Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization
... In fact, the end of apartheid, which was a system of othering, meant the creation of a new oppositional other in the form of the foreigner/migrant. Like the Muslim immigrant in contemporary Europe (especially France), who according to Mbembe (2021), embodies a difference that threatens the core values of the Republic, the foreigner in South Africa is also perceived as a threat to the cultural fabric of society. The foreigner, like the Muslim, is accused of unwillingness to integrate into the community, even when the latter is not willing to embrace the foreigner's difference. ...
... Generally, migrants tend to be perceived as 'dangerous and undesirable, including by the media' (Dodson, 2010, p. 6). In the case of France, Mbembe (2021) argues, the authorities often deny racism against non-whites prefer to treat it as 'mere cultural difference'. Similarly, in South Africa, politicians from Nelson Mandela to Cyril Ramaphosa have insisted that South Africans are not xenophobic and that the violence that often happens in poor communities is criminal and not xenophobic. ...
... For example, argue that in most European countries, domestic workers are usually tolerated while asylum seekers are generally perceived as bogus. The war in Ukraine has exposed what Mbembe (2021) sees as Europe's obsession with keeping the racialised migrants out of its borders. Fröhlich (2023, p. 16) argues that in contemporary European migration discourse, Ukrainian refugees are considered 'fellow Europeans, with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stating that 'Ukraine belongs to the European family' and unlike the Syrians who came in 2015, Ukrainians are seen as "real refugees"'. ...
Human movement and mobility are at an all-time high, making it more important than ever to understand how discourses around migration shape and influence individuals and the socioeconomic conditions of the countries they both inhabit and leave behind.
Featuring both intercontinental and intracontinental perspectives, authors Kunle Musbaudeen Oparinde and Rodwell Makombe present new, much-needed data from the African continent in terms of how discourses around migration are socially constructed in Africa and how this compares globally. Collected from social media and online platforms, this data spotlights the everyday realities of Nigerians and Zimbabweans, and by extension many Africans, in their quest to relocate. Unpacking reasons for migration, as well as the dominant discourses post-migration, the authors analyse the inherent feelings of migrants, potential migrants, unwilling but forced migrants and those who have chosen to remain in their countries despite harsh socioeconomic realities.
Examining this pressing field of study in an underexplored regional context, Social Constructions of Migration in Nigeria and Zimbabwe takes a refreshing new angle to deepen our understanding around the causes and effects of migration.
... This conjuncture demands ways of organizing that resist and actively combat the violence of colonial epistemologies. These ways of organizing require not only the formation of new categories but what Mbembe (2016) calls the "demythologizing" work of history, memory, and race which, within the context of global decolonization, involves critically analyzing and dismantling the myths of Eurocentric Whiteness that have historically shaped narratives and power structures (Mbembe, 2021;Quijano, 2007). Decolonizing is essential for fostering a future where diverse epistemic traditions are recognized and valued, allowing societies to break free from the legacies of colonialism and work toward a more equitable global community (Mbembe, 2021). ...
... These ways of organizing require not only the formation of new categories but what Mbembe (2016) calls the "demythologizing" work of history, memory, and race which, within the context of global decolonization, involves critically analyzing and dismantling the myths of Eurocentric Whiteness that have historically shaped narratives and power structures (Mbembe, 2021;Quijano, 2007). Decolonizing is essential for fostering a future where diverse epistemic traditions are recognized and valued, allowing societies to break free from the legacies of colonialism and work toward a more equitable global community (Mbembe, 2021). This may help us embrace the complexities of our shared histories and the many voices that contribute to our collective understanding of humanity; making efforts towards "remembering together", in the words of Edouard Glissant. ...
Decolonial and pluriversal perspectives have recently proliferated in organizational studies, challenging predominant Western and Eurocentric knowledge paradigms in management. Offering both a critique of and alternatives to hegemonic perspectives, the articles in the current special issue place front-and-center new possibilities that recognize multiple ways of knowing and organizing, particularly those originating within less visible, marginalized, Indigenous, or minority communities. The studies in this special issue question entrenched Eurocentric norms in management theory by privileging new perspectives that encompass three central and common concepts interwoven across this issue: hybridity, alterity, and affirmativity. These overarching themes reflect a commitment to acknowledging and integrating diverse epistemic traditions following the notion of pluriversality to resist simplistic or monolithic interpretations of human organizing practices. This commitment requires us to advocate for more inclusive publication practices beyond traditional norms to acknowledge the barriers posed by English-dominant publication outlets and standards. The present collection of articles offers an interdisciplinary exploration of decolonial practice and theory alongside a specific drive to diversify and pluralize organizational scholarship. By engaging with marginalized voices globally across contexts and organizational forms, we promote a reflexive and inclusive means to challenge hegemonic practices within academia itself and ultimately encourage organizational scholars to adopt decolonial frameworks that critique and renew management practices worldwide.
... Esse contexto requer formas de organização que resistam e combatam ativamente a violência das epistemologias coloniais. Isso exige não apenas a formação de novas categorias, mas o que Mbembe (2016) chama de trabalho de "desmitificação" da história, da memória e da raça que, no contexto da decolonização global, envolve a análise crítica e o desmantelamento dos mitos da branquitude eurocêntrica que historicamente moldaram as narrativas e as estruturas de poder (Mbembe, 2021;Quijano, 2007). Esse processo é essencial para a promoção de um futuro em que diversas tradições epistêmicas sejam reconhecidas e valorizadas, permitindo que as sociedades se libertem dos legados do colonialismo e trabalhem em prol de uma comunidade global mais equitativa (Mbembe, 2021). ...
