Berkley Center

For more than a century, thinkers of the non-Western world have explored the seeds of an alternative global modernity. They have outlined modes of universalism and an ethics of transcendence that may help avoid certain pathologies of the modernity forged by the West: inequality, racism, militarism, and environmental degradation. Yet the West retains its intellectual hegemony, and we remain far away from what Pope Francis calls the "culture of encounter"—from "seeking point of contact [and] building bridges." In this Berkley Center Lecture, Pankaj Mishra spoke about how breaking out of the old regime of intellectual inequality and calibrating the moral and intellectual legacy of the Global South is more urgent than ever before in the age of the polycrisis. Only a truly international conversation can identify common ground and promote concrete progress on the complex issues facing global humanity.