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In Thinking Against Empire: Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory, Julian Go continues his vital work on rethinking and redirecting the discipline of sociology. Go's piece relates to his wider oeuvre of postcolonial sociology – found in works such as his Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016) as well as multiple journal articles on epistemic exclusion (Go 2020), Southern theory (Go 2016), metrocentrism (Go 2014), and the history of sociology (Go 2009). In this response article, my aim is to think alongside some of the central themes outlined in Go's paper rather than offering a rebuttal of any sorts. In particular, I want to think through how the recent work on 'decoloniality' may play more of a central role in Go's vision of sociology and social theory than he acknowledges. In doing so, I hope to engage in Go's prodigious scholarship through centering discussions of the geopolitics of knowledge, double translation, and border thinking. Before proceeding to this discussion, I will offer a brief review of my reading of Go's paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to Julian Go's Lecture "Thinking against Empire. Anti‐colonial Thought and Social Theory." It proceeds in two parts: I first follow Go's invitation to read and reread Mabel Dove Danquah and Frantz Fanon and explore what their work contributes to our understanding of state‐forms. I then examine the terms of Go's invitation more closely. I contrast Go's juxtaposition of imperial sociology on the one hand and anti‐colonial sociology on the other hand, with the broader range of theoretical traditions and methods, which a practice‐oriented sociology of sociology and an international history of sociology would highlight. I raise the question what "standpoint" adds to the authors Go discusses and the broader range of scholars who have engaged with post‐colonial contexts in their research at this point in time. Calling for consideration of the anti‐colonial standpoint is a particular choice, which has a distinctive heritage in Hegelian‐Marxian projections of the social whole and is in tension with either deep exploration of particular thinkers or the middle‐range theorizing that Go also seems to endorse. Defined at a level of abstraction that is "above" (or underneath) actual conversations in a range of fields and subfields, it can appear as a "test" for scholars who have long engaged with post‐colonial contexts, which can have unintended consequences when coupled with the institutional power and asymmetric insularity of Anglo‐American academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]