This research explores the themes of discrimination and tolerance in The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. Employing postcolonial theories by Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, the study analyzes how fantasy narratives reflect social realities regarding injustice and diversity. The novel presents a fictional world marked by racial tensions among humans, elves, dwarves, and other magical beings. Through character interactions and the social structures depicted in the story, readers are presented with portrayals of marginalization, stereotyping, and systems of oppression. At the same time, the novel also includes moments of tolerance that suggest the possibility of coexistence and mutual understanding. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a library research approach. The findings reveal that The Witcher serves not only as a reflection of social inequality but also as a critique of dominant power structures and an exploration of efforts to build tolerance within a divided society.

This paper looks at the relationship between ritual, memory and identity in the postcolonial geography of Bukhara and Khorezm, two historically important regions of Central Asia. Drawing on theoretical concepts from cultural memory studies, postcolonial theory and semiotics, this research pursues an understanding of how the commemorative and ritual practices function as mechanisms of cultural continuity in the face of colonial and Soviet transformations. Based on qualitative analysis of 50 scholarly sources, the study shows that these regions serve as outstanding cases of cultural resilience that are embodied in religious syncretism, adaptive hybridity and the strategic use of memory in identity formation. The results show that Bukhara and Khorezm are comparative microcosms of a postcolonial culture of cultural negotiation in which the pre-Islamic, Islamic and Soviet legacies combine to form distinctive modes of collective identity. This work makes a theoretical intervention in postcolonial Central Asian studies by bringing together Lotmanian semiotics and modern memory studies and illuminating areas of research deficits in terms of minority experiences and contemporary transformations.

Abstract In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French imperial network resulted in the creation of multiple migration routes between various French colonies and dependencies in Asia-Pacific region, thus reshaping mobility in the area. Although the French government actively promoted migration by organizing and subsidizing travel and establishing systems of indentured labor, recruitment operations were often carried out by coolie brokers, who became important social and political actors in labor relations. Analyzing and defining their contributions to the expansion of migrant networks within the French Empire remains crucial not only for colonial and post-colonial studies but also for understanding contemporary labor migrations in the Asia-Pacific. The term “mediating Coolies” refers to the organization of labor migrations —including recruitment, passage, management, repatriation or return— by a range of intermediaries, whether native, migrant or foreign, operating under various colonial labor regimes. This collection of articles examines different forms of “coolie” brokerage in France's Empire in Asia and seeks to address a gap in the scholarship on links between political and social contexts and transnational labor migration in the region. The articles compare specific recruitment practices of labor brokers across different migration regimes and assess the relationships between state structures and labor brokers within the French colonial system.

ABSTRACT This reflective essay revisits my 2013 article, ‘The Silence of the Archives,’ to explore its origins, reception, and continuing relevance for management and organizational history. I discuss the epistemic and methodological debates that shaped the original piece, including historiographical traditions, postcolonial theory, and the challenges of interdisciplinary engagement. The essay considers the ‘after-history’ of the article, particularly in light of digitization, oral history, and the rise of born-digital sources, and reflects on how these developments intersect with enduring archival silences. By situating archival research within broader conversations on reflexivity, narrative construction, and historical imagination, I argue for a more critical and inclusive approach to historical methods in management and organization studies.

ABSTRACT This article examines the global spread of right-wing anti-trans rhetoric, focusing on how gender-affirming care controversies reinforce conservative nationalist forces in India, entrenching a bio-political regime of gender normativity. Situating these developments within the expanding nexus of global reactionary politics, the study traces how various Hindutva organisations strategically appropriate Western discourses of ‘gender ideology’ to bolster their vision of a hetero-patriarchal state, even as they negotiate an ambivalent relationship with indigenous non-binary identities such as hijras. Drawing from Susan Stryker’s theorisation of trans monstrosity and resistance, this paper foregrounds the counter-hegemonic practices of Indian trans activists who cultivate transnational solidarities with the Black, Latin American, and Indigenous trans movements. Employing a qualitative methodology, integrating critical discourse analysis of right-wing media, policy documents, and public statements, the study elucidates the dialectical interplay between authoritarian gender policing and radical trans self-determination. Concomitantly, it argues that South–South activist coalitions not only resist the globalised authoritarian turn against trans rights but also articulates new epistemological frameworks for decolonising gender. Finally, this article seeks to advance the fields of transgender studies and postcolonial theory by situating trans embodiment as a contested locus of bio-political control and a site for the emergence of insurgent futurities.

