Decoloniality

Decoloniality (Spanish: decolonialidad) is a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth.^[2] It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and imperialism.^[3]^: 168-174

Decoloniality emerged as part of a South America movement examining the role of the European colonization of the Americas in establishing Eurocentric modernity/coloniality according to Aníbal Quijano, who defined the term and reach.^[2]^[4]^[5]

Decolonial theory and practice have recently been subject to increasing critique. For example, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argued that it is analytically unsound, that "coloniality" is often conflated with "modernity", and that "decolonisation" becomes an impossible project of total emancipation.^[6] Jonatan Kurzwelly and Malin Wilckens used the example of decolonisation of academic collections of human remains, which were collected during colonial times to support racist theories and give legitimacy to colonial oppression, and showed how both contemporary scholarly methods and political practice perpetuate reified and essentialist notions of identities.^[7]

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Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course World History and today we’re going to talk about decolonization. The empires European states formed in the 19th century proved about as stable and long-lasting as Genghis Khan’s, leading to so many of the nation states we know and love today. Yes, I’m looking at you, Burundi. DID YOU EVER KNOW YOU’RE MY BURUNDI? YOU’RE EVERYTHING-- [Stan brings Karaoke house down with his version of WindBeneathMyWings? Not kidding] STAN, DON’T CUT TO THE INTRO! I SING LIKE AN ANGEL! [BEST] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [intro music] [EVAR] So unless you’re over 60-- and let’s face it, Internet, you’re not-- you’ve only ever known a world of nation states. But as we’ve seen from Egypt to Alexander the Great to China to Rome to the Mongols, who, for once, are not the exception here, [lackadaisical layabouts listen to their legion's lamentations, lounging no longer.] to the Ottomans and the Americas, empire has long been the dominant way we’ve organized ourselves politically-- or at least the way that other people have organized us. Mr. Green, Mr. Green! So to them Star Wars would’ve been, like, a completely different movie. Most of them would’ve been like, Go Empire! Crush those rebels! Yeah, also they’d be like what is this screen that displays crisp moving images of events that are not currently occurring? [failing to imagine MFTP's ideas complexly] Also, not to get off-topic, but you never learn what happens AFTER the rebel victory in Star Wars. And, as as we’ve learned from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, revolution is often the easy part. [tell that to residents of Alderaan] I mean, you think destroying a Death Star is hard? Try negotiating a trade treaty with gungans. [oh Naboo you di'int!] Right, anyway. So, the late 20th century was not the first time that empires disintegrated. Rome comes to mind. Also the Persians. And of course the American Revolution ended one kind of European imperial experiment. But in all those cases, Empire struck back... heh heh, you see what I did there? I mean, Britain lost its 13 colonies, but later controlled half of Africa and all of India. And what makes the recent decolonization so special is that at least so far, no empires have emerged to replace the ones that fell. And this was largely due to World War II because on some level, the Allies were fighting to stop Nazi imperialism: Hitler wanted to take over Central Europe, and Africa, and probably the Middle East-- and the Ally defeat of the Nazis discredited the whole idea of empire. So the English, French, and Americans couldn’t very well say to the colonial troops who’d fought alongside them, “Thank you so much for helping us to thwart Germany’s imperialistic ambitions. As a reward, please hand in your rifle and return to your state of subjugation.” [a little awkward, that] Plus, most of the big colonial powers-- especially France, Britain, and Japan-- had been significantly weakened by World War II, by which I mean that large swaths of them looked like this: So, post-war decolonization happened all over the place: The British colony that had once been “India” became three independent nations. By the way, is this Gandhi or is this Ben Kingsley playing Gandhi? In Southeast Asia, French Indochina became Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. And the Dutch East Indies became Indonesia. But of course when we think about decolonization, we mostly think about Africa going from this to this: So we’re gonna oversimplify here, [got that, commenters?] because we have to, [not because we hate and/or forgot you] but decolonization throughout Afro-Eurasia had some similar characteristics. Because it occurred in the context of the Cold War, many of these new nations had to choose between socialist and capitalist influences, which shaped their futures. [and their future color-coding] While many of these new countries eventually adopted some form of democracy, the road there was often rocky. Also decolonization often involved violence, usually the overthrow of colonial elites. But we’ll turn now to the most famous nonviolent-- or supposedly so, anyway-- decolonization: that of India. So the story begins, more or less, in 1885 with the founding of the Indian National Congress. Congress Party