ABSTRACT
The critical discontents with postcolonialism have given rise to the turn to decoloniality alongside the renewed appreciation of cosmopolitanism in postcolonial studies. This chapter is an introduction to decoloniality, exploring its convergences with and divergences from postcolonial theory as preconditions for its emergence as well as its urgency. Decoloniality extends the framework of postcolonialism through its critical engagement with time as inextricable from colonialism and globalization, on one hand, and subalternity, on the other. Its deployment of time as conceptual category generates subaltern and decolonial cosmopolitanism as an alternative framework to colonial modernity. It is this project of decolonial cosmopolitan dialogue that impels what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls the “epistemologies of the South” toward imagining a more equitable and ethical future.
