Decolonial Theory Research Articles

Decolonial Theory or the Invention of a Common Enemy

On both sides of the Atlantic, polemics have been raging on complex questions relating to identity and race: cancel culture, wokism, critical race theory, assaults on affirmative action policies, and labeling scholars “Islamo-Leftists.” The focus of this article is provided by a closer examination of the ways in which a group of militant academics have instrumentalized the notion of “decolonialism” and how adherents have positioned themselves as the self-appointed imaginary defenders of academic freedom in research. Having identified the primary corrupting influence as originating in the United States, they have sought to discredit scholarship on decolonial, postcolonial, and intersectional studies, delineating in the process a common enemy. What transpires is an antagonism aimed at scholars who have elected to subject French Republican ideals to greater scrutiny, highlighted shortcomings in secularist policies while pointing to deep-seated historical fractures in the country’s sense of exceptionalism, and also underscoring France’s inability to address structural racism and disquieting forms of Islamophobia. We all know the considerable impact postcolonial studies have had internationally, reconfiguring and reshaping intellectual debates and institutional frameworks and stimulating broad interdisciplinary research. One cannot overstate the importance of fostering spaces in which rigorous research findings can be shared and discussed and of finding our way back to the kind of dialogue and exchanges that were foundational elements in a tradition that made France’s reputation and were a source of pride.

The Cannibal’s Antidote For Resentment: Diffracting Ressentiment Through Decolonial Thought

The purpose of this essay is to diffract ressentiment through decolonial theory. I would like to see what sort of light this sheds on the psychological undercurrents that impose barriers on colonial and decolonial thought, as well as on the conceptual dynamism of ressentiment. This essay is split into two different experiments in thought. The first will be to diffract ressentiment through the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Édouard Glissant, and Gilles Deleuze. To this end, I will begin by providing an analysis of ressentiment as developed by Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals and then supplement this with Deleuze’s analysis of ressentiment in Nietzsche & Philosophy. I will create a bridge with decolonial thought by interpreting Anzaldúa’s concept of the nopal de castilla and mestiza consciousness through the interpretive lens of ressentiment to show the affinity that exists between the work of Anzaldúa and Nietzsche. I will finish the first experiment by looking at ressentiment through some of the concepts Glissant offers us in the Poetics of Relation. In particular, I will argue that ressentiment resists the creolization of identity and culture, and that Glissant’s demand for the right to opacity for all is the sign of a thinking that has overcome ressentiment. The second experiment is to diffract ressentiment through Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, beginning with an analysis of the most relevant points of that text for our discussion then putting our diffracted version of ressentiment in conversation with Amerindian perspectivism. However, this does not mean that I am aiming at a synthesis of ressentiment with Amerindian perspectivism. Rather, in the spirit of the Brazilian author’s post-structural anthropology, this essay sees only a disjunctive synthesis of the two: a ressentiment-becoming-Amerindian perspectivism and an Amerindian perspectivism-becoming-ressentiment (we will focus on developing the former). I hope that, by the end of this experiment, we may have a richer conceptual understanding of ressentiment by offering this concept an image of itself that only our decolonial thinkers and an Amerindian perspective can reveal.

Rediscovering Freedom and Responsibility through a Decolonial Psychoanalytic Lens: Discussion of Friedman & Nakash’s “Repetition Compulsion and Sociopolitical Trauma”

ABSTRACT Practitioners who work from a social justice point of view navigate the challenges of whether to stress the role of personal responsibility or social location in psychic suffering. Drawing on the founder of decolonial theory, Frantz Fanon, I will first build on Friedman & Nakash’s (this issue) discussion of neoliberalism within the wider context of racial capitalism from a decolonial and critical race theory perspective. I will I argue that the “trickle down misery” Friedman & Nakash describe is itself scaffolded by racial logics, and show how such an intersectional analysis can facilitate an integrated model of human suffering. Then, I will show how Fanon’s work gives us a different point of entry for understanding the relationship between repetition compulsion, desire, and freedom that helps us address the psyche not from the “inside-out,” but the “outside-in” (“Given this sociopolitical structure, how then do we think about the psychic?”).

