LIBERTY / DIASPORA A UNIVERSAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF DECOLONIZATION (original) (raw)
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What can the sociology of race learn from the histories of anti-colonialism
Ethnicities, 2020
This essay looks at three books about the histories of anti-colonialism: Desai's the United States of India, Getachew's Worldmaking after Empire, and Gopal's Insurgent Empire. I argue that despite it not being the authors' primary focus, these books collectively push forward the sociology of race. In particular, each of these books shows the importance for contemporary race and racism scholarship to adopt a transnational, temporally connected approach which is able to both study and forge global anti-colonial solidarities. Desai, Manan. 2020. The United States of India: Anticolonial Literature and Transnational Refraction. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Getachew, Adom. 2019. Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gopal, Priyamvada. 2019. Insurgent Empire: Anticolonialism and the Making of British Dissent. London: Verso. In the midst of a global pandemic in 2020, the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked anti-racist protests across the world. Many of these protests drew links between their nation's racism and their nation's colonial history and postcolonial present. Thus, protests in France connected Floyd's death with their own state violence against post-colonial citizens from North Africa, Portuguese protestors carried placards stating 'Racism is colonial heritage', and in Belgium, protestors tore down the statue of King Leopold II. Of course, statues were not only targeted in Belgium, but were a target throughout the world, with statues of Cecil Rhodes, for instance, being taken down in both Cape Town and Oxford. Within Britain, debates over such statues of colonial figures took centre-stage during the protests. To some, the fact that figures such as Edward Colston, a key figure in Britain's role in enslavement, were not just put up on a literal pedestal, but that their statue plaques also described them (in Colston's case) as 'one of the most virtuous and wise sons of the city', was evidence that Britain was yet to confront its colonial past. In this review essay, I am not concerned with 'statues' as much as with the linkages between imperialism, colonialism, and racism. Nevertheless, this ongoing contestation over the existence of colonial statues feeds into a key point of this essay-namely, that the pasts of empire, colonialism, and imperialism still shape the material and epistemic contours of the present. Thus, in Britain, for example, those protesting against colonial statues were claiming that this is an issue of the present, not just an issue of the past; by failing to bring a critical eye to colonial history and historical figures, Britain was making a statement in the present
Thinking Other-wise: Decoloniality and the Global Racial Order
Editorial, Decolonial Subversions, 2023
This is an introduction to the 2023 general issue of Decolonial Subversions in which authors engage in a dialogue about colonial racial capitalism from different locations and by looking through different critical lenses. Instead of the working backwards of Eurocentric research and cultural consumption/production, with its assumption of a universalist god-eye-view that closes/forecloses thought, in this issue, there is an authentic generative journey of grappling with social, political, and economic forms of domination which operate on a global scale and manifest in local structuring of access. The works in this issue use different methods in their critique and praxis: research, poetry, visual expression, a digital archive, thought exercise and theory, personal narrative, and translation. Collectively, they develop methods to Thinking Otherwise as a process of generating knowledge that challenges the racial order without being tethered, consumed and constituted by it. They cultivate to unmask domination and root in communality. In doing so, they reclaim authority over the narratives and histories that have been coopted and distorted in the colonial imaginary to locate self-determination that brings about futurity for people subjected to colonial and racial domination. This authority and self-determination are part and parcel of decolonial subjectivation out of patriarchal objectification, state exploitation and cooption, and settler-colonial elimination.
This class is an advanced introduction to the broad topic of coloniality and decoloniality. It is an interdisciplinary class in nature, with a heavy focus on historical, theoretical, sociological and anthropological readings. The class starts with an introduction of some key concepts on coloniality and decoloniality, such as the colonial and the post-colonial and the de-colonial, as well as the meaning and the nature of the colonial structure and the centrality of race in the colonial project. The class is divided into four parts. The first part is examining some examples from different historical waves of colonialisms such as the colonialism of the "new" world, and the scramble for Africa, with a brief examination of some selected cases. The second part is the study of some of the key approaches to study colonialism and imperialism, such as the Marxist approaches, post-colonial theory, indigenous perspectives, the black radical tradition and sociological approaches. The third part is an examination of the key types of colonialisms such as settler-colonialism, and imperialisms/new imperialism, as well as some of the key problematics in the field as the relationship between the state and the colonial project and the gendered nature of colonialism and imperialism. The class concludes with the study of decoloniality as a theoretical approach and as a praxis.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Coloniality, Capitalism and Race/ism as Far as the Eye Can See
Rico) in which these works were read. First, the themes of racism, capitalism and coloniality -to varying degrees disavowed and erased in both IR as a discipline and public opinion -appear as persistent, pervasive yet adapting across time, space and situatedness. Second, both the autobiographical examples and the works point at the equally omnipresent cracks in the system and invite reflection on anticolonial alternatives (of solidarity). In conclusion, the essay explores how these works could inform reconceptualisation of the IR syllabus, towards a discipline that engages with the world rather than itself, against the colonial status quo.
Colonial legacies, postcolonial 'selfhood' and the (un)doing of Africa
The debate triggered by recent publications and research justifying colonialism demands an intellectual engagement with the histories of colonialism, and their impact on postcolonial trajectories of development, peace and conflict. The argument that colonialism inspired development in societies that embraced its modernity project, enlightened governance and efficient administration-which in turn inspired national consciousness embedded in anti-colonial struggles-has been extensively critiqued. However, less attention has been paid to colonialism's enduring everyday impact and visible continuities. We argue that the present political moment defined by right-wing, conservative and insular nationalisms and racisms-particularly in Western politiesrequires deeper critique. It demands an intensive re-engagement with colonialism's legacies, the politics of race and racism and the postcolonial (un)making of 'selfhood' and 'nation-statehood' evidenced in many parts of the world. This collection revisits the impact of colonialism on the postcolonial politics and decolonial developments in Africa; its focus is to reinvestigate the endurance and efficacy of the power relations devised and propagated by the European colonial projects and their continued presence in African states and societies. On retelling 'old' stories In 2020, a year marked by one of the most catastrophic pandemics of the modern era, which has exacerbated global inequalities, the 'Black Lives Matter' (BLM) movement took the world by storm. Since 2013, the BLM movement has highlighted how coloniality and racism continue to determine social relations, political exchanges, cultural hierarchies, epistemic erasures and strategic silences in normalising a predominantly white, Euro-American world order. The BLM movement itself built on other activist calls including the 'Rhodes Must Fall' protests in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2015, to bring down the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a well-known and celebrated imperialist. The original protests escalated into a wider movement in South Africa, the UK and the US to bring down statues of institutionally exalted former colonialists and imperialists.
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 158-180., 2012
The United Nations declared that 2011 be recognized as the “International Year for People of African Descent” (IYPAD). This year marks the tenth anniversary of the World Conference Against Racism (often referred to as the Durban Conference), in which a resolution was approved stating that slavery and the colonization that sustained it were crimes against humanity. The outcome for this International Year is disappointing, if not shocking, at several levels, in terms of mediatisation, appropriation, program content, educational connection, and, significantly, any tangible impact in relation to people of African descent (PAD). The IYPAD was largely ignored and trivialized at the local, regional and national levels in almost all of the countries concerned. Following the hegemonic leadership of the United States, a number of nations proceeded to convert this International Year, which sought to underscore and engage all peoples in debates, actions and measures that could formally acknowledge historic injustices in relation to people of African descent, into the paradox of willingly rendering the focus of the Year invisible. Within this context of banalization of the IYPAD, this study, within an anti-colonial perspective, seeks to examine the international dynamic and related motives that characterize the significance of this problematic. Our analysis has led to three central interpretations: i) Africa, and all related and inter-connected questions, remain on the periphery of the world’s politics, economics and international political economy; ii) the competition between nations for the recognition of human history remains a political and economic affair, and Africa and her descendants are not accorded a seat at the same table as the colonizing forces; and iii) the IYPAD declaration, ensconced in the yolk of an empathetic conscience by some and bad faith by others, can be seen as the residue of colonization, in which the degree of invisibility of people of African descent is still tethered to the heart-beat of colonizing nations and their proxy consorts, which are economically coerced and subjugated.
Imperial legacies and postcolonial predicaments: an introduction
African Identities, 2007
The idea for a special issue of African Identities focusing on contemporary African cites caught in the contradictory logics of an imperial past and postcolonial predicaments emerged while convening a colloquium on 'Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa: Intertwined and Contest History' which was organized by the Centre for Black Diaspora at DePaul University in 2005-2006. 1 The colloquium was aimed at exploring the cultural role of colonial architecture and urbanism in the production of meanings, in the inscription of power and discipline, as well as in the dynamic construction of identities. Like other colonial institutions, such as the courts, police, prisons and schools that were crucial in establishing and maintaining political domination, colonial architecture and urbanism played pivotal roles in shaping the spatial and social structures of African cities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although a number of the colloquium participants addressed the connection between colonial past and postcolonial present, the venue was not designed to explore in depth the postcolonial predicament of African cities. A separate undertaking was carried out to invite other scholars to participate in the discussion about postcolonial African cities where intense social and spatial claims to postcolonial citizenship and modernity are constantly negotiated in the context of the deepening crisis of African states to provide adequate quality of life and security to an impoverished citizenry. Increasingly, African cities and the material and social condition of their existence are further undermined by the globalization process which limits their capacity to provide even the minimal conditions of habitable living for their inhabitants. This special issue of African Identities is an attempt to forge a productive encounter between postcolonial African cities and recent scholarly intervention to problematize African cities as spaces where the urban inhabitants are reconfiguring and remaking urban worlds, deploying their own forms of urbanity born out of their historical and material circumstances. It is in these new dense urban spaces with all their contradictions that urban Africans are reworking their