The concept of "Global South" (as opposed to the "Global North") gained another boost in popularity with the war on Gaza. Language often tries its best to keep up with the split that divides our world.
Initially, it was said that we are split into East and West, a binary that remained in usage for generations in both the "East" and the "West," and it still is. Both sides were ascribed particular traits, some derogatory and others laudatory, depending on who was ascribing them. Later on, other terms were developed in an attempt to make the terminology more precise or definitive, but they hardly shifted away from the essentialism that preceded them.
In 1952, for example, the French historian and demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term "Third World" to refer to countries that had been gaining independence from Western colonialism without adopting a communist system of governance. Indeed, not long after, we saw the emergence of the "Non-Aligned Movement and Positive Neutrality" bloc, which aligned itself with the "East" at critical junctures. As for the "Second World," that was referred to as the "Socialist Camp", it was also described, in equal measure, as the "Eastern Bloc," after the founder of the Soviet Union had called on the "peoples of the East" to stand up to "imperialism."
The universe was also split into the "under-developed” or "backward" and "developed” worlds. The former encompassed countries located not in the East geographically, and it had great similarity with the concept of "center and periphery." Nonetheless, the original connotations remained the same. The split was attributed to economics at times and culture at others, but always to vitalism and dynamism. Labeling half of the world underdeveloped or backward does not negate that this same half was nevertheless the focal point of the revolution that would ignite the world and from which enlightenment would beam.
Meanwhile, Marxist, and especially Maoist, literature facilitated this task through two successive processes: the working class of the West had "betrayed" its interests and supposed consciousness when it supported the First World War, and it subsequently doubled down on its betrayal by becoming, through its social democratic parties, part of parliamentary way of life. As for the "dependent" countries, they have no chance of seeing the emergence of a bourgeoisie that transcends servitude to the imperial metropolis. As a result of these two processes, one side was deprived of proletarian virtue, entrenching it in its Western ignobility, and another side was sparred bourgeois aberrations, rooting its untainted Eastern essence.
In a similar vein, the late Houari Boumediene championed a "new global economic order" before he left this world with his country gripped by a vicious civil war, which unfolded after Frantz Fanon had reassured us that Algerian violence had found its outlet in the country’s confrontation with French colonialism and that there would be none left for Algerians to use among themselves after gaining independence.
Inspired by many Islamic currents that had preceded it, Iranian Khomeinism pushed further in this direction. Although it claimed to be "neither Eastern nor Western," in practice, it glorified the backwardness that is usually tied to the "East'' and presented it as authenticity and uniqueness that contrast with its caricatures of the "sick" progress that the "West" claims for itself.
After Edward Said pasted Aeschylus on Dante and stacked Marx on Bernard Lewis, describing them all as "Western Orientalists," successive caravans of Arab intellectuals began voicing their dissatisfaction with both progress and enlightenment, which they believed weighed heavily on our region! Thus, the translation movement in the region became engrossed in an effort to translate every Western author disgruntled by the West, especially those opposed to everything modern and enlightened about it.
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the "Second World" becoming a thing of the past, what remained of class consciousness waned in favor of authentic identities, and new highways were paved for these myths.
As for the "Global South," it was invigorated by the birth of the BRICS in 2009, before it was followed by US-Chinese commercial and non-commercial competition, and then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all of which are seen as signs on the road toward the decline and demise of the West.
What is true about all of this is that many countries are faced with growing debts, poverty, hunger, and their extremely limited options for dealing with climate change. However, the attribution of all of their misery to the West is not at all convincing, especially given this insatiable appetite for critiquing Western policies, Western history, culture, and democracy, to pave the way for announcing the death of this very West.
This is all happening without any consideration being paid for the impossibility of arriving at a theoretical definition of the "Global South" that is more coherent than those of the past. This "South" is home to a variety of political systems, and lumping together countries like Malaysia (where the per capita income exceeds $28,000) and Zambia (where it is less than $4) is a farce. That is to say nothing about the disregard for phenomena that operate in various directions and cannot be reduced to a nutshell, such as globalization, migration, displacement, China's current position in the world, and the fact that criticism of the "North" is still issued from and practiced in the "North" alone.
With all of that, the mother of all scandals remains the boisterous celebration in this "South" of tyrannical and corrupt regimes, and militias immersed in crime and smuggling, and portraying it as an unequivocally blessed world void of contradiction. Thus, it is only fair for such a world to pride itself on its myths of identitarian authenticity, which are "suppressed" by the North and entrusted with leading us to a bright future.
The only contradiction creeping over the ground is what we share with the cursed North. We all march to fight it under the shadow of Khamenei sitting in his chair high above us, or one of the pious men sitting under his feet. As for the "clash of civilizations," only that damned Samuel Huntington spoke of it.
