Colonial Experience Research Articles

Polynesia against Paris: Indigenous Anti-Nuclear Literature and the French Colonial Origins of Oceanian Reintegration

Abstract: This essay examines Francophone and Anglophone Indigenous Oceanian literature and art to argue that through the predominantly Polynesian response to French nuclear testing in Te Ao Mā’ohi (French Polynesia), French colonialism has inadvertently generated one key cultural movement toward post-colonial Oceanian reintegration—one that extends well beyond the Francophone Pacific. The essay first examines the prose fiction of Chantal Spitz, Rai a Mai [aka Michou Chaze], and Déwé Gorodé to understand Te Ao Mā’ohi’s (French Polynesia's) and Kanaky’s (New Caledonia's) shared experiences of French colonialism. It then contrasts the same authors’ treatment of French nuclear weapons testing, which was the central crisis in Mā’ohi literature but which was marginal to early Kanak prose fiction. The essay then brings this Francophone literature in direct conversation with the hitherto unexamined specifically anti-French dimension of better-known Anglophone Oceanian works from authors Witi Ihimaera (Maori) and Albert Wendt (Samoan) and visual artists Ralph Hotere (Maori) and Hiko‘ula Hanapi (Hawaiian). The essay then demonstrates how this mutual Francophone-Anglophone Polynesian response to French colonialism created a Polynesia-centric anti-French-colonial process of Oceanian reintegration, and how that engine of Pacific reintegration later encompassed Kanaky and generated new cultural and activist connections between the Francophone and Anglophone Pacific.

Challenging patriarchal motherhood: A critical analysis of fictional mothers in Caryl Phillips’ The Final Passage and The Lost Child

This study explores the literary mother figures in Caryl Phillips’ novels The Final Passage (1985) and The Lost Child (2015) through the critical lens of matricentric feminism, focusing on patriarchal notions of motherhood including normalisation, idealisation, depoliticalisation and naturalisation. Extensive research has been conducted on these novels, but their representations of mother characters have remained relatively under-explored. With the aim of addressing that gap in the literature, we argue that Caryl Phillips problematises idealised, universal and traditional conceptions of motherhood by offering multiple and, particularly, otherised mother figures in these novels. Deconstructing such conceptions of motherhood, he exposes the socio-political and economic inequalities arising from racial discrimination, class inequalities, patriarchal oppression and colonial experiences that affect his characters’ mothering adversely. Through an intersectional reading of the mother characters in these two novels, this study aims to highlight the characters’ complexities and significance, thereby contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the novels and enriching the discourse surrounding the representation of motherhood in literature and culture. A comparative study of these novels further reveals that they encompass various settings for multiple depictions of motherhood and different stages of imperialism, presenting haunting continuities and discontinuities in different centuries.

The Uncanny Future of the Anthropocene

This essay will go over the basic notions of the uncanny while addressing the distance and the alienation of subject from the very concept of time in the imagination of the future in the age of Anthropocene. In fact, the two trajectories of time, namely past and future, overlap as the uncanny reflection of each other. It is by paying attention to the phenomenon and the consequence of the melting of glacier of the Alps that this essay attempts to remap the basic concepts of time, which consists of two kinds of engagements to historicization, namely remembering and anticipating. This essay argues that our failure to imagine the future is connected to the repressed memory of the colonial experience. In other words, the unveiling of the mountain as a result of global warming shows that our historical time is moving towards its own end, demanding us to address the issues that are repressed in our culture that allows all kinds of extractions. The time of Anthropocene is now bridging the gap between the location of death and the location of life with the force that can be best addressed as the uncanny return of the repressed voice.

