Colonial Notions Research Articles

Decolonial Perspectives on Charitable Spaces of “Welcome Culture” in Germany

This article focusses on the relationships between volunteers and refugees in the German “welcome culture”. I highlight the continuities between historical and colonial notions of feminine charity and contemporary volunteering efforts in support of refugees in Germany. The “welcome culture” is conceived here as a charitable space that is historically sedimented by specific understandings of gender, racial and class difference. In particular, the difference between the modern emancipated female volunteer and the female oppressed refugee plays a central role. The question of female self-determination, then, becomes an important social arena in the German “welcome culture”, through which the rate and terms of participation of refugees in social life are negotiated. Thus I draw on decolonial thought as well as theoretical insights from post-development scholarship and critical studies of humanitarianism in order to consider the multitemporal and transnational character of current “welcome culture” as well as to gain a better understanding of the entailed power relations. These are more contingent than might first appear. Presenting findings from my ongoing fieldwork I conclude that the notion of “welcome culture” allows for the emergence of new forms of sociality.

AN ECOFEMINIST READING OF ANITA DESAI’S FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

Ecofeminism is a term that links feminism with ecology. This paper tries to outline the fact that the capitalistic society has led to a conflict between nature and culture. This also makes it clear that the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women are closely linked with notions of class, caste, race, colonialism and social rules. Anita Desai, in Fire on the Mountain emphasis ecoconsciousness by depicting a serene landscape. She also takes the reader through a maze of human actions, diverse nature of the mountain, the ecological natural processes in the mountain milieu, excessive population disturbing the peace ,man-made dangers exploiting nature; and therefore aims at showing an integral relationship between man and nature. The novel certainly recalls the fact that mother earth suffers just like women living on her, exploited, discriminated, humiliated, raped, disowned, discarded and let to die.

The Erasure of Race: Cosmopolitanism and the Illusion of Kantian Hospitality

This article explores three key arguments: Firstly, it seeks to demonstrate the contradictions and limits within Kantian hospitality, and its links to colonialism and practices of racialisation. The acclaimed universalism of Kant’s law of hospitality forecloses a discussion of its dualism, and erases the historical, racist context in which it was conceived. The prioritization of concept over conception allows Kant’s theory on race to be obscured from official discourse and framing of policies while it still courses through inherited perceptions and theories. Secondly, in making my case, I will be applying the notion of coloniality, coined by Aníbal Quijano and later developed by Walter Mignolo, to the existing but small body of critical discourse on Kant and race. Debates initiated on the peripheries of philosophy, law and anthropology in the 1990s have led the way in this regard. However, given the time that has elapsed, it is notable that their work has received little scrutiny in political theory and International Relations theory, and thus warrants renewed attention. I argue that the notion of coloniality provides a useful lens through which to do so, and a vehicle through which to apply those excavations to a contemporary context. Finally, the article explores the extent to which Kantian thought constitutes ‘modern’ cosmopolitanism, and draws attention to the inadvertently complicit role of second-generation cosmopolitans in the erasure of race from the study of Kant. The relationship between the collective erasure of race and racism in academia and European practice towards refugees and immigrants is briefly considered.

Towards an emotional history of settler decolonisation: De Gaulle, political masculinity and the end of French Algeria 1958–1962

ABSTRACTThis article focuses upon the complex emotional relationship between the settlers and Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle returned to power in May 1958 ostensibly to maintain French Algeria and with the new Fifth Republic many settlers felt emotional and politically secure after four years of conflict. Yet, as de Gaulle’s position shifted in 1959, this article traces the changing emotional landscape of the settlers, examining how they responded to de Gaulle’s pronouncements with a mixture of fear, anxiety and anger. Following this relationship, the article will explore the way in which de Gaulle used television to project a certain image of political masculinity that was rational, detached and objective. In particular, it will foreground how this political masculinity, embodying the higher interests of the French Republic, was seen to stand in opposition to the European settler ‘other’ – irrational, unrealistic, driven by narrow, selfish interests. In conclusion the article will place these findings within the framework of the notion of settler colonialism advanced by Lorenzo Veracini. As such, the article will make a general contribution to the field, opening up a connected and comparative history of the emotional dynamics of other settler colonial societies as well as the decolonisation process in general.