Astroenvironmentalism as SF

AbstractThe New Space Age is awash with discourses about space colonization and resource exploitation, and these happily coexist with the age-old and curiosity-driven question, “Are we alone in the universe?” Astrobiology addresses this question and, at the same time, codifies knowledge useful for protecting our planet and other celestial bodies from harmful contamination. This article critically examines astroenvironmentalism as discussed within astrobiology and attempts to rescue it from becoming a principle of border creation in otherworldly ecologies. To do so, it merges astrobiology with visions and images from feminist postcolonial and decolonial theory, STS, and science fiction, and reflects on the enduring colonial tropes that provide the building blocks of current knowledge on outer space. The same colonial cartographic imagination at play in the much-debated frontier narrative animates the concept of planetary parks. These have gained increased popularity as a mechanism of environmental protection in space, but it is important to note how they entertain a settler future in outer space and legitimize claims to territorial property and extraction. In a dialogue that is contrapuntal to the codification of this form of transplanetary environmentalism, this article traces how Lynn Margulis’s cosmic symbiosis, Donna Haraway’s sympoiesis, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1976) intersect with concerns of astrobiological knowledge. Crucially, they enable the blurring of three types of borders: between science and fiction; planetary inside and outside; life and matter. This border-crossing can be generative of a process of creating more-than-human relationalities beyond Earth-centric geographies.

Decolonizing Churches as Emancipation and Exorcism

Abstract As urgently needed as decolonial theory, theology, psychology, and ecclesiology are in the churches that have had their lives and history constrained (or indeed their ecclesial formations given birth) by colonial power and knowledge relations, they are just as urgently needed in the churches that continue to benefit from those relations. The churches of the global North, and particularly those that have been the allies and moral architects of colonial extraction and assimilation projects, the churches whose histories bear out a flow of knowledge and authority from center to periphery and a flow of economic and cultural production from periphery to center, are thereby diminished and distorted in ways that require painstaking decolonial analysis and constructive reorientation to rectify.

Decolonizing internationalization initiatives in Brazilian universities

ABSTRACT Universities across the globe are implementing internationalization programs. These programs often focus on language development, study abroad programs, and developing the international reputations of professors. In this paper, we present data from interviews and ethnographic observations of university internationalization trainings in Brazil. We asked: How (do) professors in Brazil make sense of the national/organizational internationalization initiative? Drawing on decolonial theories and scholarship about organizational paradoxes, we found two primary paradoxes arise in internationalization directives: the paradox of relying on the English language and the paradox of mobility. Ultimately, we argue that university internationalization is a highly political communicative act, which perpetuates systems of oppression and dominance and can cultivate discursive and material violence. We suggest that internationalization projects must take perspectives from a variety of global locations into account in order to roll out decolonized programs that are more equitable and attainable across the globe.

Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU’s global environmental governance

This paper critically examines the European Union’s (EU) role in tropical deforestation and the bloc’s actions to mitigate it. We focus on two EU policy communications aimed at the challenge: stepping up EU action to protect and restore the world's forests and the EU updated bioeconomy strategy. In addition, we refer to the European Green Deal, which articulates the bloc’s overarching vision for sustainability and transformations. We find that by casting deforestation as a production problem and a governance challenge on the supply side, these policies deflect attention from some of the key drivers of tropical deforestation—the EU’s overconsumption of deforestation-related commodities and asymmetric market and trade power relations. The diversion allows the EU unfettered access to agro-commodities and biofuels, which are important inputs to the EU’s green transition and bio-based economy. Upholding a ‘sustainability image’ within the EU, an overly business-as-usual approach has taken precedence over transformative policies, enabling multinational corporations to run an ecocide treadmill, rapidly obliterating tropical forests. Whereas the EU's plan to nurture a bioeconomy and promote responsible agro-commodities production in the global South are relevant, the bloc is evasive in setting firm targets and policy measures to overcome the inequalities that spring from and enable its overconsumption of deforestation-related commodities. Drawing on degrowth and decolonial theories, we problematise the EU’s anti-deforestation policies and highlight alternative ideas that could lead to more just, equitable and effective measures for confronting the tropical deforestation conundrum.

