Decolonial Discourse Research Articles

Reimagining Communities through Transnational Bengali Decolonial Discourse with YouTube Content Creators

Colonialism--the policies and practices wherein a foreign body imposes its ways of life on local communities--has historically impacted how collectives perceive themselves in relation to others. One way colonialism has impacted how people see themselves is through nationalism, where nationalism is often understood through shared language, culture, religion, and geopolitical borders. The way colonialism has shaped people's experiences with nationalism has shaped historical conflicts between members of different nation-states for a long time. While recent social computing research has studied how colonially marginalized people can engage in discourse to decolonize or re-imagine and reclaim themselves and their communities on their own terms--what is less understood is how technology can better support decolonial discourses in an effort to re-imagine nationalism. To understand this phenomenon, this research draws on a semi-structured interview study with YouTubers who make videos about culturally Bengali people whose lives were upended as a product of colonization and are now dispersed across Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. This research seeks to understand people's motivations and strategies for engaging in video-mediated decolonial discourse in transnational contexts. We discuss how our work demonstrates the potential of the sociomateriality of decolonial discourse online and extends an invitation to foreground complexities of nationalism in social computing research.

Clashing Decolonial and Sociocultural Factors: Revisiting Palestinian Queer Liberation Using the Events of Summer 2019

ABSTRACT Starting in the summer of 2019, a series of events saw queer Palestinians taking to the streets and appearing in mainstream Palestinian culture and media at an unprecedented scale. Drawing on 53 interviews with queer Palestinians, activists and nonactivists, this article critiques the queer organizing around these events as it appears in the two largest queer Palestinian organizations alQaws and Aswat. Because most research and activism on queer life in Palestine centers either the decolonial discourse against “homonationalism” within the Israeli nation-state expansion project and the Palestinian queer opposition to it, or the anti-orientalist critique of Western interventionist internationalization of queer rights, participants’ opinions and lived experiences challenge the scholarly and grassroot organizing tendency to ignore queer lives and voices who believe that targeting the sociocultural aspects of their queerness is an equally viable strategy for creating change. In doing so, this article sheds a new light on the clashing sociocultural and decolonial approaches—whereby clash refers to the debates regarding the ideologies and practices Palestinian activists and scholars find most ideal for their queer liberation.

God, Philosophers and Theologians in Africa

There is renewed interest in philosophical and theological investigations about God, religions and the implications of religious beliefs among philosophers and theologians in Africa. This development is itself profitable because the question or the problem of God is a relevant discourse in Africa where the majority of people are theists. However, unlike the exploration of the first-generation African scholars—philosophers and theologians—whose primary objective was to show the symmetry between Christianity and African Traditional Religions (ATR), contemporary discourses arise within the clamour for decoloniality. The investigations, with varied emphasis, advocate the decolonisation of the concept of God, epistemic decolonisation, decolonisation of Christianity and African Christian theology, etc. In this essay, I critically examine the contemporary decolonial discourse about God, divine attributes, religious belief, and the relationship between African Christian theology and ATR. I argue that most of the contemporary literature is entangled in conceptual convolution and as such, there is a lack of clarity about what needs to be decolonised. Put differently, most works do not clearly distinguish between reality (the person or phenomenon “God”), thought (the concept “God”), and conceptions of God (language, that is, the terms and images used in making assertions about God). Further, I argue that when conceptual clarifications are adequately attended to, there is no need for decolonisation of discourses about God, divine nature, divine attributes, and the relationship between Christianity and ATR.

A Historical Review of African Scholarship and the Decolonial Discourse: Challenges and Prospects

A Historical Review of African Scholarship and the Decolonial Discourse: Challenges and Prospects