... Isso exige não apenas a formação de novas categorias, mas o que Mbembe (2016) chama de trabalho de "desmitificação" da história, da memória e da raça que, no contexto da decolonização global, envolve a análise crítica e o desmantelamento dos mitos da branquitude eurocêntrica que historicamente moldaram as narrativas e as estruturas de poder (Mbembe, 2021;Quijano, 2007). Esse processo é essencial para a promoção de um futuro em que diversas tradições epistêmicas sejam reconhecidas e valorizadas, permitindo que as sociedades se libertem dos legados do colonialismo e trabalhem em prol de uma comunidade global mais equitativa (Mbembe, 2021). Isso pode nos ajudar a abraçar as complexidades de nossas histórias compartilhadas e as muitas vozes que contribuem para nossa compreensão coletiva da humanidade, empregando esforços para "lembrar juntos", nas palavras de Edouard Glissant. ...
Resumo Perspectivas decoloniais e pluriversais têm aparecido com cada vez mais frequência nos estudos organizacionais, desafiando paradigmas de conhecimento ocidentais e eurocêntricos predominantes no campo da gestão. Os artigos desta edição especial oferecem uma crítica e também alternativas às perspectivas hegemônicas, colocando em primeiro plano novas possibilidades que consideram as múltiplas formas de se conhecer e organizar, particularmente aquelas originadas em comunidades menos visíveis, marginalizadas, indígenas ou minoritárias. Os estudos apresentados aqui questionam normas eurocêntricas arraigadas na teoria da gestão, privilegiando novas perspectivas que abrangem três conceitos centrais e comuns entrelaçados na questão: hibridismo, alteridade e afirmatividade. Esses temas são bastante abrangentes e refletem um compromisso em reconhecer e integrar diversas tradições epistêmicas, seguindo a noção de pluriversalidade de forma a resistir a interpretações simplistas ou monolíticas de práticas de organização humana. Tal compromisso requer a defesa de práticas editoriais mais inclusivas além das normas tradicionais para reconhecer as barreiras impostas por veículos e padrões de publicação de domínio inglês. O conjunto de artigos publicados nesta edição faz uma exploração interdisciplinar da prática e da teoria decoloniais ao mesmo tempo que demonstra um impulso específico para diversificar e pluralizar o campo dos estudos organizacionais. O envolvimento de vozes globalmente marginalizadas em todos os contextos e formas organizacionais contribui na promoção de meios reflexivos e inclusivos de desafiar práticas hegemônicas dentro da própria academia e, finalmente, encorajar acadêmicos organizacionais a adotar estruturas decoloniais capazes de criticar e renovar práticas de gestão em todo o mundo.
... Full de-Westernization is usually not considered a central goal of decolonization, particularly given that 'Western' includes components of other cultures (e.g., OED 1989;Gilroy 2005;Gordon 2015;Mbembe 2021). Therefore, we are reasonably left, for both practical and theoretical purposes, with considering decolonization within our existing naming systems. ...
... Multilingualism offers a multidimensional opportunity to escape "there can be only one," both among and within languages. This also offers a way to escape the constraints that vertical thinking and binary opposition often impose (Hountondji 2009;Mbembe 2021). ...
Standardized taxonomies and lists of birds were created to improve communication. They are linguistic infrastructure―biodiversity indices and dictionaries―that have been painstakingly built and maintained and that have enhanced regional and global participation in the study and enjoyment of birds. Inclusion of people has been a core objective in creating and maintaining these standardized lists, and dissatisfaction and desires to overwrite objectionable names have been associated with them for nearly two centuries. Suggestions that bird names should be changed are continuous. Today, these suggestions include the view that some bird names must be changed to make them more accurate, inoffensive, and culturally appropriate to further increase diversity and inclusion among ornithologists and bird watchers. The latter, meritorious goal has been largely successful thus far despite many ongoing objections. Historic examples indicate that large-scale name changes, however, are not needed to accomplish major societal goals of inclusion. Some barriers to inclusion likely remain, and some changes are likely needed for English names. Often overlooked or underappreciated in name change discussions are that: 1) standardized names lists have had numerically staggering success in fostering inclusion of diverse participants globally; 2) stability is vital in such systems, and destabilization has exclusionary effects; 3) dissatisfaction with such lists and the names they include has been ongoing since these naming systems began; 4) important flexibilities exist in conjunction with these communication systems that enhance local and regional communication (e.g., alternative names in English and other languages); and 5) cultural values, important as they are, are neither universally shared nor constant, and thus risk bringing divisiveness and instability when used as a central reason for change. Consideration of standardized lists of bird names as communication systems in the fuller context of history, language, and culture will improve our management of these systems and their continued utility in fostering inclusion. With standardized, stable naming systems acting as a skeleton, proactively building outwards, both within and among languages and cultures, offers a positive and productive way to increase inclusion and to improve cultural and biodiversity conservation.
