Saturday, October 17, 2026
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (GMT+07:00) Yogyakarta
Location: Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta
.jpg)
The persistence of socialism as a political force is one of the striking trends of the last decade. The rise of China has illustrated the staying power of state socialism, which many considered moribund after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the appeal of democratic socialism, even in the United States, has taken many by surprise. Does socialism have a promising future in the Global South—and even in the West? Ranjit Hoskote, Verónica Gago, and Kaiser Kuo will address these questions in conversation with Pankaj Mishra.
Participants
Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, theorist, and curator whose influential work centers on the complex history and presence of cultural pluralism from the local to the global. He has authored eight books of poetry—including Icelight (2022), Jonahwhale (2018), and a translation of a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic-poet, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd (2011)—and the acclaimed book Confluences: Forgotten Histories between East and West (2012, with Ilija Trojanow). Hoskote has curated more than 50 showcases of Indian and global art over the past three decades, including India’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
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.
Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishra (moderator) is a renowned Indian author, essayist, and literary critic with a global readership. Two of his prize-winning books, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia (2012) and Age of Anger: A History of the Present (2017), explore the history of colonialism and its enduring legacies in our contemporary global era. Mishra is also the author of two critically acclaimed novels: The Romantics (1999) and Run and Hide (2022). His columns and essays have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets. Mishra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Kaiser Kuo
Kaiser Kuo is a musician, writer, and the host and co-founder of the Sinica podcast, the leading English-language podcast on current affairs in China. Since April 2010, Sinica has published over 500 episodes featuring prominent diplomats, academics, journalists, and others with expertise on China. Previously, Kuo served as director of international communications for China’s leading search engine, Baidu. Kuo graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988 with a degree in political science and received a master’s degree in East Asian studies from the University of Arizona. He was lead guitarist and co-founder of Tang Dynasty, a Chinese heavy metal band founded in 1989.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by October 9 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.