In the era of generative AI, prompting has become a ubiquitous, often invisible pedagogical act. As educators and students increasingly rely on gen-AI systems, prompting functions as a primary interface through which knowledge is sought, structured, and legitimised. This shift reconfigures pedagogical authority, agency, and epistemic legitimacy often in ways that reinforce epistemic injustice. Grounded in critical and postcolonial theories, the paper examines how prompting mediates access to knowledge and reinforces existing systemic inequalities. We argue that pedagogical interactions with gen-AI become a form of epistemic gatekeeping, privileging certain forms of language, logic, cultural and ontological norms. We articulate our position that the wholesale adoption of gen-AI demands a critical reckoning with its epistemic consequences, particularly the ways it automates and obscures inherited hegemonic and colonial knowledges. We call for a decolonial approach to gen-AI in curricula, beginning with the relational work of deep listening to the scholars and communities who have long imagined otherwise, and a commitment to act on what they have already asked for. We challenge higher education to resist the seductive efficiencies of gen-AI and confront the epistemological stakes of its choices.

In this article, I examine the relationship between the fall of Kemalism and the rise of critical thinking about Orientalism and Eurocentrism after the 1980s in Türkiye. I argue that this critical thinking along with the development of a postcolonial perspective has had a substantial impact on the questioning of fundamental Kemalist ideas. The main assertions of Kemalism are westernization, laicite, and the construction of a historical narrative on pre-Islamic Turkishness that ignores the Seljuk and Ottoman periods. In this sense, the critical approaches and post-colonial studies have primarily challenged the most vital tenet of Kemalism, which is the reduction of modernity exclusively to the western experience. The critique has demonstrated the possibility of non-western modernities, and the importance of non-western agency in the formation of their peculiarities. By questioning total westernization and challenging the idea that modernity is identical to western experience, it has led to the weakening of Kemalist laicite and historiography; consequently, two significant events have taken place. These are the emergence of “civil” Kemalism and the rise of Islamism. These two events have made visible the contingent and political nature of Kemalism, thus undermining its claim as a “scientific, neutral and objective” project.

Abstract This article reconsiders V.Y. Mudimbe’s contribution to “decolonial” impulses that are central to current preoccupations in fields such as postcolonial studies. It argues that key concepts developed by Mudimbe, such as the “colonial library,” have been overlooked in these discussions. Further, the article provides insight into important aspects of Mudimbe’s thought on the colonial library by reminding readers of the genealogy he excavates in describing the contours of the colonial library and its continued influence (likened by Mudimbe to a lingering odor) that is still to be dismantled.

Abstract The idea of decentering the human from our understanding of the world is under discussion across the globe. Behind this lies the question of anthropocentrism and the social sciences formed around it. In what follows, I outline what is involved in decentering humans and how this process is linked to materiality. This is not a new issue: an extensive tradition of materialist critiques of anthropocentrism stretches from eleventh-century Iran to sixteenth-century Rome, post-war Germany, and Indigenous knowledges passed down across generations. We need to access these histories and understand how they have interacted with, pushed back against, and been reconfigured by colonialism and empire. Dealing with such matters raises conceptual problems about power and agency, structure and change, and nature and the social. But this work also leads to questions about global knowledge production, including who gets to theorize, who is theorized, and how different regions—such as Iran—are rendered intelligible. While there is no single blueprint for change, there is scope for invention and experiment. In this article, I contribute to the nexus of new materialism, postcolonialism, and Iranian studies by exploring these questions and providing an overview of the special issue: “Materiality in Iran.”

