Decolonial Critique Research Articles

Queer Narratives and Colonial Injustice: Tropical Landscape in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This paper explores the intersection of colonialism, masculinity, and queerness in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Through a decolonial lens, it examines how Díaz critiques the lingering effects of colonialism and dictatorship on Dominican identity, particularly through the ‘fukú’ curse—a symbol of intergenerational trauma. The paper argues that the queering of heterosexuality in the novel challenges rigid gender norms, where Oscar’s nonconformity and Yunior’s conflicted hypermasculinity expose the limitations of Dominican masculinity shaped by colonial rule. Set against the backdrop of the Dominican Republic’s tropical landscapes and violent history, Oscar’s and Yunior’s narratives highlight the broader struggle between individual authenticity and societal conformity. Díaz’s use of magical realism and transcultural storytelling amplifies this decolonial critique, revealing how colonial legacies continue to shape gender and identity in the post-colonial world. By analyzing the characters’ resistance to heteronormative pressures and their individual journeys, the paper situates The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao as a significant exploration of queering as a form of decolonial resistance, reconsidering the lasting impact of colonial oppression on cultural and gender identities.

From transnational to trans-Indigenous: a critical analysis of the role of categorization and everyday coloniality in Indigenous mobilities

ABSTRACT Addressing the special issue’s focus on the contestation of state categories, this article investigates the categorization of Indigenous Peoples on the move and how they resist and re-exist these categorizations. Rooted in decolonial approaches from Latin America, we propose a trans-Indigenous conceptual framework for the analysis of such mobilities. Based on 15 semi-structured interviews with Indigenous people on the move conducted in the State of Roraima in Brazil and supplemented by an examination of relevant policy documents in the region, our arguments are built around the perspectives of Indigenous people on the move and their resistance. In outlining the contours of a trans-Indigenous conceptual framework, this article’s primary contributions lie in contextualizing Indigenous mobilities within a decolonial critique of the modern-colonial nation-state and human rights in Latin America that may lead toward an independent praxis related to territory, sovereignty, and mobilities.

Kurdish Vernacular Learning as Indigenous Knowledge: Decolonizing Ottoman Cultural and Intellectual History

This contribution explores in what ways the Kurdish experience may be called “colonial” and, by extension, what decolonizing Kurdish studies would or could amount to. Specifically, it explores whether and to what extent Kurdish vernacular learning may be qualified as “Indigenous learning” as it appears in decolonial critiques. The article suggests a genealogical approach to the epistemic dimensions of coloniality to explicate the radical historicity of knowledge and to make visible relations of domination and resistance in the field of knowledge and learning. Early modern Kurdish vernacular learning, it will be argued, was produced under the domination of Persian and Arabic, and to some extent it amounted to heresy, that is, an act of symbolic resistance. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the vernacularization of Kurdish language and learning in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire and in Mollah Mahmûdê Bayazîdî’s encounter with nineteenth-century Russian imperialism and Orientalism.

From Chinese to Global Humanism: Articulations and Decolonial Critiques of New Confucian Philosophy in Cold War Taiwan and Hong Kong

In scholarly discussions of Cold War humanism, writings by New Confucian philosophers who exiled themselves from China after 1949 have been largely overlooked due to assumptions about their anti-Communist position. This essay proposes to re-examine New Confucian writings on humanism in Taiwan and Hong Kong from the 1950s to the 1970s as a way to better understand the complexity of these two places in relation to humanistic genres of decolonization: while the New Confucian conception of Chinese humanism intervenes in the hegemony of Western humanism, it also represses other humanistic imaginations that do not derive from Han cultural nationalism. The first part of the essay closely analyses the connection between the French debates on humanism and several philosophical works of Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995) in Taiwan and Tang Chun-I 唐君毅 (1909–1978) in Hong Kong. Following a brief overview of their exilic context, it looks into Mou’s rejection of Sartre’s existentialist humanism in defence of Chinese subjective freedom, as well as Tang’s conception and ideological development of the “Chinese humanistic spirit” in opposition to “anti-humanism” (different from Althusser). The second part turns to repressed humanisms – the positive reception of existentialist humanism among liberal and nativist intellectuals in Taiwan and the search for Hong Kongers’ cultural identity between anti-humanism and Chinese humanism in Hong Kong, which complicates colonial and anti-colonial humanisms under European imperialism. Via a comparison with Sartre, Fanon, and the conception of a new/decolonial humanism, the essay concludes that a different shift from Chinese to global humanism is necessary for finding new approaches to decolonization in Taiwan and Hong Kong from the Cold War era to the present moment.