... También incorpora el de descolonización, no tanto para referirse a un proceso histórico, sino como un proyecto filosófico que debe liderar África para «salir de la gran noche», consistente en exponer, revelar, deconstruir la operación de cercamiento del mundo que supuso la expansión de Occidente. Mbembe aterriza en un afropolitanismo, término acuñado originalmente por la escritora Taiye Selasi (2005), como una manera de ser africano que trasciende la cuestión racial, abierto a la diferencia e inserto en el mundo (Mbembe, 2021). ...
Las perspectivas poscoloniales han generado una diversidad de reacciones por parte de especialistas en África al sur del Sáhara. Han existido esfuerzos, fundamentalmente en el ámbito de los estudios culturales, por reivindicar e incorporar a africanos y africanas entre los referentes fundamentales de la corriente. Pero también se han expresado rechazos, y formulado abiertas críticas a la misma en torno a su ahistoricidad, su apoliticismo o sus excesos discursivos. Este texto recoge los intentos de los primeros y sistematiza los argumentos de los segundos, y mantiene que las principales contribuciones de los estudios africanos a la comprensión de nuestro mundo se han generado al margen del afán por consolidar una escuela poscolonial africana.
... Second, it explores two different cases of sovereignty claims made by individuals and governments in Kenya and South Africa -one detailing the challenge brought by AI annotators and content moderators in Kenya to Big Tech, including Meta and Open AI; the other charting the evolution of South Africa's Policy on Data and Cloud. Third, building on the work of Achille Mbembe (2019;, as well as on the arguments presented in the previous two sections, it explores opportunities to experiment with new forms of AI networked sovereignty. From a methodological standpoint, the article relies on documentary analysis -of the case brought by gig workers to Meta and the judgments of Kenya's courts; and of the various versions of the Data and Cloud policy in South Africa, including the responses received after the publishing of the draft policy -as well as on interviews with policy makers, lawyers, technocrats, and members of the civil society who have played distinct roles in each of the two cases analysed. ...
The conception of digital sovereignty has been associated, especially in the early stages of the diffusion of the Internet, with efforts to keep specific data and information outside of a state's jurisdiction. AI sovereignty responds to an almost opposite logic, indicating the ability of a state to access and make use of data that are produced within its jurisdiction. These two strategies-which I refer to as lock-out and lock-in sovereignty-share some common roots (e.g. the attempt to protect and enhance specific cultural attributes recognised as important by a national community), but they also point to different technical, economic, and political characteristics needed to enforce one or the other type of sovereignty. The article examines key elements that set these concepts, and their implementation, apart and how they intersect with both existing and potential articulations of national sovereignty in Africa. In particular it opposes a negative-and still pervasive-definition of sovereignty applied to African states, based on the Westphalian ideal and "measuring the gap between what Africa is and what we are told it ought to be" (Mbembe 2019, p. 26); and the possibilities disclosed by re-appropriating practices of "networked sovereignty" (Mbembe, 2016).
... Moreover, the exercise of penal power over those deemed as others has created social groups described by scholars as "stunted citizens" (Zedner, 2013), "sub-citizens" (Rosenberg Rubins, 2022) and "crimmigrant others" (Franko, 2019) whose equal citizenship status is put into question. Mbembe (2019: 3) thus suggests that: ...
... To address such disparities in sustainability debates, discourses on decolonial perspectives on environmental and climate justice are coming into focus. Decoloniality challenges dominant narratives of knowledge production inherited from colonialism and asks for a de-linking from colonial epistemologies (Mbembe, 2021;Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). It invites to embrace indigenous ways of knowing and advocates for a pluriverse of worldviews (Escobar, 2017). ...
To better understand complex and challenging transformative learning (TL) processes in the context of climate (in)justice, we introduce a decolonial perspective, through the understanding of TL as a process of decolonization, and build on a model of typical phases in TL for sustainability. We argue that it is firstly necessary to analyze the conditions, context, and prerequisites with which learners approach the topic of climate justice. Secondly, it is crucial to examine how the learning objects are taken up by the learners and which specific challenging emotions can occur. Here we plead for safe enough spaces, which are learning environments that encourage learners to constructively address their challenging emotions with the prioritized intent to restore a sense of justice through shared accountability within the community. Thirdly, after successfully mastering emotional troubles, they can engage in courageous practices developed collaboratively and fortified as collective practices in the community of learners. We conclude our thoughts with several questions about the composition of different learning groups and the normativity of TL in the context of climate justice and more generally, sustainability.
... While I draw connections between elements of the performances and the particular sites across Dakar in which they were located, I also refer to their futurist aesthetics as "African." This framing is meant to connect the artists' creative choices to patterns across contemporary cultural production that scholars and artists have referred to as Africanfuturism (Okorafor 2019), Afrotopos (Sarr 2019), Afropolitanism (Mbembe 2021) and other categories that affirm the centrality of Africa. I recognize that in using the label "African," I risk reiterating the injurious tendency to generalize and reduce a vast and extraordinarily diverse continent, but I also find it a useful qualifier in relation to practices that span various locations across the continent and that excavate, sustain, and evolve aesthetics, approaches, and modalities with roots on the continent. ...