“Education, empire and the heterogeneity of investigative modalities”: a reassessment of colonial surveys on indigenous Indian education

As the British expanded their dominions in India, political and administrative needs made it imperative for them to acquire more information about their subjects. Hence, systematic and meticulous surveys began to be commissioned by the East India Company as it assumed charge of educating the natives. These surveys were an integral part of what Bernard Cohn has called the “documentation project” whose ultimate object was to control and subjugate the colonial subjects. Therefore, a key purpose of instituting educational surveys was to dismiss indigenous education and justify its supersession by colonial education. In the process, much of the information acquired by the colonial state was simplified and digested into a monolithic narrative. This article shows that regardless of the imperatives that influenced it, the colonial survey sometimes revealed fascinating details about the nature of indigenous institutions that were often overlooked by the British Governors General. As a case study, this article examines a set of enquiries instituted by the governments of Madras, Bombay, and Bengal in 1822, 1824, and 1835 respectively. By re-examining the reports submitted by district collectors in response to these government enquiries, this article seeks to challenge colonial notions about indigenous education. One of the principal aims of this article is to refute the charge that indigenous schools did not impart any moral or useful instruction. In doing so, the article also aims to highlight the instruction that was imparted in indigenous schools.

Recognition, power and coloniality

ABSTRACTRecognition has emerged in recent decades as an almost universally valued moral and political horizon in intercultural contexts. Recognition claims underpin myriad social struggles, and forms and practices of recognition also animate the management of alterities within both formal and informal arenas. Recently, critical Indigenous scholars Audra Simpson and Glen Coulthard have posed a fundamental challenge to this moral and political horizon. Writing particularly in response to North American settler colonialism, they argue that the politics of recognition has functioned, not to ameliorate colonialism’s negative effects, but to reproduce them. We seek here to respond to the important provocation posed by Simpson and Coulthard’s scholarship, and to extend their critiques into new geographic and empirical terrains. Specifically, we draw on the notion of coloniality to establish a comparative frame that can bring both settler and non-settler postcolonial contexts into dialogue. Doing so highlights a multiplicity of forms of recognition relationships, as well as of sites and structures of power beyond the settler state. It also illuminates a complex, unstable middle ground that can exist between recognition and its absence, which provides a productive ground from which to engage with the possibilities of being against, or beyond, recognition.

Third Cinema Approach and Anti-Colonial Theory: Two trains towards one destination (A Comparative Study of Sidhwa s Ice-Candy-Man and Deepa Mehta s Earth 1947)

This research paper is an effort to analyze the Third Cinema1 approach and Anti-colonial theory by a comparative study between Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man and its visual adaptation Earth 1947 by Deepa Mehta. The paper explores the objectives of the mentioned theories/approaches and terms them as two trains towards one destination. The statement metaphorically refers to the geographical resemblance between the Anti-colonial theory and Third Cinema approach (as both deal with the issues of Third World countries) and ideological similarities between them in respect of their goals and aims. The article examines Anti-Colonial theory as a counter-narrative2 in the domain of Post-Colonial Studies. Similarly, it analyzes Third Cinema approach as a counter-projection in Third Cinema studies because it deconstructs the false and biased projection of the issues of Third World by dominant cinema and reconstructs a new version of projections based on reality. The paper shows that these theories challenge the notion of colonialism and create awareness among the suppressed and marginalized people and finally prepare them to take action, to define their identity and to resist against the colonial cruelties.