From European Roots to Settler Soil: Adapting Foucault’s Biopolitics to Canadian Settler Colonialism

This article examines the applicability of Michel Foucault’s biopolitical theory within the Canadian settler colonial context. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which describes the shift from sovereign power to the regulation of life and populations, is grounded in European historical contexts. In contrast, the Canadian settler colonial experience diverges significantly, necessitating a re-examination of biopolitics. The article argues that in Canada, the relationship between sovereignty, population, and territory does not follow the European model described by Foucault. Instead, Crown sovereignty established its control through legal mechanisms that defined ‘Indian’ status, displacing Indigenous territorialities and political structures. By analysing the evolution of ‘Indian’ status within the Indian Act (1985), the article highlights the centrality of law in constructing settler colonial biopolitics. This legal framework was used to manage and assimilate Indigenous populations, reflecting a unique biopolitical strategy aimed at creating a relationship to territory and population. The study contributes to a more specific understanding of biopolitics in settler colonial contexts, emphasizing the distinct role of law in these processes.

‘Why, it’s like Belgium!’: the Women’s International League in the Irish War of Independence 1919–1921

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates how the Women’s International League (WIL) dealt with the changing ideas of nationhood, internationalism, imperialism, and freedom when supporting the cause of Irish independence. Their actions included seeking to protect Britain’s good name while simultaneously criticising that very same nation for its war in Ireland. The ‘small nations’ rhetoric that had emerged during the First World War was used by British feminists to divorce the atrocities of the British Crown force, the Black and Tans, from the wider colonial experience of oppression. Comparing the occupation of Ireland in 1919–1921 to that of Belgium during the First World War enabled British internationalist-feminists to support the sovereignty of Ireland’s nationhood, without necessarily having to engage with the colonial dimension or history of the conflict. This entirely changed the parameters within which British feminists could show solidarity with the Irish republicans while still maintaining positive views of British imperialism and the empire.

Strategic easing of height restrictions: Unveiling the intersection of free market principles and colonial mentality in Hong Kong’s urban densification

ABSTRACT High-density housing development is considered a pragmatic response to the conflicts between land scarcity and population growth. Under the rhetoric of (neo)liberalism, the flourishing private housing market narrative was anchored throughout the last century, along with significant contributions from government regulations. The 1955 Buildings Ordinance, which eased height limits, laid the groundwork for Hong Kong’s high-density foundations. The existing historiographical literature examines this from a technical perspective. However, it overlooks the decision-making processes behind these regulations and their alignment with or deviation from free market principles. This study examines colonial archives to scrutinize the colonial government’s approach to building regulations, revealing that easing height restrictions was not merely a technical adjustment but a calculated response to broader economic and demographic challenges. It was a strategy to stimulate private housing development and manage population growth without significantly increasing government spending. This raises concerns regarding prevailing assumptions that the colonial government supported a free-market approach to housing rather than exploring the debates and deliberations that shaped these policies. By comparing colonial experiences in Hong Kong and London, historical analysis challenges the conventional understanding of Hong Kong’s urban development, thereby highlighting the contentious relationship between liberal economic policies and the colonial administrative framework.

Digital Media to Support Healing from Trauma: A Conceptual Framework Based on Mindfulness.

Digital media which involve narrative storytelling are increasingly used in nursing and health research, including clinical applications such as cinematherapy. A pilot study was conducted on how digital media self-accessed by marginalized individuals may be beneficial toward mindfulness and healing from trauma. Qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals (n = 8) who self-reported marginalizations via: race; gender; rural geography; socioeconomic status; indigenous or colonial experience; survivor of abuse; experiences of homelessness; or disability. Results indicated that trauma-narratives often organically emerge through discussions on digital media, with notable intersections with mindfulness-based practices and interventions. First, digital media can create a mindfulness of trauma as valid to discuss and disseminate. Mindfulness of authentic resolution also emerged as critical, as trauma may be employed in media narratives for attention or sympathy with no intent to support healing. Participant responses illustrate value in being mindful of individuals with severe trauma, who may be less likely to benefit from digital media. Digital media can foster sense-of-belonging and community-building amidst isolation; additionally, parasocial relationships may help foster supportive identities and ideologies on vulnerability. Findings are outlined in a preliminary conceptual framework, toward supporting future digital media with intent to create mindfulness or heal trauma.