African contemporary choreographers increasingly delink from Eurocentric performance conventions and work toward establishing local conditions of production and consumption by performing in public spaces. Although the labor undertaken to shift power asymmetries does not always result in structural changes, their art may be considered decolonial creative expression. Based on ethnographic research at the third and fourth editions (2022 and 2023) of Fatou Cissé’s street performance festival, La ville en mouv’ment (The City in Movement), in Dakar, Senegal, the author argues that decolonial potentiality extends beyond the precarious economic conditions to encapsulate the artists’ return to public space and futurist aesthetics.
... The relevance of our work to the world also presents challenges, however, in part because discussions of theory-what it is, what it means, and how it relates to practice-are intertwined with debates over how to address-or not address-challenges like inequality, violence, and exclusion. In South Africa's universities, for example, student movements (e.g., FeesMustFall, RhodesMustFall) have drawn on postcolonial, decolonial, and anti-colonial theory to outline their demands (Mbembe 2021;Okoth 2021). Right-wing politicians in the United States, meanwhile, have weaponized the word 'theory'-or, more accurately, perceptions of it-against efforts to foster inclusivity. ...
Discussions of theoretical practice often center on research, but that is not the only context in which political geographers do worldmaking ‘theory work.’ This chapter considers how political geographers can and do pursue accessible, ambitious, and accountable theoretical practice beyond the peer-reviewed (and often paywalled) page. Incorporating political geographic scholarship alongside insights from theorists such as Thomas Sankara, bell hooks, Frantz Fanon, and Antonio Gramsci, this chapter evaluates the possibilities and challenges of theory work in three contexts that are not consistently conceptualized as sites of worldmaking theoretical practice: the public sphere, the classroom, and the governing norms and logics of the subdiscipline. It concludes by discussing how political geographers can foster ambitious, accessible, and accountable theory work in the subdiscipline.
... Through this lens, we seek to unravel how the novel mirrors the experiences of postcolonial societies in their quest for reclamation and self-definition. Michel Foucault's analytical framework proves particularly illuminating, offering us a toolkit to decipher the nuanced relationships between power, knowledge, and identity as portrayed in the novel (Achille, 2021;Gaudes, 2020). https: //vfast.org/journals/index.php/VTESS@ 2024, ISSN(e): 2309-3951, ISSN(p): 2411-0221 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June 2024 As we navigate the pages of Shamsie's work, we will examine the ways in which the characters confront the legacy of colonialism, the suppression of indigenous voices, and the shaping of personal and collective identities. ...
This research article delves into the intricate interplay between postcolonial identity and discourse in Kamila Shamsie's novel, "A God in Every Stone," employing a Foucauldian analytical framework This paper presents a Foucauldian analysis of Kamila Shamsie's novel, "A God in Every Stone." Drawing upon the works of Michel Foucault (2016), the paper examines the novel through the lens of power, knowledge, and the construction of historical narratives. Through a close reading of key characters and events, this analysis elucidates how colonial power structures and systems of knowledge production intersect in the novel to shape individual and collective identities. The present study has been conducted on Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone to highlight the process of colonization. The interpreter has examined the ways by which the colonized resisted colonial rule. Foucault’s model of Power has been used as the conceptual framework of the study to analyze the postcolonial aspects of Shamsie’s (2014) novel. The present study is qualitative in nature. The data has been collected through the close reading technique of the A God in Every Stone. For data analysis, those textual lines have been selected in which the elements of power and resistance are present covertly. The interpreter has explored different dimensions of Foucault’s power, i.e., Sovereign power and disciplinary power. British Empire justified its colonial rule over the colonized through the colonial discourse which was prejudiced against non-white people. The colonized people resist colonial rule through their dialogues in this novel. In A God in Every Stone, the major protagonist is Vivian Rose Spencer. She is an English woman who carried out digging in Turkey to unearth the ancient silver circlet. The interpreter has inferred that the colonizers used many disciplinary strategies to subjugate the colonized people. The Indian soldiers were trained by the British imperialists to fight in the battlefield on the Western Front. Many innocent Indian soldiers lost their lives in fighting the enemies of the British Empire. The major character of the novel Qayyum Gul, fought bravely in the battlefield. Unfortunately, he lost an eye during the battle. When he returned to Peshawar, he joined a freedom movement, which aimed to liberate India from the British colonizers. Ultimately, this Foucauldian analysis of "A God in Every Stone" underscores the intricate dynamics of power and knowledge in the colonial context and sheds light on the complexities of historical representation and identity formation in a postcolonial world.
... Industrial humanity is a key novel component in a dynamic planetary system, and this suggests that the planet itself is now the appropriate context for thinking about policy and what needs to be done to provide security for human societies in these new circumstances. While the term "planetarity" has a history in cultural studies (Spivak, 1999), and debates about post-colonial matters (Mbembe, 2021), notions of planetarity, or in Mbebme's terms "planetary entanglement", as the appropriate framing for policy discussion, have recently begun to be a focus in social theory too (Clark and Szerszynski, 2021). This engagement can provide a novel way, at least in security studies, to grapple with the appropriate contextualization for grappling with climate change. ...
