Introduction: Thinking the World from Durban

This introductory chapter foregrounds the question of epistemology, and privileges the vantage point of “theorizing from the Global South.” In so doing, it offers an historical and geographical methodology for understanding the evolution of the modern world-system from the specific vantage point of the city of Durban, South Africa. The chapter introduces a key thread running throughout the entire book: grappling with the dialectic between racial capitalism and freedom struggles by examining the relationship between shack dwellers and the municipal government in Durban. I aim to follow the notion that black radical struggles embody freedom dreams that are epistemological in nature. My methodological proposal is therefore to approach Abahlali baseMjondolo, a social movement of shack dwellers, as a looking glass that reflects and refracts back to us important insights regarding our common ways of seeing and understanding the world. It is from this lens that I believe we can best comprehend both the violent structures that shack dwellers confront as well as their alternative visions of a "living communism" that they seek to realize through collective struggle.