Regeneration, predatory inclusion, and migrant experiences in declining rural areas in Spain and Germany

ABSTRACT Declining rural areas have become central sites for migrant settlement. In the hope that migration will counteract rural shrinkage, migrants are increasingly portrayed as catalysts to revitalize communities. This article critically examines migration to declining rural areas vis-à-vis rural reception and regeneration policies. Drawing on qualitative research including interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observations, we compare migrants’ settlement experiences and their positions in rural revitalization processes in northeast Spain and eastern Germany. Our research illustrates that local reception and regeneration policies do not only sideline the role of newcomers as rural place-makers, who contribute to the sustainment (or expansion) of local services and infrastructures. They also result in conditions of ‘predatory inclusion’, in which migrants’ settlement is shaped regarding their potential ‘use’ for revitalizing local economies and housing markets in exploitative terms and along racialized lines. Facing precarious labor and housing conditions, migrants tend to reside only temporarily in our investigated areas. This article contributes to a growing body of migration research in rural areas and explains that attempts at regeneration through migration can run the risk of ignoring migrants' structural conditions, needs, mobility aspirations and life plans, thereby reinforcing racial and class-based inequalities present in rural areas.

‘Who have I forgotten': reflections on democracy, memory and colonialism

The pages that Miguel Cardina devotes to his book O Atrito da Memória (The Friction of Memory), published in 2023 by Tinta-da-china, seem scant. The book is subtitled Colonialismo, Guerra e Descolonização no Portugal Contemporâneo (Colonialism, War and Decolonization in Contemporary Portugal) and sets out to analyze the characteristics of the construction of the country’s collective memory regarding the colonial experience, at a time when we are approaching, at high speed, the 50th anniversary of 25 April 1974 and the formal decolonization of the former Portuguese colonies.

‘The Happy Valley’: Temporalized Spatiality in Michael Radford’s White Mischief (1987)

ABSTRACT Contemporary times mark a fundamental shift in our sense and experience of the world. The postmodern condition — as remarked by Fredric Jameson (1991) and Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979), among others — calls for new conceptions of lived reality. Nevertheless, profound uneasiness with notions of space and time is not only a postmodernist obsession. Modernist cinema, on account of its aesthetic self-reflexivity, also grapples with ways of inscribing spatiality and temporality. The 1980s saw a resurgence of European heritage films, reminiscent of interwar years of empire (early 1920s–late 1930s), produced in Kenya. Out of Africa (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1985), White Mischief (dir. Michael Radford, 1987), and The Kitchen Toto (dir. Harry Hook, 1988) became global audience staples. Not only do these films perpetuate Western viewers’ ‘master-race’ instincts; they also reproduce ‘cult images’ of an ‘exotic’ African locale. This paper phenomenologically reflects on White Mischief’s nostalgic reconstruction of a colonial settler village, the Happy Valley, and its ultra-privileged white hedonists. It explores how materiality of physical space can aid re-inscription of time and vice versa. Turning the colonial gaze upon itself, in critical self-reflection, my analysis foregrounds profound ruptures, discontinuities and contradictions in the historical fact and experience of European colonialism in Africa.

The Qur’an in Malayalam: Contextualising Early iṣlāḥī Translations

This article is an exploration of the texts and historical contexts of the early translations of the Qur'an into the South Indian language of Malayalam. Attempts at Malayalam translations of the Qur'an started in the 1930s. The present study deals with the translation projects that emerged between the 1930s and 1965. It showcases the situatedness of these translations in the colonial experiences of the region, as well as in the discursiveness of global Islamic trends. It also looks at the theological controversies these translations evoked within the Muslim community.