leaders and other nationalists in India were usually from the elite classes. Initially, they didn’t even demand independence from Britain. But they were interested in creating a modern Indian nation rather than a return to some ancient pre-colonial form, possibly because India was-- and is--hugely diverse and really only unified into a single state when under imperial rule by one group or another, whether the Mauryans, the Guptas, the Mughals, or the British. Okay, let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The best known Indian nationalist, Mohandas K. Gandhi, was a fascinating character: [and a fabric-draping genius] A British educated lawyer born to a wealthy family, he’s known for making his own clothes, his long fasts, and his battles to alleviate poverty, improve the rights of women, and achieve a unified Indian independence from Britain. In terms of decolonization, he stands out for his use of nonviolence and his linking it to a somewhat mythologized view of Indian history. I mean, after all, there’s plenty of violence in India’s past and in its heroic epics, but Gandhi managed to hearken back to a past that used nonviolence to bring change. Gandhi and his compatriot Jawaharlal Nehru believed that a single India could continue to be ruled by Indian elites and somehow transcend the tension between the country’s Hindu majority and its sizable Muslim minority. In this they were less practical than their contemporary, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League who felt-- to quote historian Ainslie Embree-- "that the unified India of which the Congress spoke was an artificial one, created and maintained by British bayonets.” Jinnah proved correct and in 1947 when the British left, their Indian colony was partitioned into the modern state of India and West and East Pakistan, the latter of which became Bangladesh in 1971. While it’s easy to congratulate both the British and the Indian governments on an orderly and nonviolent transfer of power, the reality of partition was neither orderly nor nonviolent. About 12 million people were displaced as Hindus in Pakistan moved to India and Muslims in India moved to Pakistan. As people left their homes, sometimes unwillingly, there was violence, and all tolled as many as half a million people were killed, more than died in the bloody Indonesian battle for independence. So while it’s true that the massive protests that forced Britain to end its colonization of India were nonviolent, the emergence of the independent states involved really wasn’t. Thanks, Thought Bubble. All this violence devastated Gandhi, whose lengthy and repeated hunger strikes to end violence had mixed results, and who was eventually assassinated by a Hindu nationalist who felt that Gandhi was too sympathetic to Muslims. Oh, it’s time for the open letter? [we should just add wheels to the throne, maybe?] An Open Letter to hunger strikers. But first, let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today. A cupcake? Stan, this just seems cruel. [and delicious. DFTB delicious.] These are from Meredith the Intern to celebrate Merebration, the holiday she invented to celebrate the anniversary of her singleness. [no good can come of this, John…] Dear hunger strikers, Do you remember earlier when I said that Gandhi hearkened back to a mythologized Indian past? Well it turns out that hunger striking in India goes back all the way to, like, the 5th century BCE. Hunger strikes have been used around the world including British and American suffragettes, who hunger struck to get the vote. And in pre-Christian Ireland, when you felt wronged by someone, it was common practice to sit on their doorstep and hunger strike until your grievance was addressed. And sometimes it even works. I really admire you, hunger strikers. But I lack the courage of your convictions. Also, this is an amazing cupcake. Best wishes, John Green Since independence, India has largely been a success story, although we will talk about the complexity of India’s emerging global capitalism next week. For now, though, let’s travel east to Indonesia, [by map?] a huge nation of over 13,000 islands that has largely been ignored here on Crash Course World History due to our long-standing bias against islands. Like, we haven’t even mentioned Greenland on this show. The Greenlanders, of course, haven’t complained because they don’t have the Internet.[about to show how much internet they have in comments...] So, the Dutch exploited their island colonies with the system of kultuurstelsel, [gesundheit!] in which all peasants had to set aside one fifth of their land to grow cash crops for export to the Netherlands. This accounted for 25% of the total Dutch national budget and it explains why they have all kinds of fancy buildings despite technically living underwater. [flippers > wooden shoes] They’re like sea monkeys. This system was rather less popular in Indonesia, and the Dutch didn’t offer much in exchange. They couldn’t even defend their colony from the Japanese, who occupied it for most of World War II, during which time the Japanese furthered the cause of Indonesian nationalism by placing native Indonesians in more prominent positions of power, including Sukarno, who became Indonesia’s first prime minister. After the war, the Dutch-- with British help-- tried to hold onto their Indonesian colonies with so-called “police actions,” which went on for more than four years before Indonesia finally won its independence in 1950. Over in the French