Living Legacies of Imperialism

March 29, 2026

Living Legacies of Imperialism

Event Series: Barcelona, March 2026

The experience of imperialism divides humanity—into those in the former empires who think of it as largely beneficial, and the great majority who denounce it as racist and exploitative. Politicians exploit these divisions to mobilize against their adversaries, vowing to revive past greatness and punish old oppressors. How might this great chasm of experience and memory be overcome in the face of shared global challenges? The overhaul of national memory cultures? New forms of dialogue? Reparations?

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Participants

Verónica Gago

Verónica Gago, a professor of social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martín, is a prominent political theorist and activist working on issues of feminism and the global political economy. Her most recent books include A Feminist Reading of Debt (2021, with Luci Cavallero), Feminist International (2020), and Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (2017). She is also a leader in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos (Not One Women Less) movement as both a theorist and an activist.

Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif is a novelist and political and cultural commentator living and working in Cairo and London. Her novel, The Map of Love (1999), shortlisted for the BookerPrize, is translated into over 30 languages. In 2007, Soueif co-founded the Palestine Festival of Literature. Her most recent book, This is Not a Border (2017), is a co-edited collection of essays and poems born of the festival. In 2014, she published a firsthand account of theEgyptian revolution of 2011: Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed. She was the first recipient of the Mahmoud Darwich Award in 2010 and the European Culture Foundation Princess Margriet Award in 2019, among other honors.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Juan Gabriel Vásquez is the author of nine works of fiction, including The Sound of Things Falling (2011)—which won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize, and the Alfaguara Prize—and The Shape of the Ruins (2018), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. In 2021, his novel Retrospective (2022) won the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Award and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. Vásquez is also the translator into Spanish of works by Joseph Conrad and Victor Hugo, among others. His own books have been translated into more than 30 languages. Based in Madrid, he is a frequent contributor to the Spanish journal El País.

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra is an Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. His prize-winning books—From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (2012), Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), and The World After Gaza (2025)—explore the turbulent history of the modern world and its enduring legacies. He is also the author of the novels The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he writes for leading international publications and co-founded Equator.