Five decades of neoliberal developmentalism in “Least Developed Countries”: A decolonial critique

Five decades of neoliberal developmentalism in “Least Developed Countries”: A decolonial critique

Africana Political Theory as Decolonial Critique

ABSTRACT This article illuminates a fundamental problem at the core of canonical political theory: the racialization of knowledge. It contends that the history of canonical thought as being necessarily Western and, therefore, European American, means the emergence of epistemic racism produces enormous consequences for the practice of philosophical thought—namely, Africana political theory (APT). Thus, this article raises important questions such as the colonization of reason, as well as the ongoing relationship between political theory and race, such that the specter of anti-black racism manifests and becomes intertwined with the foundations of the canon. Ultimately, the article proffers APT as decolonial critique to complicate and expand the parameters of philosophical practice. The overall consequences for the discipline, its students, and its practitioners actualize an ongoing movement for black liberation.

Building a Pluriverse of Nursologies: A paradigm for decolonial theory and knowledge development in nursing.

The imperative to decolonise health disciplines underscores the need for a critical examination of the coloniality of nursing knowledge development. Decolonising nursing requires epistemic resistance aimed at exposing and dismantling epistemological hierarchies that marginalise indigenous knowledges. This paper introduces the 'Pluriverse of Nursologies' as paradigm to guide decolonial theorising in nursing. Through a four-part exploration, I first elucidate the coloniality embedded in mainstream nursing knowledge. Next, I offer a decolonial critique of Fawcett's nursing metaparadigm as an exemplar of pyramidal epistemology. I then discuss pluriversality as an approach to decolonising nursing knowledge. Finally, I introduce the Pluriverse of Nursologies (PoN) as a meta-theoretical paradigm for theory and knowledge development that decentres and dismantles the pyramidal epistemology of colonial/modern nursing, and relinks diverse nursologies from marginalised communities to the centre of intellectual nursing discourse, thereby revitalising the theoretical landscape of the discipline.

La referencia lingüística y la decolonización de los nombres propios en las lenguas de señas

The subject of the proper name is the subject of reference. Proper names are paradigmatic examples because they refer to unique entities in the world (uniqueness). In sign languages, there are gestural expressions that identify people in deaf communities and are distinguished from the spelling of their name given in Latin alphabet. Studies on this topic have described the signed proper name according to hand configurations and its other articulatory characteristics, according to some general principles about the significance of having the proper name in the community and how it functions. However, almost no mention is made of the basic concepts involved in the theoretical formulation of names and uniqueness. In this paper, we argue that descriptions of this topic are deliberately simplistic and reductionist, not because there is a desire to marginalize sign languages, but because we have been historically conditioned to act this way. From a decolonial critique and an anti-representationalist perspective of language, we show the controversies that shape the issue of proper names and propose an integrated view that advances in the deconstruction of polarizations and false dichotomies in the linguistic and identity discourse.

Article-Processing Fees and Subsidies: The Colonial Entanglement of Knowledge Production in South Africa—The Case of Gender-Based Violence Research

In this article, we studied the contribution of the current South African publishing ecosystem to the hierarchisation, elitism and monopolisation of knowledge production in social-justice studies, taking as an example the research area of gender-based violence (GBV). We examined the Sabinet database of articles published in South African journals on GBV between 2018 and 2022, and reviewed the pre- and post-production value chain related to the publication of these articles (especially the article page-fee structure and the governmental subsidy system). In addition, we couched this discussion in feminist decolonial critique. We conclude that the current publishing ecosystem—with the more or less active involvement and/or support of the government, journals and academics—greatly limits the diversity of voices able to contribute to the production of knowledge on GBV. This ecosystem hampers, minimises or even excludes the first-hand knowledge and experiences of those located outside of academic institutions (particularly, local researchers unaffiliated with South African universities, grassroot activists and members of non-governmental organisations). It conversely renders academics and the tertiary educational institutions which employ them as the only actors capable of benefiting financially from or contributing to the knowledge-production chain and, in return, feeding it. This cycle seems to propel the creation of an echo chamber of views, perspectives and opinions with academics and their tertiary educational institutions de facto acting as the only knowledge producers in the country. We propose that the solution to such an unjust situation is a radical decolonisation of the deeply epi-colonial South African publishing ecosystem.

Queering the Global Governance of Transitional Justice: Tensions and (Im)Possibilities

ABSTRACT∞ In recent years, scholars and activists have been asking queer questions about transitional justice. Queer perspectives advocate for the recognition of anti-queer violence within transitional justice; the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in transitional justice processes; and the development of queer decolonial critiques of transitional justice. Informed by this research agenda, I develop a queer perspective to the global governance of transitional justice. I analyse documents from the UN, the International Center for Transitional Justice and the International Criminal Court. Representing mechanisms from across global transitional justice, I trace the (cis-heteronormative, colonial, carceral) violence of transitional justice and its institutionalization at the global level. I reflect on the queer tensions and (im)possibilities of global transitional justice, a site that is violent but holds transformative potential. The global governance of transitional justice must be queered to expand its social, political and conceptual remit, and to seek more radical, liberatory worlds within and beyond formal justice mechanisms.