Domesticating the English Language in Niyi Osundare’s The Word Is an Egg

Niyi Osundare’s revolutionary poetics is rooted in his distinctive ability to maximise his bilingual linguistic repertoire to express Yoruba thoughts in English words. In this article, I analyse the creative and stylistic strategies that Osundare deploys to domesticate the English language using poems from his collection The Word Is an Egg (2000). I argue that Osundare uses his autonomy and agency as an African writer to present an alternative perspective on the politics of language in African literature while also meeting the decolonisation imperative of his day. He domesticates the English language by peppering it with Yoruba to create an “African English” or “Yoruba English” in his poetic composition. The article is in five parts. Initially, I situate Osundare as a poet within the Nigerian literary landscape and highlight the critical reception his radical development of Nigerian poetry in English received. A literature review focuses on the contentious language debate in African literature. The third part presents decolonisation theory as the theoretical framework, specifically highlighting language as an African resource for challenging the Western grip on poetry and the hegemony of the English language in African literature. In the fourth part, the domestication of the English language by Osundare, I discuss how he uses English and Yoruba to co-create an African English or Yoruba English in his poetic composition. I conclude by asserting that Osundare’s alternative perspective weakens Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s absolute perspective on language usage in African literature by highlighting the omission and inherent problems in the absolutisation of colonialism in decolonial discourse.

An Africological Excavation of Colonial Discourse

This article argues that epistemologies are significantly relevant to the decolonial project and the advancement of discourse around human interactions. Moreover, it is asserted that the decolonization of the mind can only occur within the context of changing the framework through which we understand the world and its history. As a concept, decolonizing the mind is dependent upon correcting dislocation and disorientation that leads to confusion about reality. However, decolonial discourse is often vulnerable to assume its own colonial orientation and can still be entrapped in centering European and Arab experiences regarding African history; it is the interrogation of those elements that Africology promotes. This paper demonstrates an imperative for a restructuring epistemology that is, inclusive of a multiplicity of perspectives. From the Africological vantage, the universalisms of European and Arab centered epistemes are grounded in cultures that in reifying their own existence, are antithetical to the free existence of those who do not adhere to their beliefs and values.

Patrón de poder colonial: síntesis y porvenir Sobre el artículo de Aníbal Quijano: “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina”, 1999

The work of Aníbal Quijano has played a pivotal role in bridging the gap between dependency theory and the decolonial movement. This premise finds its primary foundation in Quijano’s seminal article, “Coloniality of Power, Culture, and Knowledge in Latin America.” In this article, Quijano elucidates the historical evolution of the “pattern of colonial power,” a concept of profound significance and widespread recognition within decolonial discourse. For the sake of didactic clarity, this exposition distills three fundamental aspects of the colonial power pattern. These aspects not only elucidate the intricate connection between dependency and decoloniality but also delineate the overarching themes of the decolonial movement. These themes encompass a critique of modernity, Eurocentrism, and individualist capitalism, culminating in the articulation of a Latin American utopia struggling to establish its own legitimacy for critical examination. This, in turn, paves the way for a reconfiguration of the epistemic framework necessary for emancipation and social liberation. The three core facets of the decolonial current, as expounded in this article, include: a) The Intersection of Race and the Colonial Power Pattern, b) Subalternity and Its Relationship to Imitation, c) Eurocentric Hegemony and the Nexus of Material and Subjective Dependence. This article, while concluding with an open-ended perspective, underscores the enduring influence of Aníbal Quijano’s legacy within the realm of decolonial scholarship.

Decoloniality on Culture and Religion: Anglican Ritual performed on the Zulu King

Decolonial discourse continues to challenge Eurocentrism and, among other things, raises profound questions about culture and religion or their unreceptive interactions. Conversely, both culture and religion remain products of the social context in which they are located. Some have even gone so far as to conceptualize religion as a form of culture, or vice versa. Historically, however, in societies such as South Africa where dominant religions such as Christianity emerged with distinct Eurocentric cultural identities, the interaction of culture and religion remains a stumbling block. South African scholars have commendably long debated the inherent conflict between cultural practices and religion, and their impact on social bonds. The above picture, however, calls for further exploration or understanding of the intricate interaction between culture and religion. Consequently, several questions arise: Can one belong to a Western religion and practise African culture? Can an African traditional monarch belong to a Western religion, in particular Christianity? What are the implications of mixing indigenous culture with foreign religion in our society? What are the decolonial boundaries between African religion and Christianity? Can there be a healthy interplay between indigenous culture and Christianity? Can African Christianity be tamed into an indigenous cultural expression? Consequently, this paper encompasses responsive academic insights into the cultural–religious collision, particularly in the light of the recent coronation of the Zulu king in South Africa.