colonies of IndoChina, so called because they were neither Indian nor Chinese, things were even more violent. The end of colonization was disastrous in Cambodia, where the 17-year reign of Norodom Sihanouk gave way to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, [Pol Pot definitely prime candidate for the Evil Baby Orphanage] which massacred a stunning 21% of Cambodia’s population between 1975 and 1979. In Vietnam, the French fought communist-led nationalists, especially Ho Chi Minh from almost the moment World War II ended until 1954, when the French were defeated. And then the Americans learned that there was a land war available in Asia, so they quickly took over from the French and communists did not fully control Vietnam until 1975. Despite still being ostensibly communist, Vietnam now manufactures all kinds of stuff that we like in America, especially sneakers. More about that next week, too, but now to Egypt. You’ll remember that Egypt bankrupted itself in the 19th century, trying to industrialize and ever since had been ruled by an Egyptian king who took his orders from the British. So while technically Egypt had been independent since 1922, it was very dependent independence. But, that changed in the 1950s, when the king was overthrown by the army. The army commander who led that coup was Gemal Abdul Nasser, who proved brilliant at playing the US and the USSR off each other to the benefit of Egypt. Nasser’s was a largely secular nationalism, and he and his successors saw one of the other anti-imperialistic nationalist forces in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, as a threat. So once in power, Nasser and the army banned the Muslim Brotherhood, forcing it underground, where it would disappear and never become an issue again. [not exactly] Wait, what’s that? ...Really? And finally let’s turn to Central and Southern Africa. One of the most problematic legacies of colonialism was its geography. Colonial boundaries became redefined as the borders of new nation states, even where those boundaries were arbitrary or, in some cases, pernicious. The best known example is in Rwanda, where two very different tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsis were combined into one nation. But, more generally, the colonizers’ focus on value extraction really hurt these new nations. Europeans claimed to bring civilization and economic development to their colonies, but this economic development focused solely on building infrastructure to get resources and export them. Now whether European powers deliberately sabotaged development in Africa is a hot-button topic we’re going to stay well away from, but this much is inarguably true: when the Europeans left, African nations did not have the institutions necessary to thrive in the post-war industrial world. They had very few schools, for instance, and even fewer universities. Like, when the Congo achieved independence from Belgium in 1960, there were sixteen college graduates in a country of fourteen million people. Also, in many of these new countries, the traditional elites had been undermined by imperialism. Most Europeans didn’t rule their African possessions directly but rather through the proxies of local rulers. And once the Europeans left, those local rulers, the upper classes, were seen as illegitimate collaborators. And this meant that a new group of rulers had to rise up to take their place, often with very little experience in governance. I mean, Zimbabwe’s long-serving dictator Robert Mugabe was a high school teacher. Let that be a lesson to you. YOUR TEACHERS MAY HAVE DICTATORIAL AMBITIONS. But most strongmen have emerged, of course, from the military: Joseph Mobutu seized power in the Congo, which he held from 1965 until his death in 1997. Idi Amin was military dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya from 1977 until 2011. The list goes on, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression about Africa. Because while the continent does have less freedom and lower levels of development than other regions in the world, many African nations show strong and consistent signs of growth despite the challenges of decolonization. Botswana for instance has gone from 70% literacy to 85% in the past 15 years and has seen steady GDP growth over 5%. Benin’s economy has grown in each of the past 12 years, which is better than Europe or the US can say. In 2002, Kenya’s life expectancy was 47; today it’s 63. Ethiopia’s per capita GDP has doubled over the past 10 years; and Mauritania has seen its infant mortality rate fall by more than 40%. Now, this progress is spotty and fragile, but it’s important to note that these nations have existed, on average, about 13 years less than my dad. Of course, past experience with the fall of empires hasn’t given us cause for hope, but many citizens of these new nations are seeing real progress. That said, disaster might lurk around the corner. It’s hard to say. I mean, now more than ever, we’re trying to tell the story of humans... from inside the story of humans. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. [single, yes, but waaay too cool for you] The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Bubble. [is it true what they say about Winnipeg?] Last week’s phrase of the week was “Meatloaf’s Career.” If you want to guess at this week’s phrase of the week or suggest future ones, you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to Never get involved in a land war in Asia. [outro]