The Dialectics of Modernity and Tradition: A Decolonial Critique of the University’s Role in Shaping Social Consciousness

Positioned at the intersection of reason and practical life, the study dissecs the university system’s dual role in upholding and contesting the hegemonic narratives of modernity. Through a dialectical analysis, the paper argues how universities have unconsciously perpetuated modern Western concepts of progress and rationality, often overshadowing traditional and indigenous ways of understanding. The article highlights the imperative for universities to undergo a decolonial transformation, integrating contemporary and traditional epistemologies in a dynamic synergy fostering a more encompassing and inclusive societal awareness. The article recommends that academic institutions actively integrate and value diverse epistemologies, challenging long-held Western-centric pedagogies for a more inclusive educational environment. Therefore, dissecting the nuanced interplay between modernity and tradition within universities, this study hopefully will contribute to a deeper understanding of decolonial processes in shaping more holistic and representative knowledge systems in academia.

Critiquing ‘powerful knowledge’ in school geography through a decolonial lens

ABSTRACT The concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has risen to prominence in the school curriculum in England, taking on a life both in educational policy and in the work of schools, teachers, teacher educators and students. This article conducts a decolonial critique of ‘powerful knowledge’ in school geography. We begin by reviewing research about ‘powerful knowledge’ in geography education before turning to its interpretation in education policy and curriculum framings. We then offer our decolonial critique. We argue that the concept adopts reductive binary frames and neglects the racialising politics of geographical knowledge production. In doing so, ‘powerful knowledge’ marginalises the everyday knowledge of people globally and glosses over their ‘hidden’ geographies and histories in ways that sustain racialised global inequalities. We conclude by explaining the reasons for the emergence of ‘powerful knowledge’ and arguing for its demise on account of lack of analytical rigour and inattentiveness to social justice.

Standing against racial capitalism: Reconsidering psychology's role in dismantling systemic racism.

The American Psychological Association's resolutions on dismantling systemic racism represent a watershed moment in our discipline, yet confusion remains as to what it means to "dismantle" racism given psychology's emphasis on changing individual beliefs. This submission will review the tension between "idealist" interpretations of critical race theory emphasizing individual beliefs and "realist" perspectives contextualizing racism within political economic arrangements. Psychology's adoption of an "idealist" framework will be shown to privilege a neoliberal project emphasizing individual change and symbolic performances of racial justice instead of structural changes benefitting people of color's material existence. Drawing on a decolonial critique of racial capitalism, we propose an alternative framework to challenge our discipline to broaden its political imagination by supporting evidence-based policies to dismantle racism as a structural and political force. This includes universal policies to reduce racial and economic inequality and population-specific policies such as reparations for African Americans predicted to stimulate economic growth. Urgently, the decolonial lens challenges psychology to theorize racism not as a primarily individual phenomenon but a political force that divides and conquers while enriching white economic elites. To fulfill the promises of the American Psychological Association's resolutions, we must directly challenge the political economic interests that benefit from racism and contribute to the common good as a form of "loving care." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Insufficient and inadequate democracy? Exploring coloniality and possibilities for the teaching of slavery in Europe

In the context of calls to decolonise education in European contexts, this paper draws on coloniality-based critiques of Eurocentric modernity to take up the links between democracy, slavery, and colonialism in education. Starting from the position that modernity requires epistemological support to sustain racism and white supremacy in European democracies, we read coloniality-based critiques of democracy with empirical literature about the teaching of slavery. We consider possibilities for revised critical engagements with democracy and with the history of European colonialism and slavery. The paper builds on and contributes to recent decolonial critiques of democracy in education by explicitly engaging a tension raised around the possibility of disentangling democracy from its colonial roots.

From Opposition to Creativity: Saba Mahmood's Decolonial Critique of Teleological Feminist Futures

Abstract Saba Mahmood's anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency, and capacity building by the women's dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood's “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood's work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood's work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women.

Countering durian plantationocene visuality and the erasure of natureculture histories in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Large-scale durian plantations are now a major threat, causing deforestation and displacing the Orang Asli, the aboriginal peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, from their customary lands. This paper focuses on visual representations of the durian plantations and/or forest to discuss two contrasting views of the landscape. We analyse durian plantation corporate investment videos wooing public investors and videos of the Temiar Orang Asli’s resistance against forced evacuations by the durian companies in Gua Musang, Kelantan. The landscape presented in the corporate video is one that silently but violently erases the Indigenous Peoples of the land and their natureculture histories through high modernist ideology and aesthetics. Counterposing the corporate plantationocene visuals against the raw footage from the amateur videos shot on mobile phones, the Orang Asli galvanize emotionally moving countervisuality as witness to their resistance against the violence enacted by corporate occupation. By doing so, they are actively using visual documentation to tell their side of the story and to demand justice. Drawing from posthumanism, environmental humanities and critical visual studies, this paper presents a decolonial critique of the modernist/developmentalist discourse and highlights the violence of the erasure of natureculture in an extractive economy.

