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Abstract

The end of the twentieth century saw the collapse of the global socialist and anticolonial revolutionary project. In its wake, citizens across the world, especially on the Left, found themselves without a future to look forward to, stranded in the present, amidst the ruins of the past. As the failings of the post-Cold War neoliberal economic order have become increasingly clear, there has been growing interest in the idea of reviving a now forgotten policy from almost half a century ago: the New International Economic Order (NIEO). While this essay begins by discussing the prospect of reviving the NIEO, it is this tension between the Bandung era and its romantic yearning for total revolution and the neoliberal era and the accompanying loss of futures that is of particular interest. This essay argues that the project of reviving the NIEO relies on a set of concepts, terms, and temporal arrangements that are no longer available in the postcolonial neoliberal present. Thus, the central motivating question of this paper regards the type of relationship we can have with a past that no longer speaks to our present. While this essay argues that revival is no longer an option, it also argues against forgetting projects like the NIEO and the tradition of global socialist and anticolonial revolution that they drew from. Instead, this essay makes an argument for remembrance, which exists within a space between reviving and forgetting that allows us to maintain a connection with the past while freeing us to develop new ways of dealing with the challenges of the postcolonial neoliberal present.

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