The Resonant Asset: Exploring the Productive Investments of Postcolonial Theory in the Face of Decolonial Turns

Abstract

Conceived in the years leading up to the end of formal colonialism, postcolonial theory, also known as post-colonialism, was given its label in the 1970s to designate a political framework and instrument for cultural analysis which was meant to counter the enterprise and discourse of colonialism. At the time, the application of postcolonial theory would focus on the need to not only destabilize, and eventually overthrow, colonialism but also facilitate the founding and stabilizing of so-called postcolonial societies which, in time, would rid themselves of colonialism. With the gradual fading of formal colonialism, the trajectory of postcolonial theory would begin to change and bear the hallmarks of a theory which would reflect the idea of identity as ‘a liminal reality’ (Bhabha 2004, 73). This is a version of postcolonial theory which resists polarities of power and prejudice, promoting the idea that ‘culture is ‘in the making, never static’ (Spencer 2014, 159). In recent times, the emergence of decoloniality, also known as the decolonial imaginary, seems to be all but a ghost of the initial version of postcolonial theory. In this article, I examine and discuss both postcolonial and decolonial theories in juxtaposition and argue that, whereas the former is most telling and forceful in its embrace of the notion of difference, or Otherness, the latter is shot through with worrying gaps which relate to particular discourses which border on adversarial politics. My argument is that in the twenty-first century, rather than decoloniality, postcolonial theory remains a resonant asset.