From Strangers to Community Members: The Settlement Experiences of Mexican American Farmworkers in Michigan

From Strangers to Community Members: The Settlement Experiences of Mexican American Farmworkers in Michigan

The Archaeology of Absence in Kamila Shamsie’s <i>A God in Every Stone</i>

Approximately 1.4 million Indians were recruited to the First World War. Despite their role in the war and the high number of deaths, most of the literature in English on the Great War has been narrowed down to British experience. However, in recent years their stories have been emerging through fiction, in academic research and educational projects resulting in a more complete picture of the war and who was involved. A British arts education group engaged students in a project designed to teach and share the stories of forgotten soldiers from World War I. Writing about the project in The Guardian in 2018 Kamila Shamsie claimed the aim was to teach school children about the war and the involvement of non-British recruits whose narratives had up till then been unknown. In academia, respected scholars such as Santanu Das or Claire Buck have undergone thorough research on the representation of Indian recruits through an analysis of literary texts and artefacts states that war memories of the Indian sepoy whose stories were left behind and forgotten on the battle ground. According to Das, the lack of stories by Indian recruits does not mean that history cannot be rectified since it is possible to recover the experience and memory of the recruits. Recently emerging literary representation of the Indian recruit provided historical insight into their experience shedding light on new perspectives of the War. The aim of this article is to analyse the representation of Indian recruits and their experience of World War I in Kamila Shamsie’s 2014 novel <i>A God in Every Stone.</i> I argue that through fiction, it is possible to construct a broader and more inclusive understanding of this historical event as well as to uncover deeper complexities and anxieties on the Indian colonial experience.

The WTO as Multilateral Diffusion Hub: Institutional Learning in WTO Disputes and the Design of Preferential Trade Agreements

Abstract Institutions are not created in a vacuum—but how do extant institutions influence design choices? Leveraging fragmentation in the global trade order, this paper stresses the relevance of experience and argues that the institutional influence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) extends beyond its jurisdiction through its centrality as multilateral diffusion hub: When states negotiate preferential trade agreements (PTAs), previous dispute settlement experiences in the WTO shape the design of dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs). National bureaucracies undergo institutional learning processes when participating in multilateral trade disputes and subsequently conclude PTAs with DSMs that are similar to the institutions of the WTO, thus fostering their—decentralized—spread to the network of PTAs. The learning effect is particularly pronounced for states with low bureaucratic capacity. Employing a novel, unitary conceptualization of DSMs in terms of complainant rights shows that the results of this diffusion process generally entail increased levels of complainant rights in PTAs. Importantly, institutional learning is more than mere emulation: States also adapt institutional design to individual context by considering the prior dispute experience of their trading partners. A dual empirical strategy and interviews with PTA negotiators corroborate the learning effect and its relevance during PTA negotiations.

The Roma Population: Migration, Settlement, and Resilience

The Roma population—with a unique history marked by migration, settlement issues, and ongoing resilience—has always faced significant social marginalization and has often been subjected to forced migration. Despite being one of the largest and most diverse ethnic groups in Europe, Roma continue to face systemic discrimination and social exclusion, leading to poor outcomes in education, employment, health, and housing. This article analyses the migration pathways, settlement experiences, and persistent obstacles faced by Roma. We argue that removing historical and systemic barriers to create a more equitable and welcoming environment for the Roma community is their right. The resilience of the Roma community in the face of adversity is a testament to their cultural strength and adaptability. This research aims to document these aspects and thus provide a basis for policies that promote social inclusion, equality, and respect for cultural diversity.

“They Too Will Be Gone and New”. Colonial Otherness in the Interplay between Humanity and Elfdom in Andrzej Sapkowski’s “The Edge of the World”

Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy narrative and novel saga, as exemplified by the “The Edge of the World” short story, borrows largely from J. R. R. Tolkien’s depiction of elves in defining most of their traits and the relationship between them and humans. Sapkowski, however, clearly transforms the image of the (predominantly) benevolent elf defined by Tolkien. The aim of this article is to explore the way in which Sapkowski portrays the elven race as sovereign in their exclusion from the world of humanity. Sapkowski’s story allows the group to maintain its unique motivations, resisting morally dualistic stereotyping at the same time. Moreover, because neither humanity nor elfdom may claim moral superiority in their conflict, the colonial experience of the elves is not simply appropriated by the author as an example of Indigenous victimhood. Rather, it serves the purpose of presenting readers with a multifaceted tapestry of colonial conflict contained within a fantasy world. The players of this world, though opposed and prone to othering their enemies, are nevertheless rhetorically equal.

