Decolonial cosmopolitan citizenship for a post-COVID-19 world: Towards a reimagined convivial planetary re-existence

Abstract

This paper rethinks a decolonial cosmopolitanism citizenship as a potentially useful heuristic to promote a planetary conviviality that could provide succour to humanity in a post COVID-19 world. The outbreak of the COVID- 19 pandemic in 2019 was followed by raced and xenophobic discourses as nations re-borderised in efforts to stem the pandemic. Such action resulted in trauma and acrimony on a planetary scale as the ideal of cosmopolitanism citizenship foundered on the altar of narrow selfish interest. It is aginst this backdrop that this paper seeks to foreground a decolonial cosmopolitan citizenship as part of a global imaginary for a post-COVID- 19 world. The argument developed is that decoloniality when intepellated with Ubuntu principles guarantees a cosmopolitan citizenship for a convivial re-existence in a post-COVID- 19 world.

Keywords

• covid-19; conviviality
• cosmopolitan citizenship; decoloniality; global south; ubuntu