Much of the discussion under the label of "climate security" focuses on potential conflicts and disruptions in peripheral locations in the global south putatively triggered by climate change. If, however the analysis starts with climate, and the earth system as the point of departure for analysis, then things look very different. The speed and scale of climate disruptions is accelerating. Earth system science suggests that urgent action is needed to deal with climate change; waiting too long may make the issue impossible to address. Framing matters in terms of a planetary condition and focusing on climate rather than national security as the starting point for analysis suggests very different policy priorities. Reframing climate security to grapple with the planetary condition requires policies that first, facilitate adaptation, second work to make sustainable habitats for humanity and third, work to drastically constrain the use of fossil fuels urgently. Here, proposals for fossil fuel non-proliferation treaties and similar measures analogous with earlier arms control agreements. This provides the security sector with a much-needed direct engagement with the causes of climate change and its resultant disruptions while simultaneously reframing climate as a matter of planetary rather than national security. Tackling climate change is a matter of urgency, and failure to so effectively in the short run my derail needed efforts later, simply because the resources to do so are no longer available.
... And some of them have been fighting for it, albeit with different strategies. Some authors have highlighted the so-called "silent revolution" that has occurred on the African continent in recent decades with regard to the transformation of sexual practices and the emergence (and visibility) of new sexual identities (Gilroy 1995;Ekine 2013;Mbembe 2020). ...
Since the establishment of Anglophone queer African studies in the 1990s, numerous outstanding ethnographies have been conducted in Africa by both African and non-African researchers. From this extensive pool of data collected over the past thirty years, two aspects frequently emerge among research: that the African continent is characterized by both the nativist discourse of the exogeny of sexual dissidence and the widespread silence on the subject. Leveraging the ethnographic experience with queer issues in two Lusophone African countries and an extensive literature review, Miguel offers a comprehensive overview of this field and presents some original insights on these topics.
... The pressing issue of the time was to compensate for what colonial governments failed to do, and partly even suppressed, in their mission to establish only those technological infrastructures that were necessary for the extraction of mineral resources and agricultural products. The core idea of Senghor's position was reiterated later by Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2013) and Achille Mbembe (2021). According to the latter, the emergence of the colony as a social form gave rise to zones of creolisation that fostered exchange, dialogue, new imaginaries and opportunities for an alternative version of global modernity for the planet. ...
... By doing so, the places and spaces of knowledge and memory (such as archives, museums, universities and the Internet) can be reconfigured as inclusive places that serve life in general. Achille Mbembe (2021) suggests that this has become one of the most urgent imperatives of our neoliberal, global, and anthropocentric present. ...
... Decolonial and postcolonial dialogues are ever-present within nations that have officially gained independence from colonisation (Mbembe 2021;Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015). These dialogues evoke urgent questions about how futures are to be designed and about the possibilities for designing pluriversal futures in collaboration with marginalised communities that have been the subjects of design and development (Escobar 2018;Fry 2017). ...
... Black and/or disadvantaged students and lecturers tend to find this culture "discomforting, alienating, disempowering, and exclusionary" (Badat, 2016, p. 85). Achille Mbembe (2021) argues for rejecting politics of otherness that defines centre-periphery relations and calls for re-centring Africa on the continent. The spaces at higher-education institutions (mind, body, classroom, curriculum) should also be decolonised (Mbembe, 2016). ...
This article asks the central question of how to practically engage in the ongoing production of space at Stellenbosch University (SU) as to reimagine and redefine spaces. Spaces, which affect people indirectly and subconsciously, can act as microaggressions on one hand and places of safety connected to identity on the other. The Visual Redress (VR) project at SU focuses on removing or replacing contentious visual elements on campus and facilitating engagements to alter experiences of places and spaces. The VR project is not only interested in physically transforming the space, but also in facilitating critical dialogue and physical interventions to engage in spatial memory and emotional remembrance. In this article Hauntology is used as a methodology to remember and reflect on visual elements on the Stellenbosch campus of SU and how the memory of the past and the dead in the form of visual elements still haunts the present. These hauntological engagements include crucial interactions with students, lecturers, and the various publics of the university. In this article the researchers will provide an overview of VR at SU and show and discuss the processes of three specific VR projects that were implemented at SU to illustrate the importance of hauntological engagements with the aim of reconstructing spaces. ISISHWANKATHELO Eli nqaku liphakamisa owona mbuzo ungundoqo wendlela yokuzibandakanya kuqulunqo lweqonga oluqhubayo kwiYunivesithi yaseStellenbosch (iSU) njengokucinga ngokutsha kunye nokuchaza ngokutsha iqonga. Amaqonga, achaphazela abantu ngokungathanga ngqo yaye bengaqondanga bona, anokusebenza njengohlaselo olungaqondakaliyo kwelinye icala kunye neendawo zokhuseleko ezihambalena nobuni kwelinye icala. Iphulo loKulungiswa kweMbonakalo (VR) eSU ligxile ekususeni okanye ekutshintsheni iimbonakalo ezinokuxabanisa ekhampasini kunye nokuququzelela iindibano zokutshintsha amava eendawo kunye nawamaqonga. Eli phulo leVR alijolisanga kuphela ekuguquleni iqonga ngqo, kodwa likwajolise ekuququzeleleni iingxoxo ezibalulekileyo kunye nokungenelela ngokuthe ngqo okubandakanya iinkumbulo ngendawo kunye neenkumbulo ngokweemvakalelo. Kweli nqaku iHauntology isetyenziswa njengendlela yokukhumbula kunye nokucamngca ngezinto † Prof. Elmarie Costandius, Former Associate Professor: Visual Arts Department, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. ORCID: 0000-0003-3561-7652.
