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Global Futurities: Articulating the Struggle for (Other) worldly Justice

  • Long T. Bui EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 2, 2024
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Abstract

This essay lays out the concept of global futurities, which I define as the discursive scales and plural epistemologies by which marginalized identities and groups articulate, construct, imagine, or locate their futures. While global future is usually based on what could happen to all people and the planet, my framework of global futurities maps the differential horizon of being and co-becoming for those who have been historically denied a future due to discriminatory processes such as Black communities, Indigenous peoples, formerly colonized populations, migrants, etc. Such futurities are not simply pluralistic in terms of cultural diversity, but they serve as counter-hegemonic forms of futuring and worlding, shaped by dissident interests and political actors dedicated to promoting (Other)worldly justice. These subaltern viewpoints challenge a singular framing of humanity, as they involve multiple nodes and networks of power/knowledge/desire. These ontological and temporal geographies are centered in queer, feminist, intersectional, anti-racist, multi-species forms of collective agency amid existential threats from colonialism, globalization, the Anthropocene, and the COVID-19 pandemic.


Corresponding author: Long T. Bui, Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA, E-mail:

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Received: 2023-07-15
Accepted: 2024-03-10
Published Online: 2024-04-02

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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