History as Narration: Resistance and Subaltern Subjectivity in Micaela Bastidas’ ‘Confession’

This paper focusses on the negotiations in which many subaltern peoples engage within contexts of unequal power relations in colonial settings like eighteenth-century Peru. The trial and ‘confession’ of Micaela Bastidas, an indigenous mestizo and wife of the Inca rebel Túpac Amaru II, allows for an analysis of the complexity of her subjectivity and agency, both as products of colonial impositions and Andean notions of gender complementarity and power. As a woman, wife of a noble curaca and member of a conquered indigenous population, she defied rigidly bipolar colonial ethnic and gender norms. Skilfully engaging in ‘rituals of subordination’ through the manipulation of discriminatory colonial expectations, Micaela refused to share what was expected of her, subverting colonial gender and power hierarchies, albeit momentarily.

Critical Reflexivity and Moral Regulation

ABSTRACTCritical reflexivity is a dominant practice framework in social work. It is designed to address the operation of power relations between social workers and their clients. However, I intend to shed light on a different set of concerns related to this practice. I examine the ways in which critical reflexivity can operate to re-inscribe colonial notions of moral superiority, and re-center whiteness within social work education and practice settings. Drawing on research I conducted with racialized social workers in Toronto, Canada, this article examines the ways in which critical reflexivity can operate as a governing technology to silence the operation of racism.

Islamophobia and Anti‐Semitism: Shared Prejudice or Singular Social Pathologies

Islamophobia and Anti‐Semitism: Shared Prejudice or Singular Social Pathologies Michael Dobkowski There is no doubt: there has been a significant rise in anti‐Semitism and Islamophobia in recent years. Both have deep roots in history as well as being generated by more recent political and economic influences. Some see them as basically parallel phenomena, characterized more by their similarities than their differences. Others believe that anti‐Semitism is a unique prejudice that really stands alone and cannot be compared to Islamophobia or even racism. What I will attempt to do in this essay is to provide a theoretical and historical framework for approaching this complex and controversial question. I don't expect my analysis will satisfy everyone, but I do hope it will generate additional thinking on these impactful “hatreds.” The roots of Islamophobia Let me briefly begin with some context. Islamophobia is a term first put into use in 1997 in a report of the Runnymede Trust, a think tank in Britain launched by the British Home Secretary Jack Straw. It was given further currency by the 2001 UN conference on racism at Durban that most observers believe devolved from an examination of racism to an exercise in racism and anti‐Semitism. Israel was singled out for special criticism prompting the U.S. delegates to walk out. The official declarations eventually included a reference to anti‐Semitism, but this was counterbalanced by the addition of Islamophobia suggesting an equivalency between the two phenomena. Clearly, Muslim populations around the world are experiencing a hostile pressure and waves of discrimination that come from non‐Muslim populations of various sorts—the product of Hindu–Muslim tensions in India, of Christian–Muslim competition in Africa, of Jewish–Arab disputes in Israel and Palestine, and of anti‐Muslim immigrant sentiment in Europe and North America. There have been countless incidents of stereotyping, scapegoating, and bigotry directed against Muslims because of their religious identity. There exists a huge and profound ignorance about Islam. There is no shortage of voices proclaiming that fanaticism and intolerance are fundamental to Islamic tradition, that horrific violence against enemies of Islam and people defined as infidels have deep Qur'anic roots (Yoffie , 121). Many believe and are spreading the image that Islam is the enemy of the West, America, and Israel and that it is a religion prone to violence and terrorism. This tendency is certainly fueled by a long tradition of anti‐Muslim discourse in Western history and culture—from Dante to Don Quixote, to basic Orientalist scholarship; it has been exacerbated by ignorance, bigotry, and post‐9/11 fears. Islamophobia is real and to a certain extent is ingrained in Western culture. In his Orientalism, Edward Said demonstrated that the West's reified view of Islam has its roots in European colonialism. In his Covering Islam, he showed how these colonial notions continue to influence Western coverage of the Middle East in the 1990s. Islamophobia needs to be examined and confronted. It results from ignorance and from limited social contact, which is in turn buttressed by conflict and violence occurring around the world and its treatment by mainstream culture. This anxiety, like most prejudices, relies on a sense of otherness (Mattson , 129–130). Similarly, anti‐Semitism remains a persistent prejudice. The murder of Jewish shoppers at the Parisian Hyper Casher supermarket on January 9, 2015, after the killing of twelve people at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, was particularly disturbing, not because it was the first such event but because it has become part of a troubling pattern. By every measure, there has been a rise of anti‐Semitism around the world—incidents of violence and intimidation, negative polling data, incitement, desecrations, rhetoric, etc. In 2006, Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Paris. In 2012, Mehdi Nemmouche killed four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels. In 2012, a rabbi and three young children were murdered at a Jewish school in Toulouse by Mohammad Merah. In early February 2015, there were killings in Copenhagen, and 300 Jewish graves were desecrated in Eastern France. Additionally, there were smaller affronts like the popularity of the quenelle gesture (a reverse Nazi salute...