Where is the North? Southern ruptures in decolonizing theory

Calls for decolonizing theory, knowledge, methods, and the university have taken hold of academia. However, critics have pointed out that these projects are primarily located in the global North and distanced from actual political struggles. This paper proposes a way to disaggregate different elements of the North and evaluate the “decolonization” potential in relation to broader anticolonial political geographies. We define the North as an orientation toward the capitalist-colonial world and Northness as a relational property along three axes of geographical location, social position, and institutional vocation. Applying this, we review historic trends in decolonization thought by using a stylistic scheme of three southern ruptures: resistance to colonial conquest, postcolonial arrivals into the Northern academy, and transnational convergence. This analytical lens cautions against giving primacy to issues of marginalized social position over geographic location and institutional vocation, while also offering a political economic focus on postcolonial engagements with anticolonial politics. We call for attending to the current conjuncture characterized by increasing decolonial discourse alongside southern ruination by aligning epistemic endeavors with social movement struggle.

An Afrocentric Ecoreading of ‘Coloniality of Power’ in Prophet Hosea’s Narrative

This work examines the environmental challenges occasioned by Samaria’s ‘imperial singleness’ in prophet Hosea’s text from an African perspective. The interaction between the ‘seat of power’ in Samaria and imperial forces in Hosea’s time appears to have negatively influenced Israel’s attitude towards land use (Hos 12:1, 2; 1 Ki 21:1–28; 2 Ki 9:26). Such interface becomes evident in a shift, by Samaria’s ‘seat of power’, from Yahweh’s prescribed land-use policy to those of their imperial masters—Assyria and Egypt. Despite Israel’s liberation from Egypt by Yahweh during the exodus (Hos 11:1), their susceptibility to treaty alliances with these imperial forces remains vivid in Hosea’s narrative (Hos 7:1–16; 12:1–2). Echoing the words of Ngwa, such an alliance seemingly classifies Samaria’s monarchy as a ‘localised imperial singularity’ and a ‘single hero’ as against the ‘communal oneness with the divine, humans and the earth itself’. This ‘localised imperial singleness’ and its effect on Israel’s land was subjected to a critical engagement premised on the principles of interconnectedness and the voice of the earth, while a combination of Mburu’s African Hermeneutics and Kavus’ Ecological Hermeneutics is employed for the purpose of critical decolonial discourse.

Vozes do Sul: conversações pós-coloniais e decoloniais

Abstract Over the last ten years, although a certain amount of critical effort has gone into bringing the debates around Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies closer together, these two areas still remain on opposite or different sides of a debate that is often heated and irreconcilable. Particularly at the beginning of the current century, following the publication of Walter Mignolo's (2000) Local Histories/Global Designs, much of the postcolonial criticism found itself on a collision course with decolonial discourse. In the same way, the main authors of the Modernity/Coloniality/Decoloniality group became critics of Postcolonial Studies by formulating the bases of Decolonial thought under the concept of the “Decolonial Turn”, which demands a disconnection and break with the Western structures of thought, under which Postcolonialism built its responses to the literature of the former colonialist empires. In this sense, this text intends to investigate the theoretical path that culminates in the break between Decolonial and Postcolonial studies, and our aim is to open up questions that can favor dialogue between the two theoretical fields and also open up possibilities for a South-South dialogue based on a new understanding of the new and old epistemologies.

From decolonisation to authoritarianism: the co-option of the decolonial agenda in higher education by right-wing nationalist elites in Russia and India

This article discusses how the critique of the monopoly of Western liberal thought through the decolonisation movement that was intended to increase the number of voices heard has been co-opted by nationalist politics in India and Russia. The debates in higher education in these countries reflect current key questions on the nature of the Indian and Russian nations—both under respective nationalist governments—where both are advocating a cutting off from Western modernity. Using Mignolo’s concept of “de-linking” that was intended to raise up non-Western ways of thinking, the article shows that India and Russia have adapted and simplified decolonial discourse to reject “Western-influenced” critiques of development, inequality, and authoritarianism. Under political pressure from these authoritarian regimes, universities have helped to embed repressive majoritarian politics through anti-Western rhetoric disguised as de-linking, enabling democratic backsliding by discrediting opposition. This is done to protect a new identity based upon state conceptions of traditional values, paradoxically erasing minority voices that do not fit neatly into the unified national narrative. When universities are branded as Western agents for being critical of local traditions and schools of thought, the space for critical thinking and democratic debate is ultimately removed, leaving those who oppose Putin and Modi with no safe way to engage with political discourse, and this actually undermines the intentions of decolonial philosophy.

