular time and how it continues to inform the present of the Indigenous struggle for sovereignty in North America.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

In October 2019, we had published a podcast episode with Lakota organizer Madonna Thunder Hawk and her daughter, Marcella Gilbert—a graduate of the We Will Remember Survival Schools—about the American…

28/07/2026

The delineation of what separates the Global North from the Global South often essentializes the settler colonial border that separates the United States of America from the United Mexican States, as if the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty had created an absolute and definitive schism between the northern parts of Abya Yala and its central and southern parts. Without denying the importance of this line that became wall, we asked Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga to describe how our understanding of race—in particular blackness, indigeneity, and mestizaje—could depart from a North-South binary in the way it could share continental commonalities, while simultaneously holding regional and national specificities.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

The delineation of what separates the Global North from the Global South often essentializes the settler colonial border that separates the United States of America from the United Mexican States…

27/07/2026

The notions of Third Worldism (in opposition to both US and Soviet world paradigms) and of Non-Alignment complicate, to some extent, the binary of Global North/Global South. Yugoslavia was not only the only European state part of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM), but also hosted the first of its summits, in 1961. Yet, it is easy to romanticize Yugoslavian internationalism—in particular because of its production of a powerful iconography and architecture—and, in doing, so denying the various forms of nationalisms and Eurocentrism prevalent in Yugoslavia, and even more so in its various countries today. For these reasons, we asked Dubravka Sekulić and Sanja Horvatinčić to reflect on this balancing act we need to honor when we want to mobilize this memory.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

23/07/2026

Some of the favorite pieces we published started with an in-person conversation. This is the case of this text by Micol Meghnagi after a few days spent together in Bethlehem in March 2026. Just like this issue is not, per se, an issue against the concept of the Global South but, rather, against a binary reading of the world, Micol’s (com)mission for this contribution was to articulate the possibility of holding two contradictory truths together. In her case, these two truths revolve around Mu’ammar Gaddafi’s national and international policies during the four decades he ruled over Libya. While for her family, these policies signified exile, for her Palestinian’s friend whose parents were welcomed in Tripoli after the 1967 Naksa, they signified respite.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

Some of the favorite pieces we published started with an in-person conversation. This is the case of this text by Micol Meghnagi after a few days spent together in Bethlehem in March 2026.

21/07/2026

What does the global divide between North and South mean for a country and its people cut between both (a place where the North is part of the “Global South,” and the South, the “Global North”)? This text by Andrei-Sergei Kim and Lina Eunji Chang begins with a key moment of Korean history that began in The Hague in 1907, over 8,500 kilometers further west from the Korean peninsula. They trace the exile trajectories of Koreans throughout the 20th century, following those who fled Japanese colonialism to eastern Russia where they were later deported by Stalin to the Kazakh and Uzbek Soviet Republics, alongside those who were left south of the DMZ in 1953, often exiled (sometimes against their will, as infants) across the world.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

What does the global divide between North and South mean for a country and its people cut between both (a place where the North is part of the “Global South,” and the South, the “Global North”)?

20/07/2026

In 2018, Quito Swan published an essay demonstrating how the 1955 Afro–Asian Bandung Conference—one of the key historical events of the formation of what could be designated as the Global South—has contributed to normalizing the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and West Papua. In this text, using similar argumentative foundations, he offers to reflect on the multitude of spaces and times mobilized by global Blackness from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

In 2018, Quito Swan published an essay demonstrating how the 1955 Afro–Asian Bandung Conference—one of the key historical events of the formation of what could be designated as the Global South—has…

09/07/2026

Following an initial article by Onesphore Sematumba in our 61st issue (September–October 2025), we continue to explore the various complexities of the war in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We therefore asked Josaphat Musamba to describe the role of mining extractivism within this war, taking care not to make it the sole focus of the conflicts. Indeed, in Europe and North America, this extractivism is often presented as the cause, means, and goal of the war. The Congolese M23 rebellion, associated with the Rwandan army, is described as proxies for states and/or corporations of the Global North that profit handsomely from Congolese minerals. Although this narrative contains an undeniable proportion of truth, it nevertheless strikes us as simplistic if not lazy. Commissioning such a text for this issue thus reflects a desire to reaffirm that the regions comprising what is called “the Global South”—in this case, eastern Congo—are not exclusively driven politically by a relationship of exploitation with the North and possess diverse forms of agency, the potential for conflict within which can lead to wars.

This text has been translated from French by Léopold Lambert.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT Following an initial article by Onesphore Sematumba in our 61st issue (September–October 2025), we continue to explore the various complexities of the war in…

07/07/2026

One of the critiques we can make of the concept of Global South is the flattening of any regional specificity and the invisibilization of colonial domination committed by states such as the Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Moroccan, or Indian ones (to name only a few). While this domination is almost always historically rooted in European colonialism, the present occupations cannot be solely explained and contextualized in this history. This conversation between Kashmiri artist Čhoakkeladd and Saharawi organizer Buhari Lehbib was edited with this framework in mind. At a time when the occupations of Kashmir and Western Sahara are more normalized as they ever have been, we wanted to organize this dialogue to minimize the 6,000 kilometers that separate them and, in doing so, imagine what kind of solidarities could emerge from it.

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Read more in our current issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026).

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ČHOAKKELADD AND BUHARI LEHBIB One of the critiques we can make of the concept of Global South is the flattening of any regional specificity and the invisibilization of colonial…

06/07/2026

💫 NEW ISSUE! 💫 We are happy to share with you our new issue "Beyond the Global South" (July–August 2026), where we offer a critique of our own framework of knowledge production. We noticed how the concept of “Global South” has been turned into a handy word to lazily designate two-thirds of the world’s earthly area and 90% of its population, thus flattening the millions of specificities that characterize this grouping.

This presence of the “North” in the “South” and of the “South” in the “North” that characterizes the globality of capitalism and imperialism also encourages us to read the world through relationships (including those of domination) and imbrication, rather than through two large blocks.

Cover artwork by Johanna Mirabel.

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18/06/2026

When thinking of the various historical and present forms of resistance against settler colonialism in South(ern) Africa, it is crucial to consider rurality as a place at least as important as its urban counterpart. In this conversation with Hugo ka Canham, we speak about the “riotous deathscapes” of Mpondoland and how our relationship with the dead can be one of dialogue and political accountability.

Read more in our current issue "Fifty Years After Soweto" (May–June 2026).

A CONVERSATION WITH HUGO KA CANHAM When thinking of the various historical and present forms of resistance against settler colonialism in South(ern) Africa, it is crucial to consider rurality as a…