Subaltern-centred Pedagogy: Field Notes and Reflections from Tunisia

Abstract This essay responds to the challenge of deconstructing the concept of democracy and decolonizing knowledge production. The authors, educators in secondary and higher education, grapple with the pedagogical dilemma of how to re-tell the stories of the marginalized and silenced ‘others’ in their classrooms. They explore the concept of ‘subalternity’ as a decolonial critique and a methodological perspective, with the aim of shifting the epistemic location of narratives about migration. This essay proposes a radical change in educational approaches, urging practitioners to listen to the subaltern rather than speaking for them, and to adopt a ‘subaltern-centered pedagogy’ (Reed 2013) to counter hegemonic and dehumanizing narratives about migration. By doing so, this reflective essay emphasizes the role of educators in fostering critical thinking and awareness about positionality. Before concluding, the authors call for a bold epistemic intervention in education systems, aiming to leave a lasting impact on pedagogical practices. They propose a process of unlearning through critical reflexivity to deconstruct Eurocentric and nationalist narratives, ultimately empowering students to become global citizens in a globalized world.

A weapon of responsibility: the lyric cry in Alda Espírito Santo’s and Maria Manuela Margarido’s negritude poetics

As a symbolic enunciation of Black subjection and resistance, the cry has functioned as a central trope in negritude poetics. This essay revisits the trope by focusing on another geography of the negritude imagination beyond the francophone world. I analyse how the work of two women poets from the African archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe, Alda Espírito Santo (1926–2010) and Maria Manuela Margarido (1925–2007), reorients the cry as a modality of decolonial critique. I argue that they intentionally mobilize the sonorous force, intensity, and frequency of the cry in their poetry to grapple with the colonial ritual of terror in the Portuguese empire. In the intersection of mourning and resistance, the cry functions as both a critique of colonial violence and the voicing of radical hope for a decolonial future. This essay brings postcolonial and decolonial thought into conversation with lyric studies as it maps out the connection between Espírito Santo’s and Manuela Margarido’s poetry, intellectual work, and political activism. It illuminates the entanglement of the voice, power, and resistance in negritude poetics.

The ethics liberation and punitive power in peripheral countries

The research addressed Enrique Dussel's Ethics of Liberation in the era of globalization and social exclusion, using it as a framework for ethical considerations in a decolonial critique of the Eurocentric and North American standards that underpinned the domination of peripheral countries by central countries, including in criminological knowledge. Therefore, we explored decolonial knowledge, correlating it with critical criminology, resulting in the proposal of a decolonial criminology. The theoretical contributions, in conjunction with the Ethics of Liberation, were employed to foster a critical awareness of the use of punitive power as a means of maintaining the colonial matrix of domination and exploitation, especially within the field of criminology. In conclusion, we also presented the contribution of the Ethics of Liberation to a new configuration of punitive power, now employed in favor of vulnerable groups with the aim of eliminating or reducing their victimization within the current world system. However, it is crucial to note that the same Ethics of Liberation demands that the use of punitive power must not lead to new victims of exclusion or domination..

The “Civilization of the Universal”

The intersectionality argument originating in Black feminism challenges the preponderance of “single-axis thinking” (Crenshaw), and the decolonial critique of Eurocentrism challenges the assumption of neutral universality or “zero-point hubris” (Castro-Gómez) on the part of colonial thinking. Inspired by these challenges, this paper brings decolonial, intersectional, and phenomenological thought into conversation to consider how philosophical thinking can operate in light of these risks. The first section distinguishes between the inevitable, existential condition by which we inhabit determinate forms of life, and the pernicious way in which some forms come to masquerade as universal and dominate others. The second section aids in opposing the pernicious by working *through* the existential, showing that it is our very determinacy that fosters the possibility of understanding others and working toward universality on the basis of two arguments. First, we all experience ourselves as one among many, developing inside of an interpersonal reality in which interaction guides us to sense, and this shared structure of perspective renders us different and opens us to the possibility of further transformation through exposure. Second, thinking and determinacy are inevitably linked, as each of us draws on local mechanisms available to us to give expression to meanings we experience as non-local, and the possibility of universality lies on the horizon, in answerability to other pairings of determinacy and meaning. In the course of making these conceptual arguments, the paper flags both the mechanisms by which practical reality could be structured to encourage exposure to the determinacy that supports thinking, and the challenges and hubristic risks we face in doing so.