Creating and Sustaining a ‘Tunnel Vision’ Argument for the Application of Customary Law—A Language Conundrum

Legal practitioners and scholars have argued that customary law in the South African legal context has historically been underpinned by various issues which include, but are not limited to, epistemological misunderstanding, problems of ill-will in the application of this law and intentional underdevelopment. While there is contestation to a degree, the common ground among legal scholars is that the praxis of law in the country is disconnected from indigenous people’s customary beliefs, cultural practices and legal experiences. This has culminated in the training and practice of law in South Africa that lacks inclusion and or a reflection of indigenous people’s worldviews and understandings of law. Naturally, this means that it overlooks the importance of indigenous languages in the understanding and application of the law. Regrettably, the continued intentional or unintentional consumption of law founded predominately on a Euro-American worldview and cultural practices, renders South African law problematic as far as its conceptualisation and application of customary law is concerned. It is at this juncture that the present article argues that language as a cultural artefact is a critical tool in the formulation, teaching, training and praxis of law. For the South African context, indigenous languages, therefore, become a critical tool for this purpose as opposed to the prevailing use of the English language. To this end, this contribution debates African epistemological and indigenous language questions intended to demonstrate their relevance in the formulation, training and application of law in South Africa. Specifically, the article is intended to contribute to the decolonial discourse in the legal fraternity with emphasis on the importance of correct conceptualisation and application of the indigenous people’s customary beliefs, cultural practices and legal experiences.

Traditional Knowledge Protection and Digitization: A Critical Decolonial Discourse Analysis

Trade treaties and legal agreements generally left Indigenous peoples and colonized communities out of negotiations that directly impacted them. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, informed by decolonial thinking and Nishnaabeg epistemology, this research study analyzed the language of five public documents, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), surrounding the protection of Traditional Knowledge (TK) through the sui generis legal figure and its connection to the development of digitization TK. As TK is largely uncommodifiable, the ability to identify and protect TK through Intellectual Property Rights within the WIPO and the WTO is encumbered. The research analyzed and explored how language and knowledge shape policy and ideology against historically marginalized people and communities through discourse enacted by the WIPO and the WTO.

The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing

The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing

NIGERIA: DECOLONIAL CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND CONFLICT. EVIDENCE FROM COASTAL COMMUNITIES OF THE NIGER DELTA

The paper proceeds on the assumption that decoloniality matters in tackling the global climate crisis, conflict, and development at the community level across countries with high vulnerabilities. Africa remains one of the most vulnerable regions in the world. By examining what decolonisation means in climate adaptation and the experience of six communities in three states in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, this article contributes to the conceptualization of the decolonial discourse of climate adaptation, development and conflict understood as conditions favourable to the crisis. I analysed qualitative data obtained from the coastal communities through observation, focus group discussions, and interviews. The results showed a reinforcement of positions in a segment of the literature on decolonial climate adaptation in communities in some parts of the world. Migration, alternative sources of livelihood, embarkment of shorelines, skills development, vocations, and infrastructure development are among legitimate adaptive measures local communities are adopting. At the same time, maladaptive measures such as piracy, kidnapping, illegal oil refining, and gangsterism are common. These antisocial behaviours lead to conflict and contribute to making climate change a very complex problem. Decolonial climate adaptation requires collaborative interventions at the level of the community, sub-national, national, and multilateral fronts. The fact that climate change is a global problem with unequal impact means that the capacity to respond well to it at the community, sub-national, national, regional, continental, and international levels is crucial in addressing the crisis. The role of decoloniality in the handling of the effects of climate change in the community may take the form of integration of local and western knowledge. The decolonial framework would appear to be elastic with a potential conceptual role of critical assessment of existing frameworks, outcomes, impact, and power relations. One of the striking messages in this analysis is the likely role of local knowledge in reducing the risk of social tension and criminal conflict, and the need to strengthen it to increase the resilience and well-being of people. Keywords: Decolonisation, climate, adaptation, development, Africa, Nigeria, coastal communities