This study examines the dominance of the Dutch colonial government's legal-political policies over interpretive thinking in Indonesia. This domination produced a relationship between Dutch colonial legal-political policies and interpretive thinking in Indonesia. Legal-political policies, as products of power and of interpretation, are also products of thought situated within the domain of knowledge. Therefore, to critique the relationship between Dutch colonial legal-political policies and Indonesian interpretation, Foucault's power and knowledge framework is used. The relationship is not one of equal bargaining power. Rather, Indonesian interpretation is positioned as the dominated party, socially, politically, legally, and culturally. Therefore, the five interpretations that are the object of the study will be analyzed through postcolonial theory to assess the extent of the relationship between colonial legal politics and Indonesian interpretation. This is a library-based study that uses five commentaries as primary sources, including "Tafsir al-Quran al-Hakim Beserta Tujuan dan Maksudnya" by Ilyas and Abdul Jalil (1920), "Tafsir al-Furqan" by Ahmad Hasan (1928), "Tafsir al-Quran al-Karim" by Abdul Halim, Arifin Abbas, and Abdurrahman Haitami (1930), "Tafsir al-Quran al-Karim" by Mahmud Yunus (1935), and "Tafsir al-Quran" by Zainuddin Hamidy and Fakhruddin (1959). This study is descriptive and analytical in nature, employing a historical approach. The study identifies three important findings, including the concept and construction of Indonesian interpretation, the values of Dutch colonial legal-political policies in Indonesian interpretation, and the implications of Dutch colonial legal-political policies in Indonesian interpretation. This study demonstrates the relationship between the legal policies of the Dutch colonial government and Indonesian interpretation, particularly in interpretations of legal verses in Indonesia.

This explanatory and qualitative study stems from the expectation that history education students have developed the competency to apply historical consciousness to different concepts, including those that are part of their culture, such as the Zulu indigenous rituals. Historical consciousness is the conceptual framework and postcolonial theory is the theoretical framework for this study. 15 participants were divided into three focus groups for interviews. The findings from the data analysis revealed that participants had conflicting historical consciousness in relation to Zulu indigenous rituals. Their consciousness both conforms to and resists contextual infl uence rather than being informed by the official history they learn.

Contemporary gender and sexuality politics in Pakistan are shaped by a confluence of local histories, religious discourses, structural inequalities, and widespread transnational flows of labour, knowledge, and digital communication. This article critically examines these intersecting dynamics by situating Pakistan within broader South and Southeast Asian migratory networks, with a particular emphasis on the lived experiences of women, queer individuals, and transgender communities, both within Pakistan and throughout the Asian diaspora. Utilising feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and migration studies, the article asserts that gendered and sexual struggles in Pakistan are fundamentally transnational, reflecting the global circulation of norms, activism, and resistance. Digital activism, labour migration, diasporic feminist networks, and international human rights frameworks all play significant roles in shaping evolving expressions of agency, identity, and contestation. Through an interdisciplinary review of literature and case studies—including the Aurat March, legal reforms for transgender persons, and the experiences of Pakistani migrant workers in Gulf and Asian cities—the article advocates for a transnational social justice approach grounded in intersectionality, cultural specificity, and international rightsbased collaboration. It concludes that genuine transformation requires addressing structural inequalities at both national and transnational levels, amplifying migrant and queer voices, and resisting the rise of authoritarian and Islamophobic tendencies within the global landscape.

This study examines how Islamic values influence the design and symbolism of Baju Kurung, a Malay traditional dress, in negotiating modesty, femininity, and women's empowerment in Malaysia. Within Third World feminism and Islamic cultural identity, the research bridges the gap in academic literature that tends to marginalize non-Western expressions of agency through dress. Approaching it qualitatively, the study employs textual interpretation of literature from the past in the form of Ibu Zain's writing and cultural discourse analysis of elements of customary designs and their meaning. The findings prove that Baju Kurung is more than a piece of clothing; it is a socio-religious symbol reflecting decency values, spiritual devoutness, and national identity values. Islamic beauty with loose figures, non-revealing shapes, and symbolic cutting—are central to the means by which Malay women negotiate both femininity and religion. The study contributes to Islamic fashion studies and postcolonial feminist studies in offering Baju Kurung as veiled empowerment, countering Westernized presumptions on dress, freedom, and female agency in Muslim worlds.

ABSTRACT South African scholar Premesh Lalu is a leading postcolonial theorist of South Africa. Framed by an introductory note by Fernanda Pinto de Almeida, this interview invites Lalu to discuss his critical work alongside his own intellectual trajectory, beginning with his early essay entitled “Sara’s Suicide” (2000). Building on his engagement with the concept of subalternity and a critique of nationalist narratives of the past, it asks whether this essay offers a model for a postcolonial history. The interview also discusses how Lalu’s early work may relate to the theoretical approaches developed in his later monographs The Deaths of Hintsa (2009) and Undoing Apartheid (2022).