This article examines the complex interplay between modernity, colonialism, and necropolitics as represented in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, and Burmese Days by George Orwell. These modernist texts not only critique the dehumanization and systemic extermination justified by colonial ideologies but also highlight the ways in which colonial power uses necropolitical strategies to govern life and death. By integrating Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics with Michel Foucault's theory of biopower, this analysis elucidates the racial and sovereign dynamics that both underpin and challenge colonial regimes. The paper contextualizes the relationship between modernism and colonial history, highlighting how modernist narratives reflect a crisis in the colonial agenda and embody Enlightenment ideals that have shaped the socio-political landscape of empires. These narratives offer a critical view of the dichotomy between the colonizer and the colonized, emphasizing the fractured and uncertain epistemological underpinnings of imperial logic. The examination of Conrad, Forster, and Orwell focuses on the ethical and psychological turmoil from colonial dominance, probing how colonialism justifies violence and subjugation. The study reveals how colonial powers exert necropolitical control, deciding who lives and who dies—a control that extends beyond physical dominance to the psychological colonization of minds, perpetuating colonial hegemony. Ultimately, this paper shows how modernist texts critique colonial necropolitics and expose the racial prejudices and biopolitical strategies essential for maintaining colonial regimes. These texts provide profound insights into the lasting impacts of colonialism on contemporary understandings of race, sovereignty, and resistance.
Este texto é baseado na Conferência de Abertura da VII CONACIR, realizada em 21 de novembro de 2023. Propõe um repensar crítico da noção de utopia na era do antropoceno/capitaloceno a partir do lugar da categoria “religião” construída durante a modernidade. Nesse sentido, busca investigar a dimensão particularmente política das noções de antropoceno/capitaloceno e a funcionalidade da religião nessa dialética.
Museums and news organizations make up major parts of the structure that maintains an informed community essential to democracy. As resources for both of these institutions dwindle, it’s more important than ever for these sectors to work together toward their common goals – not only with each other, but with their respective communities in ways that are collaborative and egalitarian. The following outlines Civil Wrongs, a program started at the University of Memphis Department of Journalism and Strategic Media in 2022, as an emerging example of how these institutions can work together and learn from each other for the sake of a more informed community. Civil Wrongs is both a journalistic project of the nonprofit Institute for Public Service Reporting, and an academic class for junior and senior college students from multiple disciplines, including journalism, history, and political science. Through narrative podcasting, the program aims to examine past cases of racial terror in the Mid-South and analyze their connection to present-day injustices. It is a break from the traditional journalistic model that focuses solely on the present with little historical context and therefore naturally creates a bridge to museums that are grounded in history education.
L’articolo rivisita due concetti classici di frontiera per analizzare la delocalizzazione del controllo e della gestione delle migrazioni nello spazio Euro-Africano. Si occupa in particolar modo della cosiddetta esternalizzazione dei confini europei in Africa, partendo da ricerche etnografiche in Gambia sui rimpatri e reinserimenti assistiti dai paesi di transito sulle rotte mediterranee. Da un lato, l’articolo propone di leggere l’esternalizzazione come un fronte del controllo che avanza nel continente africano, sebbene in modo non lineare e irreversibile, e in parte ripercorrendo frontiere passate. Dall’altro, offre una prospettiva interstiziale di frontiera ispirata a Igor Kopytoff che, evitando euro- e stato-centrismo, analizza l’esternalizzazione come un processo emergente di interazione tra molteplici regimi della mobilità che avviene in spazi istituzionali spesso in/formali o opachi.
My focus in this conceptual paper is the choice of theoretical concepts and their place-based use analytically for knowledge making about languages and literacies in mathematics education. This is motivated by two related concerns: that the pursuit of certainty, stability, and permanence of meaning of analytic concepts brings some, and not other, existences into being; and that concepts are given meaning in relational, geopolitical place in enfolded pasts, presents, and futures. I write from and for my context in the relational geopolitical South, a context pervaded by questions of what knowledges and practices, for whom, and using what languages and literacies. I propose an imaginary of the world as an archipelago of geopolitical contexts. This is a complex world in which openings and closings, mobilities and permanencies, continuities and discontinuities, entanglements and separations, and incompleteness of languages and literacies and their meanings are the norm, rather than a problem. I argue for a shift in thinking; from the student as language migrant, to flows and fractures in meaning in space and time. For it is in these (im)mobilities that inequities emerge, but also in which the potential for redesign lies. I offer this place-based thinking to prompt conversations about the concepts-in-use in other contexts, towards strengthening knowledge making in mathematics education, without universalising.
This chapter analyzes how Ukrainian artists engage with landscape, starting from the Soviet colonial landscape and concluding with the contemporary Ukrainian one. In 1994, William John Thomas Mitchell called for the abandonment of landscape art, arguing that it was a thoroughly colonial and European genre. However, even if we accept the colonial nature of the genre, there is a space for rethinking and reinventing it, which can lead to the emergence of a new environment, landscape, and identity. In Ukrainian art, these processes occur in parallel and sometimes influence one another. For instance, the denaturalization of the official Soviet landscape becomes a central theme in the artistic practices of Lada Nakonechna and Nikita Kadan. At the same time, the hybrid phase of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which started in 2014, and the subsequent full-scale Russian invasion, beginning on February 24, 2022, have triggered a strong interest in landscape, as evidenced by numerous artworks created during the war. The author examines the works of Alevtina Kakhidze, Kateryna Aliinyk, and Kateryna Buchatska to track changes in the landscape following Russia’s full-scale invasion. The depletion of the earth’s resources, the ideological construction of environmental topography, and landscape’s role as both a participant in the war and its battleground have become prominent motifs in the artworks, which I will address in my contribution.
