CITIM is celebrating its 40th anniversary and with that, the Brennpunkt Drëtt Welt special edition comes to life to dwell on the big issues common to our work at ASTM and CITIM. This special edition represents a change from the usual issues we publish. The special edition focuses on a particular theme and aims to develop it from different angles and to be accessible to a wider audience.
A constant in our work, has been the aim of justice for a “monde plus solidaire” through an implicit and explicit process of decolonization. This issue is therefore dedicated to the call to decolonize. Some articles, such as “Point brûlant”, “Et au Luxembourg?” and “Horizon des possibles” present more in-depth analyses. The rest of the articles are intended to be more accessible: a closer look at the world news, personal interviews, practical recommendations, and even the art of the incredible artist Sozapato.
Why the call to decolonize? There is a latent urgency to find other ways of being in the world to respond to what appears in the global North as the climate crisis of the Anthropocene. Most actions taken by governments and corporations seem to solve critical problems in the short term. In reality, these actions deteriorate our livelihoods in the long term. In the face of such a dead end, the call to decolonize is a long-standing struggle for emancipation that presents serious critiques and alternatives to our globalized system, which some call “capitalism”. Upon closer examination, the defense of life lies on those on the frontlines, the unheard voices of our globalized system with their call to decolonize: the racialized communities or, as we call them, the global South.
This issue focuses largely on the call to decolonize in the global South by and with Indigenous peoples. Their call remains inseparable from the defense of land and nature in an ecocentric perspective. At the same time, such an attempt to understand the call to decolonize is futile without taking a close look at what is happening at home. In recent years, the call to decolonize has indeed become strong and insightful in its aim of removing racism from society in Luxembourg.
This is an urgent appeal to slow down and question, more than ever, our way of being in the world. It is a call to the inevitability of our coexistence: justice (social and environmental) is not a matter of compassion. It is a matter of survival. The wrongly called “Anthropocene” (age of man) assumes that all humankind is responsible for the destruction of the Earth. It ignores the vast resistance in the global South. Nevertheless, the drums of destruction have a name and an address. Their origin is home in the global North.
Raquel Luna