Space for haunting: site-specific theatre as method for engaging with the complexity of heritage sites

This paper considers a devised, site-specific performance in and about the Windybrow, a mining magnate heritage house-turned-arts-centre in Johannesburg’s inner city Hillbrow. The work was called Ngale kweNdlu, which translates from isiXhosa as ‘The Other Side of the House.’ Through scenographic installations and interwoven theatrical narratives, characters and scenes, Ngale kweNdlu sought to draw out the less told, untold and invisibilized elements of the house’s 122-year-old story, putting them in critical dialogue with the documented archival history of the building. From process to final product the notion of haunting became an ever richer way of understanding our engagement with complex heritage through theatre-making in the Ngale kweNdlu process. This paper argues for the ways in which haunting played throughout the work, advocating for theatre as a tool to mobilize hauntings productively in navigating heritage with sensitivity to past social injustices and their legacies in contemporary moments. We do draw significantly on the spectral turn of European critical theory, but our sense of haunting is informed more expansively by the ways in which post-colonial and decolonial discourse argue for an understanding of the spectral that takes seriously cosmologies outside of European paradigms.

Reading Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson: A Personal essay

This essay critically responds to recent calls to decolonise the classics. In rejecting claims about the inherent value of certain literary works, I unravel my socially situated reading and responses, and therefore counter assumptions that literary value or acts of reading can be universalised. I reflect on personal encounters with Jane Austen’s novels and Emily Dickinson’s poetry, demonstrating how this generated my cognitive, sensory and imaginative growth. Analysed memories of discovering and first reading particular works are connected to a critique of prescriptive decolonial discourse. The essay illustrates this by focusing on readers’ embodied encounters with certain books, affective responses and heterogeneous subject positions. These can lead to their finding emotionally satisfying, edifying and inspirational meanings – irrespective of the historical, geopolitical or cultural worlds delineated by the works’ authors.

Decolonial discourse and global public art under Ukrainian conditions

In the paper, the author attempts to prove the urgency of rethinking the idea of decolonial identity in contemporary Ukrainian art. Adherents of Western theories of decolonialism and the indigenous movement expose the dark side of unified global public art, which regresses, ignoring the archetypal features of the traditions of mental and spiritual experience of ethnic groups. The conscious identity of the artistic vision associated with the empathic-transcendental worldview of the nation is evolving through aesthetic judgment, whereas, instead, the market art episteme of globalized contemporary experience, as a form of benchmarking borrowed from economics, harms national cultures and civilizational development, provoking substantial degradation and professional deskilling. To overcome the current crisis of cultural creation, artistic consciousness must distinguish regressive paradigms and resist the cultural-industrial strategies of global marketing of Eurocentrism, guaranteeing the diverse flourishing of national / regional cultures in a single family of civilizational polylogue.

Approaches to decolonising forensic curricula

Forensic science in UK Higher Education involves a constellation of subdisciplines, each with a biography shaped by a colonial past. Deeper examinations of the structures of curriculum design allow educators to address where colonial assumptions may reside and the impact of these legacies on the present. One process to assist this endeavour is Decolonising the Curriculum (DtC), which seeks to question and dismantle colonial structures of knowledge and support contextualisation to broaden, rather than narrow, the curricula. DtC toolkits, like those developed at the University of Winchester in the south of England, may provide practical support to programme teams to reflect on how colonial attitudes shape new and existing curricula. DtC may be seen as supporting existing quality processes that are part of the reflection cycle and tested through institutional and other accreditation quality procedures. Toolkits support programme teams to identify existing good practices and areas requiring further reflection and development. We offer perspectives on areas that would benefit from critical evaluation when teaching subjects with foundations in race science, colonial attitudes, and social injustice. The paper focuses on three main approaches to support decolonial discourse: sustained historical inquiry, questioning ethnic classifications and identity, and the presentation of international forensic work. Rather than seeing DtC as a threat to educational quality, it may be more constructively seen as an integral part of quality processes in curriculum design to support more diverse, inclusive, and authentic learning in forensic Higher Education.