What Time Was It?

In Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, University of Chicago political theorist Adom Getachew has written a revisionist account of decolonization as “worldmaking” to inspire those who follow trailblazers like Kwame Nkrumah in pursuit of what she calls an “anti-imperial future.” As with other such projects of “imagining,” as Ernest Renan once observed about nationalism, a certain forgetfulness and even historical error would appear essential.