“Let Black Girls Be”: The (Insta)poetry of Upile Chisala and its resistance to coloniality of being

ABSTRACT The production and circulation of poetry on social media has gained critical attention over the past decade. Known popularly as Instapoetry, this digital literary phenomenon has been celebrated in the Global North for increased printed poetry sales and changing readership patterns. Little has been written about Instapoetry from the Global South despite its popularity amongst black women readers and sharers, especially in South Africa. By offering a Southern analysis of the poetry and Instagram profile of Malawian storyteller and instapoet Upile Chisala, grounded in decolonial theory, this paper suggests that the oft-cited criticism against Instapoetry as “not poetry” fails to acknowledge its location on “the other side of the line.” Chisala’s poetry is an example of post-abyssality: it draws attention to the abyssal line and seeks to overcome it. The paper argues that Chisala’s call to voice and self-love is a “re-humaning” ethic that is useful for challenging coloniality of being. Her poetry therefore contributes to reimagining the being of black women and girls.

God dwells in Flesh: Decolonial Ecojustice and Planetary Ethics in the “Anthropocene”

This article provides a preliminary cartography of the intersections of theories, approaches and challenges associated with the “decolonisation” of ecojustice in the Anthropocene. It correlates post- and decolonial theories which for long time have remained environmentally blind with posthuman theories, and confronts the theory of the Anthropocene with its blindness towards non-Western knowledge. Decolonial theory is called upon to put its human-centred presuppositions to the test, to adopt post-anthropocentric perspectives, and to include non-human nature in its critique of epistemic violence and “Western reason.” Ecojustice is a task that links the central post-/decolonial commitment to justice and liberation with ecological challenges. The article is embedded in the field of intercultural theology and liberation theology, which provides some “material” that highlights the challenges at hand. The post-/decolonial and intercultural-theological reflection of ecojustice stimulates an incarnational theology that starts with the enfleshment and queering of God. Overall, the article suggests a decolonial reading of the Anthropocene and an unmasking of the persistent anthropocentric as well as Euro- and North American-centric perspective it holds, which continues to marginalise other forms of knowledge. Keywords: Decolonial Epistemology, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Post-human Ethics, Relational Ecojustice, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Creative Uncertainty

Decolonial Architecture and Urbanism: Symbolic Formation of Regions in Post-Soviet Russia

Abstract: My research examines post-Soviet architecture in Russia through a postcolonial lens, focusing on decentralization processes from 1990 to 2010. I analyze the role of architecture in the construction of regional and ethnic identities, using classic post- and decolonial theories and concepts on identity and regionalism. In this paper I identify and describe decolonial architectural practices in regions of Russia and their relationship with decentralization and regional autonomous subjectivity. I claim that post-Soviet architecture was a tool in regional symbolic politics that was used by local elites to establish regions as unique and rightful territorial social groups or to challenge the established order. I show, however, the hybridity of such regional architectural practices, which were both empowering and suppressive, decolonial and orientalist. Finally, I propose the new perspective to describe the architecture in regions as "symbolic regimes," linking the local political, economic, and cultural disposition with architectural practice.

A reply to ‘Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical analysis’ by Elaine Unterhalter and Laila Kadiwal

In this reply, I make three comments on the article ‘Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical analysis’ by Elaine Unterhalter and Laila Kadiwal (2022). Unterhalter and Kadiwal foreground the meanings and implications of the department’s changing organisational titles over time, illustrating that these titles can be interpreted as metonyms that symbolise shifting registers of colonial and post-colonial identification for the department as a whole, as well as among individual staff at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), London, UK. Geographies and positionalities are extensively elaborated in the analysis. Expanding on this, I suggest that the authors’ initial line of thinking begins to show, and can show even more, the limited recognition at the IOE that decolonial identities and discourses are underlined by an affective dimension. This connects with Unterhalter and Kadiwal’s observation that although recently decolonial theories and praxis at the IOE have taken on a more nuanced, multidimensional perspective, further institutional and individual work is required. Thus, my response engages with questions around the modalities through which a narrative of history is constructed and naturalised.

