Can the Global South Speak?

Abstract

This research examines the function of cultural and intellectual production from the Global South as a site of epistemic resistance and narrative sovereignty within the enduring structures of colonial modernity. Utilising decolonial theory and postcolonial critique, it contends that literature, cinema, digital activism, and academic interventions jointly contest the epistemic hierarchies that elevate Western perspectives as universal. This study examines works such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, Malala Yousafzai’s activism, and India’s #MeToo movement to demonstrate how Global South actors reconstruct marginalised histories, reconfigure representational frameworks, and advocate for epistemologies rooted in lived experience. The article integrates theoretical perspectives from Quijano, Spivak, Santos, Mignolo, Grosfoguel, Sen, and Nakata, situating these cultural practices within a broader context of epistemic fairness and pluriversality. It contends that knowledge production in the Global South seeks not just to integrate into existing frameworks but also to actively transform the global knowledge architecture.