Foundational principles

Coloniality of knowledge

Coloniality of knowledge is a concept that Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano developed and adapted to contemporary decolonial thinking. The concept critiques what proponents call the Eurocentric system of knowledge, arguing the legacy of colonialism survives within the domains of knowledge. For decolonial scholars, the coloniality of knowledge is central to the functioning of the coloniality of power and is responsible for turning colonial subjects into victims of the coloniality of being, a term that refers to the lived experiences of colonized peoples.

Coloniality of power

The coloniality of power is a concept interrelating the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies, decoloniality, and Latin American subaltern studies, most prominently by Anibal Quijano. It identifies and describes the living legacy of colonialism in contemporary societies in the form of social discrimination that outlived formal colonialism and became integrated in succeeding social orders.^[9] The concept identifies the racial, political and social hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism in Latin America that prescribed value to certain peoples/societies while disenfranchising others.

Colonialism as the root

Decoloniality is founded on the principle that European colonialism is at the root of how the modern world functions today.^[10]^[11]

The decolonial movement includes diverse forms of critical theory, articulated by pluriversal forms of liberatory thinking that arise out of distinct situations. In its academic forms, it analyzes class distinctions, ethnic studies, gender studies, and area studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic (in the sense of semiotics) and practical “options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power"^[12]^: xxvii or from a "matrix of modernity" rooted in colonialism.^[10]^[11]

It considers colonialism "the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today," although this foundational interconnectedness is often downplayed.^[12]^: 2 This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power or coloniality of power. Some have built upon decolonial theory by proposing Critical Indigenous Methodologies for research.^[13]

Imperialism as the successor

Although formal and explicit colonization ended with the decolonization of the Americas during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the decolonization of much of the Global South in the late twentieth century, its successors, Western imperialism and globalization perpetuate those inequalities. The colonial matrix of power produced social discrimination eventually variously codified as racial, ethnic, anthropological or national according to specific historic, social, and geographic contexts.^[3]^: 168 Decoloniality emerged as the colonial matrix of power was put into place during the 16th century.^{[citation needed]}^{[clarification needed]} It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from, Eurocentrism.^[14]^: 542

Coloniality of gender

Coloniality of gender is a concept developed by Argentine philosopher Maria Lugones. Building off Aníbal Quijano's foundational concept of coloniality of power,^[16] coloniality of gender explores how European colonialism influenced and imposed European gender structures on Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This concept challenges the notion that gender can be isolated from the impacts of colonialism.

Scholars have also extended the concept of coloniality of gender to describe colonial experiences in Asian and African societies. The concept is notably employed in academic fields like decolonial feminism and the broader study of decoloniality.^[17]

Disobedience and de-linking

Decoloniality has been called a form of "epistemic disobedience",^[12]^: 122-123 "epistemic de-linking",^[18]^: 450 and "epistemic reconstruction".^[3]^: 176 In this sense, decolonial thinking is the recognition and implementation of a border gnosis or subaltern,^[19]^: 88 a means of eliminating the provincial tendency to pretend that Western European modes of thinking are universal.^[14]^: 544 In less theoretical applications—such as movements for Indigenous autonomy—decoloniality is considered a program of de-linking from contemporary legacies of coloniality,^[18]^: 452 a response to needs unmet by the modern Rightist or Leftist governments,^[12]^: 217 or, most broadly, social movements in search of a “new humanity”^[12]^: 52 or the search for “social liberation from all power organized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and domination”.^[3]^: 178

Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire contributed to decolonial thinking, theory, and practice by identifying core principles of decoloniality. The first principle they identified is that colonialism must be confronted and treated as a discourse which fundamentally frames all aspects of thinking, organization, and existence. Framing colonialism as a "fundamental problem" empowers the colonized to center their experiences and thinking without seeking the recognition of the colonizer—a step towards the creation of decolonial thinking.^[20]

The second core principle is that decolonization goes beyond ending colonization. Nelson Maldonado-Torres explains, "For decolonial thinking decolonization is less the end of colonialism wherever it has occurred and more the project of undoing and unlearning the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being and of creating a new sense of humanity and forms of interrelationality."^[20] This is the work of the decolonial project that has epistemic, political, and ethical dimensions.^[21]

Aníbal Quijano summarized the goals of decoloniality as a need to recognize that the instrumentation of reason by the colonial matrix of power produced distorted paradigms of knowledge and spoiled the liberating promises of modernity, and by that recognition, realize the destruction of the global coloniality of power.^[18]^: 452 Alanna Lockward explains that Europe has engaged in an intentional "politics of confusion" to conceal the relationship between modernity and coloniality.^[22]

Decoloniality is synonymous with decolonial "thinking and doing",^[12]^: xxiv and it questions or problematizes the histories of power emerging from Europe. These histories underlie the logic of Western civilization.^[3]^: 168 Thus, decoloniality refers to analytic approaches and socioeconomic and political practices opposed to pillars of Western civilization: coloniality and modernity. This makes decoloniality both a political and epistemic project.^[12]^{: xxiv-xxiv}

Examples

Examples of contemporary decolonial programmatics and analytics exist throughout the Americas. Decolonial movements include the contemporary Zapatista governments of Southern Mexico, Indigenous movements for autonomy throughout South America, ALBA,^[23] CONFENIAE in Ecuador, ONIC in Colombia, the TIPNIS movement in Bolivia, and the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil. These movements embody action oriented towards the goals expressed to seek ever-increasing freedoms by challenging the reasoning behind modernity, since modernity is in fact a facet of the colonial matrix of power.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of contemporary decolonial analytics include ethnic studies programs at various educational levels designed primarily to appeal to certain ethnic groups, including those at the K-12 level recently banned in Arizona, as well as long-established university programs. Scholars primarily with analytics who fail to recognize the connection between politics or decoloniality and the production of knowledge—between programmatics and analytics—are those claimed by decolonialists to most likely to reflect "an underlying acceptance of capitalist modernity, liberal democracy, and individualism" values which decoloniality seeks to challenge.^[24]^: 6

Decolonial critique

Researchers, authors, creators, theorists, and others engage in decoloniality through essays, artwork, and media. Many of these creators engage in decolonial critique. In decolonial critique, thinkers employ the theoretical, political, epistemic, and social frameworks advanced by decoloniality to scrutinize, reformulate, and denaturalize often widely accepted and celebrated concepts.^[20]^[25] Many decolonial critiques focus on reformulating the concept of modernity as situated within colonial and racial frameworks.^[26] Decolonial critique may inspire a decolonial culture that delinks from reproducing Western hierarchies.^[27] Decolonial critique is a method of applying decolonial methods and practices to all facets of epistemic, social, and political thinking.^[20]

Decolonial art

Decolonial art critiques Western art for the way it is alienated from the surrounding world and its focus on pursuing aesthetic beauty.^[29] Rather than feelings of sublime at the beauty of an art object, decolonial art seeks to evoke feelings of "sadness, indignation, repentance, hope, solidarity, resolution to change the world in the future, and, most importantly, with the restoration of human dignity."^[30] Decolonial aesthetics "seek to recognize and open options for liberating the senses" beyond just visual senses^[31] and challenge "the idea of art from Eurocentric forms of expression and philosophies of the beautiful."^[32]

Decolonial art may "re-inscribe indigeneity on the land" that has been obscured by colonialism and reveal alternatives or an "always elsewhere of colonialism."^[31] Graffiti can function as an open or public challenge to colonial or imperialist structures and disrupt notions of a contented oppressed or colonized people.