This article addresses the recent interest in Black Internationalism in the history of political thought and related fields by engaging with a portion of W. E. B. Du Bois’s (1868–1963) work. It examines in particular how Du Bois treats Africa in his published and unpublished writings from the 1910s to the 1940s in light of the challenges of world war and continued imperial expansionism in the global South. I argue that through a rhetorical framing of problems on the continent, and by situating Africa in relation to global economic problems as well as the goal of long-lasting peace, Du Bois comes up with novel approaches to war and empire, as well as solutions to the problems that they pose. I conclude by reflecting on how he can contribute to debates on Black Internationalism today.
This article deals with the ‘primitivist’ sources of European modern art, with a focus on Eastern European artists, including some who later developed their careers in the West. These artists are regarded as atypical but relevant cases of modernist legacies, yet their contribution is less studied because of their non-Western European backgrounds. Their early artistic careers were influenced by the local folk and naïve style and motifs of their rural homelands, but they later transmuted their ‘primitivist style’, adopting the fashionable exotic, mostly African, motifs of the Western modernist schools when they moved to the West (typically, France), connected themselves with the modernist movement and received recognition. Unlike the perspective usually adopted by art criticism, this article suggests a heritage studies approach: it firstly conceptualises and considers how one type of heritage primitivism is subsumed to another in this complex artistic formation, and then problematises this dissonant legacy of their work. It is argued that in the field of cultural heritage debate, we need to extend the concept of dissonant heritage to discuss the dual concept of local/exotic heritage, while critically reassessing the uses of primitivism in its authenticist vs. assimilationist ideological intentions.
In this edited book we are compelled to think about the convergences between the technological advances made possible by lockdowns brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic and increased 4IR use in the South African context. The insights presented in this edited volume make a case that transformation of higher education scholarship cannot happen without making space for historically excluded knowers, thinking differently about historically marginalized knowledges and by constantly grappling with new developments and how they facilitate or encumber the transformation project. Consequently, Transforming Higher Education Scholarship After Covid-19 and in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution does a good job of illustrating how shifts towards the advancement of 4IR in the South African Higher Education sector impacted the transformation trajectory. In their efforts to reimagine universities in Africa into African universities the authors in this edited volume grapple with how race and gender intersect in making the experiences of Black women in the South African academy untenable. The chapters also contend for the significance of pluriversal knowledges by making a case for the place of Indigenous Knowledges Systems in building African universities. As we grapple with the changes the 4IR has on the world and the teaching and learning landscape, some of the chapters in this volume make a compelling argument for thinking both from a critical perspective about what the challenges the developments coming out of these technologies mean for South Africa and the continent as well as what possibilities for positive impact these tools bring. Transforming Higher Education Scholarship After Covid-19 and in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution, is timely and makes an important contribution to higher education transformation discourses.
This paper is a methodological reflection on my time as a graduate student studying Indian Residential Schools through archival sources. I broadly survey relevant secondary studies to access the current state of the field and to chart prospective avenues for future scholarly engagement. I suggest that, for religionists, the frameworks of church history and mission history can be selectively utilized to examine the history of residential schooling. I argue that the ‘Indian Residential School’ (or IRS) terminology creates a narrowed understanding of colonialism and assimilative education by disregarding other modes of schooling deployed in Indigenous communities: the day schools and mission schools, but also hospitals, convents, and other church-operated institutions. Largely dating to the pre-Confederation period, mission schools especially fade from view when studies focus on the national model of the IRS launched in 1879 and expanded in 1884. In many regional contexts, mission schools of the colonial era laid the literal and conceptual groundwork for the later launching of the IRS system. By studying the works and the records of specific church bodies, religionists might elucidate with greater clarity the evolving differences, synchronicities, or collaborations of ideologies, policies, and practices among members of church and state over several centuries. Attending to pre-Confederation, colonial history also lends a transnational scope to a topic that is often framed in the context of national history, i.e., ‘Canada’s residential school system’. A global perspective on colonial education could assist historians of religion to assess the legacies of church, empire, and imperialism on Canada’s national model of residential schooling.
This article considers the affordances of utilizing practical applications of music, sound, and orality, as alternatives to the dominant visual-centric, text-based forms of communication in Religious Studies pedagogical settings. The premise of this article is that sound and musicking can be explored in terms of their potential to dismantle academic, discursive, visual-centric, and linguistic forms – some of which are so ossified in a particular collectivity or conversation that we can no longer “say somethin’” as the bass player Charles Mingus puts it in the context of jazz. This approach attempts to revise the colonial structures upon which much of higher education was built by modifying and destabilizing the foundation through which concepts in Religious Studies are introduced and processed.