Decolonisation and Ideology: Preconditions for Urbanism in Late Colonial Port Moresby

Hart's informality occurs in market economies when people are unable or unwilling to conform with the guiding orthodoxy of the State. In Papua New Guinea (PNG) after the second world war an ideology of 'economic development' was adopted by the colonial State. Bureaucratic norms established to support Australian colonial notions of 'development' were confronted by transgressive (that is, informal) behaviour on the part of indigenous people. Such behaviour included unauthorized migration to Port Moresby, squatting on urban land and unauthorized home-building, all of which substantially altered the physical fabric and social character of the capital. The paper describes how Port Moresby gradually moved towards a more stable and committed urban workforce supporting a 'normalized' population structure, although this process was still incomplete by self-government in 1973. By then, however, Port Moresby had progressed a long way from being an Australian colonial town towards assuming the status and characteristics of a Third World city, with increasing 'space' for informal economic activities. Late colonial PNG is shown as having been an obsolescent society and economy, a condition originating in the nexus between retarded urbanism, archaic processes of wage determination and low labour productivity -- a Gordian knot for policy-makers.

The Coloniality of Neoliberal English: The Enduring Structures of American Colonial English Instruction in the Philippines and Puerto Rico

This article highlights two relationships in regards to neoliberalism and second language. First, it examines the connection between English and neoliberalism. It focuses on the idea of English as a global language and the linguistic instrumentalism (Kubota, 2011; Wee, 2003) of English as a necessary tool for economic viability in the globalized market. Second, it explores this relationship by tracing English in the contemporary neoliberal context to the history of English as an element of overseas colonial rule. It employs Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano’s notion of coloniality of power (2000) to illustrate that the colonial context of neoliberal global English serves not merely as a historical legacy but as an enduring structure of oppressive power that continues to establish hierarchical difference through linguistic othering. This article highlights the historical context of colonial English instruction to demonstrate how English imposition served as the foundation for the neoliberal privileging of English as a global language. Specifically, it presents the cases of American colonial English instruction in Puerto Rico and the Philippines as a developmental link to the current neoliberal status of global English. It illuminates how American colonial administrations established English instruction in a manner that mystified its imposed nature and the context of conquest. This article thus depicts both how English is bound with neoliberalism and how claims of global English’s neutrality belie the historic colonial inequalities, which created the conditions for its existence. It concludes with an examination of the coloniality of global English and the enduring colonial structures of hierarchical difference established through English.