Narrativa cuir, experiência estética e política na luta pela paz: notas sobre o curta-metragem Negrum3

The contemporary Brazilian context offers a growing artistic and cultural production, generated by LGBTQIA+ subjects, which disputes narratives and sensitivity, and suggests new ways of being in the social world. This article looks at how such artistic-cultural production can bring critiques and contributions on peacebuilding. The article questions how to think peacebuilding from queer perspectives: it confronts peacebuilding with dissident critiques, in order to think a possible idea of queer peace. This is proposed through the aesthetic experience, in articulations between affection and politics that mobilize relations of recognition and otherness, from a sensitive perception of the discourses of resistance and affirmation of existence. To conduct an analysis that values culture —and its aesthetic and sensitive character— as a relevant field for research in the social and political sciences, we discuss the short film Negrum3 by filmmaker Diego Paulino. This audiovisual object is analyzed through a brief historical incursion, which presents a picture of LGBTQIA+ public policies in Brazil and their possible bridges with an idea of peacebuilding, and a theoretical reflection that contrasts decolonial theories with figures from the European academia. Thus, we reflect on how a queer peace can be built in the dimension of aesthetic experience, which is also political, and allows us to imagine and enable new forms of life. Our conclusion is that queer peace is a challenging conception, which retains its challenges and is based on a critique of hegemonic and institutionalized apprehensions of peace. In this sense, the artistic-cultural production, with its aesthetic approaches, appears as an inventive path. The originality of the article consists in its articulation of queer theories and, above all, of aesthetic and political practices, to think about peacebuilding in Brazil’s social reality.

Voice (as and in) touch

What can touch, as operational metaphor and physical method, offer to voice work for an intersectional performer in an intercultural context? This analysis considers 3 voice practices I have researched within the frame of experimental deviser training with diverse student groups, grounded in my work at the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA). The exercises work with different touch interfaces; (1) Vocal Wrestling (touching each other), inspired by contact improvisation and Grotowski diaspora trainings, (2) Follow the bubbles (self-touch) derived from anatomical voice methods, and (3) The Voices in My Voices (touching our communities/cosmologies) inspired by decolonial and New Materialist (NM) thought. The work proposes touch as generative in the process of world making via voice. Strategies include: decentring the teacher, empowering student world building, polyvocality, brave spaces, vocal risk and queer use via hybrid experience. It puts forth principle-based and practical starting points for models of touch in training which ‘meet’ today’s climate of care and carefulness proactively and with lightness. Theoretically, this work is grounded in McAllister-Viel, Thomaidis, Oram, Eidsheim, Object Oriented Feminism, aurality studies, critical whiteness and decolonial theory.

Embodied reclamation: how Big Baby Balam and Danza Ocelotl represent the body as a site for decolonization

AbstractIn this article, I investigate how two paintings—Big Baby Balam and Danza Ocelotl—represent the potential for embodied reclamation for Chicanas/os. Through these paintings, the artist Yreina D. Cervántez situates her body as a site for decolonization through a process which I describe as embodied reclamation. In decolonizing her body and situating her body as a site for decolonization, Cervántez represents the body as a physical and material location that was colonized and can be reclaimed. This article extends decolonial theories to discuss embodied reclamation, which reconceptualizes the body as a physical site for reclamation rather than colonization. I am looking at the way these paintings represent a wrestling with embodied identity, and from that I call for more work exploring the “art of identity” as a strategy of self-making in contexts where particular bodies are Othered and brutalized.

Situating Some Aspects of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in South African Higher Education Within Southern Theories

This paper discusses aspects of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in South African higher education (HE) and locates it within what it calls Southern theories. Three examples of such theories that the paper advances are Southern decolonial theory, decoloniality, and transversality, which it frames from the Global South standpoint. Concerning the first theory, the paper argues that SoTL, both as a notion and as a practice, needs to be problematized, critiqued, and contextualized according to the Global South HE settings in which it is applied. One of its key points in this regard is that SoTL has to question and critique the dominant epistemic practices and scholarly practices underpinning the curricula of Global South higher education institutions (HEIs), and through which students are framed in these HEIs. With reference to both decoloniality and transversality, the paper foregrounds components of SoTL that are aligned to these two approaches in a way that dismantles their hierarchical relations. Most importantly, it contends that transversality is capable of decentering Western truth claims in favor of polycentric epistemologies, frameworks, and methodologies that resonate with and that have applicability to the Global South.

