“That other me, down and dreaming”: an animal perspective critique of decoloniality theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article critiques decoloniality theory, including its use of the notion of epistemic colonisation, from an animal perspective. It has two main parts. Part one is an internal critique of decoloniality theory. It introduces and comments on core decoloniality theory concepts and argues that, according to its assumptions, animals are illegitimately omitted from decoloniality theory. By excluding animals, decoloniality theory has not been consistently applied and is in that way anthropocentric. Part two is a reflexive critique of decoloniality theory. It starts by arguing that animals such as cattle are experiencers and knowers, with their own sensory and emotional experiences, and their own memories and ways of learning and knowing. Adopting decoloniality theory concepts such as the colonial matrix of power (CMP) and epistemic colonisation for the sake of argument, part two invokes historical examples of pre-colonial cattle’s ways of knowing, how coloniality repudiated cattle as experiential knowers, and how the CMP affected cattle by subjugating them into colonial economic and governance structures. This article concludes that by not recognising animals as experiential knowers impacted by epistemic colonisation, decoloniality theory is, with respect to animals, complicit in the coloniality of knowledge to which it seeks to respond.