Settler colonialism and cultural policy: the colonial foundations and refoundations of Canadian cultural policy

This article aims to reintegrate the colonial history of Canada as part of the grids of analysis for understanding the evolution of its Federal cultural policy. Building on the notion of settler colonialism and its implication for Indigenous population (For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ is used in place of, perhaps, more popular or familiar terms – such as ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘Native’ – in order to remain consistent with current Indigenous politics. In particular, some Indigenous scholars are reluctant to accept the label Aboriginal because they feel it is consistent with the colonial order imposed by the Canadian government [Alfred and Corntassel 2005, p. 599]). The term Indigenous also alludes to a global political awareness and to forms of alterity between different populations from North America, South America, Asia, and the Pacific. in Canada, this paper documents different transformations in cultural policy and illustrates some of its paradoxes and challenges. Building on principles developed by Indigenous scholars, this article highlights some of the components for decolonizing cultural policy in Canada. It is argued that a post-colonial cultural policy must build on the grounds of ethics (and ethos).

Remembering my whiteness/imagining my African-ness

This article comprises of reflections on an artwork created during a research exercise using visual methodologies to explore various aspects of identity within the context of autobiographical studies. It interrogates aspects of meaning and identity as a white person in post-apartheid South Africa and post-colonial Africa and traces my journey of critical reflection through an interactive process where the visual text, research on predominant theorists in areas related to the white hegemonic gaze, and collaborative comment of colleagues revealed embedded commentary and cultural critique. My critical reflections about notions of representation, appropriation, colonialism, essentializing discourses, postmodernism and hybridity are included in this article. Throughout these reflections emerged the constant need to be mindful of not reinforcing whiteness as normative and to be aware of forms of moral distancing and moral superiority. Such critical self-reflection is vital to my roles as teacher educator and researcher within the discipline of social justice in education. Although often uncomfortable, I confront and remember my privileged racial identity, fashioned in a divided and exclusive past. I consider what it is I have become and what it is I no longer want to be, and have the audacity of spirit to imagine and reposition myself beyond my white socialization. I recognize and struggle for the possibility of new frames of understanding and new identities, new social spaces and new communities, beyond the historical differences which keep up separated and alienated.

The War of Translation: Colonial Education, American English, and Tagalog Slang in the Philippines

This paper examines the role of language in nationalist attempts at decolonization. In the case of the Philippines, American colonial education imposed English as the sole medium of instruction. Native students were required to suppress their vernacular languages so that the classroom became the site for a kind of linguistic war, or better yet, the war of translation. Nationalists have routinely denounced the continued use of English as a morbid symptom of colonial mentality. Yet, such a view was deeply tied to the colonial notion of the sheer instrumentality of language and the notion that translation was a means for the speaker to dominate language as such. However, other practices of translation existed based not on domination but play seen in the classroom and the streets. Popular practices of translation undercut colonial and nationalist ideas about language, providing us with an alternative understanding of translation in democratizing expression in a postcolonial context.

Decolonising Indigenous water ‘rights’ in Australia: flow, difference, and the limits of law

This article addresses Indigenous Australian claims to water resources and how they inform and relate to current Australian law and contemporary legal thinking about future possibilities. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from historical records, previous ethnographic investigation with Indigenous Australians, current legal scholarship, and social anthropological theory. In doing so, it analyses Indigenous dependencies on water, the history of settler colonial orientations to water bodies, the evolution of settler colonial–Indigenous relations to natural resources, and the development of the Australian legal system's regulation of water. This provides foundations for a discussion of the limitations of settler colonial notions of property and the failure of settler colonial law to understand and incorporate the dynamism of Indigenous relationships to water, particularly the meaning and productive capacity of water flows within Indigenous cosmologies and sociocultural and ecological systems. Calling for a decolonial turn in legal approaches to Indigenous access and water resource determination, the authors explore the ways in which Australian law may need to ‘unthink’ settler colonial notions of resource ownership as a prerequisite for reformulating future water policy and planning. This reformulation relies on a more extensive legal philosophical engagement with the concept of ‘flow’, a concept that already exists in both water law and planning, but which has not been adequately theorised and enacted. A more comprehensive legal understanding of flow in the context of Indigenous understandings of, and claims to, water provides more sustainable and equitable legal and analytical foundations for managing future water resources issues. The article creates the space for a more culturally relevant notion of ‘Indigenous water rights’ and for new ways of honouring the interrelationship between water flows, meaning-making practices, and cultural continuity.

