Spectres of the Third World: global modernity and the end of the three worlds

Author: Dirlik Arif  

Publisher: Routledge Ltd

ISSN: 1360-2241

Source: Third World Quarterly, Vol.25, Iss.1, 2004-02, pp. : 131-148

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Abstract

The three worlds configuration was a product of Eurocentric mappings of the world to deal with the postcolonial situation that emerged after World War II. Mortgaging Third World futures to either capitalism or socialism, which was a premise of this mapping, also pointed to a future dominated by alternatives of European origin. The situation I describe as 'global modernity' refers to a post-Eurocentric modernity that has scrambled notions of space and time inherited from modernity. It is a product of modernity, and of the struggles that the idea of three worlds sought to capture, but those struggles have led to unanticipated reconfigurations globally, including the reconfiguration of capitalism that has globalised following the fall of the Second World (the world of socialisms). This article discusses some of the problems attendant upon this situation.