This article explores the methodological possibilities of autoethnography and narrative inquiry in addressing colonial legacies in Jamaican education. Situated within postcolonial theory and culturally responsive teaching (CRT), it examines how reflexive and storied approaches can contribute to decolonizing educational research. Rather than reporting new empirical findings, the article undertakes a conceptual analysis. It draws on autoethnographic reflection and published Jamaican scholarship to interrogate how research methodologies themselves may reproduce or resist colonial epistemologies. Clandinin and Connelly’s three-dimensional narrative inquiry space, which focuses on temporality, sociality, and place, provides a conceptual orientation, highlighting how storied inquiry foregrounds the entanglement of subjectivity, history, and culture. The analysis develops four insights that demonstrate how contradiction can serve as a methodological resource in decolonizing research. Reflexivity situates positionality at the center of knowledge production. Narrative complexity resists reductive simplification and holds tensions within stories. Divergence between theory and practice is reframed as a generative condition rather than a shortcoming. Counter-stories disrupt colonial narratives by affirming cultural identities and resisting deficit framings. Autoethnography and narrative inquiry, when situated within postcolonial and culturally responsive perspectives, operate as decolonizing methodologies. They challenge Eurocentric assumptions, amplify marginalized voices, and embrace complexity. While Jamaica provides the illustrative case, the argument extends globally to postcolonial and marginalized contexts. By conceptualizing contradiction as insight, the article contributes a novel perspective to debates on decolonizing methodology, emphasizing reflexivity, complexity, divergence, and counter-stories as foundations for inclusive educational inquiry.

This paper examines how Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith engages with the restoration of Aboriginal voice and identity within the context of Australian colonial discourse. Specifically, the novel addresses the historical silencing of Aboriginal people and highlights the tension between imposed European language and enduring Aboriginal oral traditions. The central objective of this study is to explore how linguistic hybridity—particularly Aboriginal English and ceremonial chanting—functions as a tool of identity assertion and resistance against colonial authority. Employing close textual analysis informed by postcolonial theory, the paper draws on Said's concept of colonial discourse, Bhabha's notion of hybridity, and Ashcroft's idea of linguistic resistance. This analysis demonstrates how Aboriginal English, with its hybridised grammar and vocabulary, alongside chants rooted in kinship and cultural memory, operate subversively within the English novel form. Furthermore, the study situates Keneally's novel alongside Indigenous-authored works such as Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and Kim Scott's Benang: From the Heart. This comparative perspective underscores both the contributions and the limits of settler-authored attempts to “restore” Aboriginal voice, contrasting them with Indigenous narrative sovereignty that reconstitutes English from within Aboriginal epistemologies. The findings conclude that while Keneally's novel functions as a counter-narrative that unsettles colonial silencing, its mediation through settler authorship leaves it marked by ambivalence. Ultimately, the enduring reclamation of Aboriginal voice and identity in literature is most powerfully enacted in Indigenous-authored narratives, which reshape language, memory, and representation on their own terms. Highlights: Aboriginal voice restoration (it examines how The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith restores Aboriginal voice and identity within Australian colonial discourse). Linguistic hybridity (it demonstrates how linguistic hybridity functions as a means of survival, identity assertion). Counter-narrative discourse (it argues that the novel operates as a counter-narrative, asserting Aboriginal agency and reframing dominant historical accounts).

