CHANGING THEORY, concepts from the Global South

346pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, First SA Edition, Johannesburg, 2022

First published in the UK and USA in 2022.

“Changing Theory forces us to think about the world differently by ‘doing things with words.’ This brilliant set of reflections by major contemporary theorists on key concepts from the languages of the Global South is a rich provocation to change the world by changing the tools we think with.” Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Emeritus, Jadavpur University

"This work is a milestone, marking the Global South both as a field and as an epistemological revolution that is happening around the world. It is not only limited to criticism and deconstruction of colonial knowledge, Eurocentrism, or the North as intellectual lens, as most post-colonial theory has done, but re-discovers the contemporary nature of Southern concepts, and in their singularities and mutually associated global context, reconstructs the world's picture and the universe of our knowledge ... This book will be remembered as a classic." Wang Hui, Professor, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University

Contributions include:

"Nongqayi/Nongqai" by Hlonipha Mokoena

"Izithunguthu" by John Wright and Cynthia Kros

"Eddembe" by Edgar Taylor

"Logic" by Edwin Etieyibo

"Pajubā" by Caio Simões de Araújo

"Rantau" by Saarah Jappie.

Dilip M. Menon is the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, and Director, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa. His recent publications include the co-edited volumes Capitalisms: Towards a Global History. Professor Menon was recently awarded the 2021 Falling Walls Foundation Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities.