Introduction: Cultural production under multiple colonialisms

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this introduction to the special journal issue, we elaborate a multiple colonialisms framework that allows us to examine the complex relationalities of multiple and converging colonial relations in historical and contemporary contexts within which cultural production does its work. Through examples of cultural production from the Americas and Asia, Special Issue contributors analyse rarely-recognized sites of colonialism that bear a palimpsestic relationship to other articulations that are more commonly legible as colonialism. Such an approach makes new analytical connections and gives greater depth to conventional theorizations of coloniality and decolonization. We also illustrate the centrality of the scholarship of Indigenous, Black, and Dalit-Bahujan scholars to the framework, especially the ways in which their work challenges our collective and accumulated racialized and colonial unknowings and illuminates what often remains unthinkable in conventional analyses of cultural production and the colonial contexts of their making. Overall, rather than analytically imply pluralism and equivalence among varied colonialisms, we argue that a multiple colonialisms framework enables cultural studies scholarship to dwell on the relationality, contradictions, and incommensurabilities generated within converging structures and multiple articulations of colonial and racialized violence across spaces. Weaving the various contributions into the framework, we invite readers to consider what histories, structures, and relationships help to explain why actually existing colonialities remain illegible as such in the particular context of each paper, and what that implies for solidarity and decolonization struggles. We hope that highlighting the specific creative methodological practices and significant spatial and temporal rethinking that a multiple colonialisms approach can generate incites conversations about how we might enrich theorizations of coloniality and decolonization.