Notable artists include:

Kwame Akoto-Bamfo (Ghana): Creates sculptures and installations that reflect on the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impact on African communities.
Maria Thereza Alves (Brazil): Focuses on Indigenous and environmental issues, shedding light on the impact of colonization on Indigenous communities.
Wangechi Mutu (Kenya/United States): Explores African identities and the interplay between tradition and modernity in a postcolonial context through painting, collage, and sculpture.
Tracey Moffatt (Australia): Examines identities, stories, and representations of Indigenous populations in Australia, focusing on colonial and postcolonial themes.
Yinka Shonibare (United Kingdom/Nigeria): Utilizes African batik-printed fabrics and examines cultural identity, colonialism, and postcolonial issues through sculptures and installations.

Decolonial feminism

Decolonial feminism reformulates the coloniality of gender by critiquing the very formation of gender and its subsequent formations of patriarchy and the gender binary, not as universal constants across cultures, but as structures that have been instituted by and for the benefit of European colonialism.^[5]^[33] Marìa Lugones proposes that decolonial feminism speaks to how "the colonial imposition of gender cuts across questions of ecology, economics, government, relations with the spirit world, and knowledge, as well as across everyday practices that either habituate us to take care of the world or to destroy it."^[33] Decolonial feminists like Karla Jessen Williamson and Rauna Kuokkanen have examined colonialism as a force that has imposed gender hierarchies on Indigenous women that have disempowered and fractured Indigenous communities and ways of life.^[5]

Decolonial love

Decolonial love is a love established on our relationality that is directed toward the emancipation of community from the coloniality of power, including human and non-human beings.^[35] It was developed by Chicana feminist Chela Sandoval as a reformulation of love beyond individualist romantic notions of love.^[35] Decolonial love "demands a deep recognition of our humanity and mutual implacability in undoing colonial relations of power and oppression that lead to indifference, contempt, and dehumanization."^[34] It begins from within, as a love of one's humanity and for those who have resisted colonial violence in their pursuit of healing and liberation.^[34] Thinkers who speak to the concept state that it is rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, including In Lak'ech ("you are my other me"), where love is a relational and resisting act toward the coloniality of power.^[34]

Critiquing Western liberal democracy

Moving beyond the critiques of enlightenment philosophy and modernity, decolonial critiques of democracy uncover how practices in democratic governance root themselves in colonial and racial rhetoric. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee seeks to counter "hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference."^[25]

Banerjee critiques western liberal democracy: "In liberal democracies colonial power becomes the epistemic basis of a privileged Eurocentric position that can explain culture and define the realities and identities of marginalized populations, while eliding power asymmetries inherent in the fixing of colonial difference.”^[25] He also extends this analysis against deliberative democracy, arguing that this political theory fails to take into account colonized forms of deliberation often discounted and silenced—including oral history, music production, and more—as well as how asymmetries of power are reproduced within political arenas.^[25]

Distinction from related ideas

Decoloniality is often conflated with postcolonialism, decolonization, and postmodernism. However, decolonial theorists draw clear distinctions.

Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism is often mainstreamed into general oppositional practices by "people of color", "Third World intellectuals", or ethnic groups.^[19]^: 87 Decoloniality—as both an analytic and a programmatic approach—is said to move "away and beyond the post-colonial" because "post-colonialism criticism and theory is a project of scholarly transformation within the academy".^[18]^: 452

This final point is debatable, as some postcolonial scholars consider postcolonial criticism and theory to be both an analytic (a scholarly, theoretical, and epistemic) project and a programmatic (a practical, political) stance.^[36]^: 8 This disagreement is an example of the ambiguity—"sometimes dangerous, sometimes confusing, and generally limited and unconsciously employed"—of the term "postcolonialism," which has been applied to analysis of colonial expansion and decolonization, in contexts such as Algeria, the 19th-century United States, and 19th-century Brazil.^[37]^: 93-94

Decolonial scholars consider the colonization of the Americas a precondition for postcolonial analysis. The seminal text of postcolonial studies, Orientalism by Edward Said, describes the nineteenth-century European invention of the Orient as a geographic region considered racially and culturally distinct from, and inferior to, Europe. However, without the European invention of the Americas in the sixteenth century, sometimes referred to as Occidentalism, the later invention of the Orient would have been impossible.^[12]^: 56 This means that postcolonialism becomes problematic when applied to post-nineteenth-century Latin America.^[37]^: 94

Political decolonization

Decolonization is largely political and historical: the end of the period of territorial domination of lands primarily in the global south by European powers. Decolonial scholars contend that colonialism did not disappear with political decolonization.

It is important to note the vast differences in the histories, socioeconomics, and geographies of colonization in its various global manifestations. However, coloniality— meaning racialized and gendered socioeconomic and political stratification according to an invented Eurocentric standard—was common to all forms of colonization. Similarly, decoloniality in the form of challenges to this Eurocentric stratification manifested previous to de jure decolonization. Gandhi and Jinnah in India, Fanon in Algeria, Mandela in South Africa, and the early 20th-century Zapatistas in Mexico are all examples of decolonial projects that existed before decolonization.

Postmodernism

"Modernity" as a concept is complementary to coloniality. Coloniality is called "the darker side of western modernity".^[12] The problematic aspects of coloniality are often overlooked when describing the totality of Western society, whose advent is instead often framed as the introduction of modernity and rationality, a concept critiqued by post-modern thinkers. However, this critique is largely "limited and internal to European history and the history of European ideas".^[18]^: 451

Although postmodern thinkers recognize the problematic nature of the notions of modernity and rationality, these thinkers often overlook the fact that modernity as a concept emerged when Europe defined itself as the center of the world. In this sense, those seen as part of the periphery are themselves part of Europe's self-definition.^[38]^: 13

To summarize, like modernity, postmodernity often reproduces the "Eurocentric fallacy" foundational to modernity. Therefore, rather than criticizing the terrors of modernity, decolonialism criticizes Eurocentric modernity and rationality because of the "irrational myth" that these conceal.^[18]^: 453-454 Decolonial approaches thus seek to "politicise epistemology from the experiences of those on the 'border,' not to develop yet another epistemology of politics".^[38]^: 13

References

^ Provocative plastics : their value in design and material culture. Susan Lambert. Cham, Switzerland. 2020. p. 243. ISBN 978-3-030-55882-6. OCLC 1230460235.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
^ ^a ^b Rebhahn, Michael (2021). "The Decolonial Option". Defragmentation Curating Contemporary Music (eBook). Sylvia Freydank. Mainz: Schott Music. ISBN 978-3-7957-2510-5. OCLC 1256260452.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Quijano, Aníbal (2007). "Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality". Cultural Studies. 21 (2–3): 168–178. doi:10.1080/09502380601164353. S2CID 144975976.
^ Torres, Nelson Maldonado (2017), "Fanon and Decolonial Thought", in Peters, Michael A. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, Singapore: Springer, pp. 799–803, doi:10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_506, ISBN 978-981-287-588-4, retrieved 2022-10-23
^ ^a ^b ^c Tlostanova, Madina; Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi; Knobblock, Ina (2019-10-02). "Do We Need Decolonial Feminism in Sweden?". NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. 27 (4): 290–295. doi:10.1080/08038740.2019.1641552. ISSN 0803-8740. S2CID 201389171.
^ Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi (2022). Against decolonisation: taking African agency seriously. African arguments. London: Hurst & Company. ISBN 978-1-78738-692-1.
^ Kurzwelly, Jonatan; Wilckens, Malin S (2023). "Calcified identities: Persisting essentialism in academic collections of human remains". Anthropological Theory. 23 (1): 100–122. doi:10.1177/14634996221133872. ISSN 1463-4996. S2CID 254352277.
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Works cited

DiPietro, Pedro J. (1 June 2019). Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-7453-3.

Decoloniality

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Transcription

Foundational principles

Coloniality of knowledge

Coloniality of power

Colonialism as the root

Imperialism as the successor

Coloniality of gender

Disobedience and de-linking

Decoloniality

Examples

Decolonial critique

Decolonial art

Decolonial feminism

Decolonial love

Critiquing Western liberal democracy

Distinction from related ideas

Postcolonialism

Political decolonization

Postmodernism

See also

References

Works cited

Further reading