‘Blond Beasts of Prey’: A Nietzschean interpretation of the language of Britain's colonisation of New Zealand

This article explores the efficacy of applying Friedrich Nietzsche's hypothetical reconstruction of the emergence of human morality, to examples of the language used by agents of the British colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on notions of cultural and racial superiority/inferiority. The particular nexus of psychology and philosophy that Nietzsche formulated provides a useful ontological framework for examining the phenomenon of colonisation, especially its often explicitly racial orientation. Nietzsche's architecture of the history of morality, with its constituent elements of race, mastery, civilisation, savagery, morality, imperial expansion, and pan-Europeanism, is evident in much of the language used by various agents of Britain's colonisation of New Zealand in the nineteenth century. The analogies are not always exact, and the connections are correlative rather than causative (necessarily so, on the basis that Neitzsche's reconstruction of the emergence of human morality is retrospectively applied in this article), but the particular nexus of psychology and philosophy that Nietzsche formulated does provide a useful ontological framework for examining the phenomenon of colonisation, especially its often explicitly racial orientation. Nietzsche's theories in this area also resonate with the notion of settler colonialism, in which an expanding dominant population spreads out into new territories, and then encodes and reproduces the unequal relationships that it has used to coerce other populations during previous phases of its expansion. The conclusion reached is that Nietzsche's architecture of the history of morality, despite being largely conjectural, can serve as a theoretical model that assists in interpreting and contextualising some of the language that accompanied Britain's colonisation of New Zealand in ways not afforded by other theoretical approaches.

Constructing Colonial Legality in Russian Central Asia: On Guardianship

AbstractThe history of Islamic law in Russian Central Asia defies many of the categorizations offered by both global and Russian imperial history. Recent studies of law in the age of colonialism have concluded that the attainment of legal hegemony in the colonies was consequent upon the initiative of indigenes that strategically manipulated jurisdictions; as colonial subjects increasingly involved the state in their private conflicts, they effectively pushed their masters to consolidate the institutional arrangements through which the state dispensed justice. Historians of the Russian Empire have reached a diametrically different conclusion: under tsarist rule, they argue, Muslims continued to access the services of the “native courts,” which remained mostly untouched following Russia's southeastward expansion. As the empire promoted a policy of differentiated jurisprudence, Russians effectively safeguarded the integrity of Islamic law. I argue that both of the aforementioned approaches are confined to the level of institutional history, and thus fail to consider that the creation of colonial hegemony rested on ways in which colonial subjects understood law and viewed themselves as legal subjects. I show that Russians, from the outset of their rule in Central Asia, initiated Muslims into colonial forms of legality by overcoming the jurisdictional separation they had themselves put in place. In allowing the local population to file their grievances with the military bureaucracy, the Russians effectively pushed Central Asians to reify colonial notions of justice, and thereby distance themselves from the tradition of Islamic legal practices.

Caste, race and difference: The limits of knowledge and resistance

This article reconsiders the past and the present of Dalit and lower-caste struggle in India, including recent efforts to link caste and race in order to make a common platform against discrimination at international fora. It explores the burden of colonial concepts and statist imaginaries in the shaping of objectified identities by Dalits, especially as they seize upon and crucially rework such categories. Critically engaging with the notion of coloniality, ‘the other side of modernity’, the article reveals the limits of categorical perspectives and intellectual theory in the articulation of social worlds. Instead, it points towards a global sociology that acknowledges and affirms ambivalence and contradiction as crucial attributes of thinking, writing and practice.

Síntomas (de)coloniales: Grosfoguel como lector de Foucault

Tabula Rasa es una revista científica del área de las ciencias sociales con una periodicidad trimestral, dedicada principalmente a las disciplinas de la Antropología, Historia, Sociología, Trabajo Social, Geografía Humana y Estudios Culturales.