Dominant narratives often present childhood as a universal, idealized stage of innocence and dependence. However, these narratives obscure the ways in which childhood is differentially constructed and distributed across race, class, migration status, and geography. This article interrogates the structural, historical, and legal frameworks that shape childhood, revealing how policies and institutions differentially extend protection and privilege to some children while criminalizing and excluding others. Drawing from Critical Childhood Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and the Politics of Belonging and Bordering, we examine how childhood is racialized, bordered, and surveilled—particularly for Black, Indigenous, and migrant children. Using Critical Narrative Analysis, we analyze how legal, educational, and policy discourses sustain exclusionary constructions of childhood that render certain children as being unworthy of care, innocence, or opportunity. Findings highlight the racialized adultification of Black children, the hyper-surveillance of Indigenous youth, and the weaponization of immigration policies that deny migrant children the right to childhood itself. These disparities expose how childhood is neither neutral nor universal but an active site of contestation, where power structures determine who counts as a child and who does not. In response, this article calls for a radical reimagining of childhood that moves beyond rigid, Eurocentric developmental models toward more just, inclusive, and culturally affirming understandings. We advocate for restorative justice approaches in education, decolonized frameworks for early childhood policies, and a rejection of punitive legal structures that police childhood. By centering diverse epistemologies and community-based care, we aim to disrupt exclusionary paradigms and envision a world where every child is truly recognized, valued, and supported.

This paper investigates the recruitment of the 22nd Manipur Labour Corps during World War I, situating the episode within the intersecting forces of colonial coercion, princely politics, missionary mediation, and indigenous agency. While the British Empire mobilized over a million soldiers from India, the extraction of labourers from frontier communities such as the Tangkhuls, Kukis, and Mao Poumei reflects the imperial logic of using “tribal” bodies as expendable units in global warfare. Maharaja Chura Chand Singh, bound by subsidiary alliances, acquiesced to British demands, while Reverend William Pettigrew assumed a central role as mediator, leveraging his missionary authority to secure participation from his Christian converts. Although more than 2,000 men were dispatched to France and other theatres for non-combatant work such as trench construction and logistical support, recruitment was marked by deep ambivalence. Many tribal groups resisted conscription as an extension of existing exploitations under house taxes and begar (forced labour), while others accepted under promises of wages, travel, and lifelong exemption from local obligations. Interpreters and mission-trained elites such as Kanrei Shaiza emerged as key figures, embodying the paradox of colonial modernity: both products of missionary education and agents of indigenous intellectual and cultural transformation. Drawing on Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, this paper interprets resistance as a form of non-hegemonic politics and participation as a negotiated engagement with imperial power. It further demonstrates how colonial biopolitics, through drills, wage hierarchies, and symbolic appeals, regulated subaltern bodies for imperial purposes, while simultaneously opening avenues for new cultural identities, Christian public spheres, and global exposure. By recovering the overlooked experiences of Manipuri labourers, the paper contributes to broader debates on militarized labour, missionary complicity, and the hybrid subjectivities forged within the crucible of empire.

ABSTRACT This article is devoted to Latvian folklore studies and the Institute of Folklore during the first years of Soviet occupation after the Second World War. As well as the Soviet regime, the principles of Soviet scholarship were also established in Latvian folklore studies. In 1946, Latvian poet Andrejs Kurcijs obtained a research position in folk medicine at the Institute of Folklore, but his career ended in 1949 with his arrest and deportation to Siberia. The article is based on archival materials and is framed by postcolonial studies of the Soviet area.

Research Problem: This study examines the "paradox of giantism" in Nigeria's foreign policy, a condition where the pursuit of external prestige as the "Giant of Africa" overshadows pressing domestic development imperatives such as economic diversification, security, infrastructure, and human capital growth. Methods/Theory: The research employs a qualitative design, relying on a systematic review of secondary sources from 1960 to 2025. The analysis is guided by the theoretical framework of postcolonial realism, which combines classical realism's focus on power with post-colonial theory's emphasis on identity and symbolic recognition. Results: The findings reveal that the paradox is driven by three interrelated factors: identity politics that prioritize costly Afrocentric dogma, critical institutional capacity deficits within diplomatic institutions, and a fundamental misalignment between prestige-driven diplomacy and developmental priorities. Conclusion: The study concludes that Nigeria's foreign policy has been largely performative, securing diplomatic recognition but yielding minimal tangible benefits for citizens, thereby imposing high opportunity costs on internal progress. Key Contribution to Knowledge: The key contribution is the conceptualization of "paradox of giantism" as a critical lens for understanding the recurring neglect of core national interests in Nigeria's external relations. Recommendation: It is recommended that foreign policy be strategically recalibrated towards a citizen-centric, value-driven approach. This necessitates redefining national interest beyond elite ambitions, strengthening diplomatic institutions, prioritizing economic diplomacy, and rationalizing costly external engagements to ensure they deliver measurable domestic benefits.