The process of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century was not simply a transfer of power from imperial to nationalist hands. It called for new ideas, institutions, and practices that could construct a new world from the ruins of empires. This class will be an intellectual biography of that distinctive ‘Third Worldist’ political project through writings and reflections of (primarily) thinkers and actors who inhabited that world – from its emergence following decolonization to its decline during globalization. The class is divided into three parts: making, crisis, unmaking. The first part, ‘making’, will look at the ideas and institutions generated by the ambitious yet precarious project of constructing a new ‘post’colonial order – from democracy to developmentalism, from international law to culture. The second part will focus on the crisis of that project – both internal and external – in the late 1960s – 1970s, and the critical political and intellectual currents it brought forth. The last part, ‘unmaking’, looks at the eventual exhaustion and decline of the project starting from the 1980s, to what would be known as globalization. It would look at both the ideas that defeated it, as well as the new genre of critiques and requiems that followed. Through this intellectual biography, the course is interested in investigating the aspirations and limitations of the project of postcolonial worldmaking, and how it can be a resource for us to think about our present conditions, as the age of globalization itself seems exhausted. TBA