Nonalignment and Its Forms of Knowledge

Abstract

Abstract Third Worldism, Afro-Asianism, nonalignment, and their associated projects were not simply diplomatic agendas on the international stage; they were cultural and epistemological projects tied to smaller, older geographies of significance. Beyond the politicians’ conferences, whether at Bandung (1955), Belgrade (1961), or Cairo (1964), events that receive the bulk of scholarly interest in nonalignment's trajectory and significance, nonalignment occurred at a different scale. Scrutinizing nonalignment's intellectual history can reveal forms of knowledge that can be salvaged from nonalignment's irretrievable political past. Rather than simply recounting the events of nonalignment—the grand accumulation of solidarity, the limits of which were subsequently revealed—it may be prudent to bring our attention to the ideas of nonalignment. To account for the content and conditions of nonaligned thought, this article narrates a history of Arab and Indian intellectuals thinking together in the second half of the twentieth century. The author focuses principally on the work of the Lebanese scholar-diplomat Clovis Maksoud (1926–2016), the most articulate Arab theorist of positive neutrality and nonalignment.