My journey with western theory in the university in Africa

In this paper, I recount my experiences with western media theory. Working on my PhD thesis marked my turn to decolonial theory. I used the creolisation strategy of putting critical western Marxist theories in conversation with African, black and Latin American decolonial theories. I worked on my PhD thesis under conditions informed by the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), the Fees Must Fall (FMF) and other broader protests in South Africa whose connecting thread was the demand for the decolonisation of both the academy and public life. It is my conviction that, although work has already begun, there is still a lot of work to be done in decolonising the disciplines of journalism, media and cultural studies.

Violent Continuities and the Possibility of Hope

This brief essay is excerpted from my State of the Profession plenary presentation, delivered at the American Society for Theatre Research conference on October 28, 2021. Patrick Anderson and I reference this presentation in our essay, "Is This Ballroom a Bathhouse? The Promise and Peril of Coming Together," which also appears in this issue of the journal. I offer it here to expand upon our discussion on how Abdoh's politics and aesthetics are relevant to our current set of cultural crises. In the full version, I combined my analysis of Reza Abdoh with consideration of how decolonial theory by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson might offer transformative possibilities for university culture; these possibilities are touched upon at the end of this excerpt.

Mulheres quilombolas e a luta pelo território na perspectiva do feminismo decolonial

Abstract The present work aims to analyze, from the point of view of decolonial feminism, the struggle of quilombola women for the recognition of their ancestral territories. Decolonial feminism manifests itself in the Latin American context, giving visibility to its subaltern representations, to Latin American, Afro-descendant, mestizo, and indigenous women, and in this scenario quilombola women are also included. In Brazil, decolonial theories and practices are drawn from theoretical discussions held by more classical theorists, such as Lélia Gonzalez and Sueli Carneiro, and contemporary ones, such as Carla Akotirene, to address issues that are closer to the reality of Brazilian women. The phenomena that support the theories are glimpsed in the daily struggles of black women, especially quilombolas, for the right to the recognition of their territories - denied by the State and which potentiates the various forms of violence, including gender violence. These practices are carried out by quilombola leaders in the private and public contexts and correspond to the notion of female empowerment linked to the collective context. For the analysis of the application of the theories and phenomena, the deductive method was used and as methodological procedures, the literature review and the analysis of available data and documents. We conclude that decolonial feminism should increasingly observe more the phenomena than the theories and that the feminine resistances in and through the quilombola territory go through struggles for the recognition of gender identities to mitigate the overlapping violence.

Turning toward a Theology of Transformation: Notes from the Borderlands

This article brings Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “self” and “borderlands/ mestiza consciousness” into conversation with M. Shawn Copeland’s call to “turn theology toward persons.” After tracing Anzaldúa’s critical rethinking of José Vasconcelos’s understanding of mestizaje, as well as the political implications of borderlands/ mestiza consciousness as theorized in the work of María Lugones and others, the article examines Copeland’s engagement of decolonial theory in her attempt to “turn” theology. Both Copeland’s and Anzaldúa’s writings teach nos/otrx that theology can only be both transformed and transformative if the persons doing theology engage in critical self-reflection and build this critical reflexivity into the theologies they create.

Kwayedza newspaper’s coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in Zimbabwe

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the methodology and decolonial theory as the theoretical framework, this study sought to critique coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in Zimbabwe between March 2020 and July 2021 in Kwayedza newspaper’s editorial comment. Twelve articles written in an African language were purposively selected to obtain a sizable sample. This study found that the newspaper effectively covered Covid-19 in an African language while focusing on its socio-economic and cultural impact on the country and offered precautions and prescriptions for dealing with the pandemic. Its major downside was that it downplayed certain key issues in the process due to its ownership by Zimpapers, which tends to support the government’s policies. This violates ethical journalism principles such as independence, truth and accuracy and is an abrogation of the media’s duty to bring accountability to public officials. This paper, therefore, recommends adherence to the values of journalism which centralize public interest over that of owners.