Tradition and Disruption in Latinx and Latin American Political Thought

Abstract This article presents Latinx political thought as a distinctive tradition in political theory that reworks central concepts in response to historical experiences of conquest, colonialism, migration, and transnational politics. In reconstructing this tradition, we argue that its problem space converges with US-based Latin American political thought. The article first traces a genealogy of Latinx political theory and then explores three realms of theorizing around which Latinx and Latin American political thought cluster: sovereignty and state violence, peoplehood, and transnationalism. We explain how the surveyed works disrupt and enrich political theory accounts of these problems. In arguing for the recognition of this field as a tradition, the article also aims to make it intelligible as an area of concentration for PhD students in political science.

Theorizing “new ethnicities” in diasporic Europe: Jews, Muslims and Stuart Hall

ABSTRACT Stuart Hall’s concept of “new ethnicities” theorizes (post)migrant belonging by centering not on the power of othering, but rather on the agentive force of diasporic groups to contend with their essentialization and marginalization. While rooted in Black transatlantic experiences of colonialism and slavery, “new ethnicities” provides a conceptual platform from which those more broadly marginalized in the diasporic context of Europe may speak and act. In this paper, Becker argues that Hall’s theory of “new ethnicities” provides a productive lens through which to rethink the knot of religious-racialized-ethnic othering that has served to set both Muslims and Jews apart from the European mainstream. She does so by tracing the historical differentiation of Muslims and Jews, both together and apart, as well as the contemporary politics of difference enacted by Muslim and Jewish Berliners who contest essentialized understandings of their identities and marginalized sociocultural locations in Europe, today.

Native American History as Counter-Discourse in James Welch’s Narratives: The Examples of “Fools Crow” and “Killing Custer”.

A peculiar dimension in the Native American writing is the documentation of the history of the Native Americans’ traditional lives before, during and after their encounter with the white settlers. It is a development that is essentially explicable within the purview of postcolonial discourse, given that, in some contexts, historical distortions from the perspective of the ‘other’ have been asserted as the rationale for such creative explorations on the part of the Native writers. In the context of this study, such a dimension, with particular reference to James Welch’s novels, is considered as, indeed, counter-discursive. Two of his novels, Fools Crow and Killing Custer, are selected with a view to assessing how the historical documentations in the texts translate to counter-discourses in the context of the Native Americans’ historical evolution. The study reveals that, while the Native American histories in the texts dovetail into each other, they are largely inspired by the Native Americans’ colonial experience vis-à-vis the need to represent their history from the perspective of ‘us’ as opposed to ‘other’. It concludes that the narratives have, in a significant way, performed the allegorical configuration function, as a counter-discourse strategy described by Slemon (1987). This holds in that they have conceivably assumed ‘readings’ and ‘contestations’ of the previously textualised colonial experience of the Native Americans from the perspective of the ‘other’.

“Meine Stimme auf der Suche nach ihrem Weg” – Eine Rekonstruktion des Personalismus M. A. Lahbabis aus der Erfahrung von Gefangenschaft und Exil

Abstract The postcolonial discourse in the Maghrib was dominated by the political Left for a long time. Thus, other approaches of coming to terms with the experience of colonialism were marginalized. It was Abdelkébir Khatibi’s book Maghreb Pluriel which made it possible to acknowledge these other discourses in their own way of criticizing colonialism, without reading them from the beginning with a hermeneutics of suspicion. In establishing one of these discourses the founder of the modern Moroccan academic philosophy, Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi, played a substantial role: His experience of depersonalization during the colonial period was the starting point for his search of being a person, and for his personalist philosophy.