Decolonization is not a metaphor

Text Exploration

In this article, the authors argue that the idea of decolonization has been adopted broadly by well-intentioned scholars, and has become a container for many programs related to social justice and critical approaches that have nothing to do with actual colonization. The authors view this as problematic because it allows a reconciliation of guilt, while perpetuating the practices of colonization.

The authors note the ease of which liberally minded researchers have adopted the language of colonization in support of many social causes. For example, educators have argued that they need to “decolonize our schools.” This might be viewed as a form of solidarity, but the authors view this joining of forces as “too easy”—that solidarity should be an “uneasy, reserved, and unsettled matter.”

First, the authors compare external colonialism—the appropriation of indigenous resources for export—with internal colonialism—the domestication and seizure of indigenous lands within domestic borders. They offer a third form, called settler colonialism, which positions colonialism as a means towards the end of homemaking. The addition of the third form is important because it highlights how decolonization, as a metaphor for other forms of social equity movements, ignores foundational elements of settling beyond what are generally accepted as the antagonistic settlers (social justice, for example, is not fundamentally about homemaking—it is about other forms of social inequity.)

The authors argue this through reference to behaviors that appropriate or integrate ideas of colonization for other social aims. They call these “moves to innocence,” and they preface the description of these moves by warning that “the discussion will likely cause discomfort in our settler readers.”

One of the moves to innocence is claiming a native relationship through “Indian blood,” as this then permits deflection from a settler; it indicates a feeling of inclusiveness towards a common goal. Ancestry, however, is “different from tribal membership” and the authors argue that it does not permit one to claim commonality with those who are colonized.

The second move to innocence is illustrate through a critical analysis of popular culture, primarily through the presentation of The Last of the Mohicans. This type of entertainment offers a protagonist becoming one with those who are being settled; the authors argue, sarcastically, that “the beauty of this settler fantasy is that it adopts decolonization and aborts it in one gesture.”

Colonial equivocation is to homogenize various experiences of oppression into one and label is colonization, and this is the third move to innocence described by the authors. Minorities who enter a country and are themselves oppressed “fail to activate the decolonizing project,” as they, too, are colonizers. This, perhaps the most controversial or offensive claim, is likely at the heart of the earlier disclaimer promising discomfort to readers.

The fourth move to innocence, “free your mind and the rest will follow,” asserts that starting with a productive mindset towards critical consciousness, and working outwards, is ineffective and simply serves to relieve feelings of guilt or responsibility; it is only an empty gesture. The fifth move is to position indigenous communities as “asterisk peoples,” as their population, relative to others, is so small as to appear insignificant on graphs, charts, and other formal methods of tracking populations. And the last move, related to the colonial equivocation of solidarity, is re-occupation through movements like Occupy in which liberally-minded participants claim solidarity with others who have been oppressed. The authors argue that the occupiers, even in rejecting the wealthy 1%, are they themselves still oppressing another 99%.

The authors end by introducing incommensurability: the idea that there are distinctions in the view of decolonization that “simply cannot speak to one another, cannot be aligned or allied.” Even abolitionism, they claim, is misaligned with a desire for postcolonialism, as those who are “freed” find themselves as settlers who are then offered land ownership, particularly through reparations. The authors view incommensurability as a positive, and reconciliation as a negative; they conclude that “decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions” of how to resolve these complex issues that have been argued. It is accountable only to the sovereignty of the Indigenous; the role of postcolonial scholars is only to pursue the return of stolen land.