This article examines Césaire's The Tragedy of King Christophe as a fundamental text for understanding the complexities of decolonization in postcolonial contexts. The essay rereads the play, focusing on the concepts of 'bad decolonization,' 'good decolonization,' and the necessity for a 'second liberation'-a form of decolonization that transcends mere emancipation from physical subjugation. It analyses Césaire's dramatization of Haiti's revolutionary period to illuminate how his portrayal of decolonization not only prefigures but also advocates for the second liberation. Through a critical engagement with the works of Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe, the essay argues that effective decolonization within the postcolony must inherently culminate in self-awareness, the eradication of colonial vestiges, and the cultivation of a new consciousness that inspires what Mbembe (2021, 3) refers to as the "will to community" to describe a shared commitment to reconceptualizing community beyond the colonial legacies of separation, hierarchy, and exclusion.
Disaster scholarship purportedly promotes disaster risk reduction and resists disaster risk creation, thereby deeply engaging with transboundary existential risks, justice, and political power. It is thus a commitment to humanity, and for it to become truly equitable and just, solidarity must lie at its heart. In this paper we connect solidarity with knowledge production and assess the implications of disaster scholarship and the relationships on which it is built. We offer a critique of the kind of research produced by neoliberal academic institutions and provocations for resistance through solidarity. We call on disaster scholars to use these prompts to reflect on their practice, research ethics, and their commitment to other human beings, inside and outside of the academy. Solidarity can help scholars to avoid the saviourism, self‐congratulation, and paternalism that are common in academia. Solidarity in disaster scholarship is a worthy endeavour precisely because it yields a concrete alternative vision of resisting disaster risk creation through knowledge production.
Challenging the false neutrality of secularism, J. Z. Smith (1988) declared that between “religion” and “religious studies” there is “no difference at all.” The subsequent rise of area studies matched the decline of comparative programs whose underwriting logic faltered under postcolonial scrutiny. This turn toward particularity and data expansion was a way of reckoning with the ethnocentric universalizing of modern social theory. Today, scholars in both religious studies and anthropology worry about how ethnocentrism persists in the very form of “the data.” However, the former have largely misunderstood the contributions of anthropology’s ontological turn—specifically the “radical” variant “perspectivism”—to disciplinary reform. I explain why perspectivists suggest replacing talk of multiple views with talk of multiple worlds to model a genuine alternative to cultural relativism.
Postcolonialism has been criticized for its binary oppositions, dichotomy, and othering. However, recent postcolonial writers and novelists developed new projects such as Afropolitanism and transnational feminism which have opened new insights and perspectives into the postcolonial disputes and agendas. Leila Slimani's Lullaby (2018) is a novel that deals with feminist issues par excellence. This study delves into the interconnectedness between transnational feminism and "the Implicate Subjects," as an approach, to examine the complexity of feminist issues in the novel. The paper tries to unravel how social and cultural norms infiltrate and entangle with discrimination, gender roles, power dynamics, and social-economic inequality that are practiced at the small-scale and large-scale in our contemporary societies. Besides, the intersection between Slimani's transnational feminism and Rothberg's Implicated Subjects offers new readings and insights, and bridges connections between Western and non-Western feminism which needs global solidarity and cross-border entanglement.
The edited volume Mobility, Agency, Kinship: Representations of Migration Beyond Victimhood sets out to investigate narrative representations of the nexus between migration, agency, and kinship in literature, media, and the arts. Starting from the observation that previous research on migration and kinship has largely neglected to examine how practices of kinship formation can facilitate migrant agency, this introduction conceptualizes kinship as a transformative social and cultural practice that is inscribed in narrative patterns and structures informing the ways in which migration is perceived and responded to in different cultures and societies. The chapter develops its argument in two steps: It first offers an overview of recent research in the fields of migration studies, kinship studies, and interdisciplinary narrative research that provides the conceptual and theoretical frameworks underlying the contributions to the volume before it proceeds to outline the tripartite structure of the volume and the argument of its individual chapters.
The development and deployment of machine learning and AI engender 'AI colonialism', a term that conceptually overlaps with 'data colonialism', as a form of injustice. AI colonialism is in need of decolonization for three reasons. Politically, because it enforces digital capitalism's hegemony. Ecologically, as it negatively impacts the environment and intensifies the extraction of natural resources and consumption of energy. Epistemically, since the social systems within which AI is embedded reinforce Western universalism by imposing Western colonial values on the global South when these manifest in the digital realm is a form of digital capitalism. These reasons require a new conceptualization of AI decolonization. First this paper draws from the historical debates on the concepts of colonialism and decolonization. Secondly it retrieves Achille Mbembe's notion of decolonization as disenclosure to argue that the decolonization of AI will have to be the abolishment of political, ecological and epistemic borders erected and reinforced in the phases of its design, production, development of AI in the West and drawing from the knowledge from the global South. In conclusion, it is discussed how conceiving of decolonial AI as form of disenclosure opens up new ways to think about and intervene in colonial instantiations of AI development and deployment, in order to empower 'the wretched of AI', re-ecologise the unsustainable ecologies AI depends on and to counter the colonial power structures unreflective AI deployment risks to reinforce.
Waste is an increasing global environmental issue. South Africa’s informal sector plays a crucial role in diverting recyclables from landfills. Despite their indispensable contributions, informal recyclers form part of a societal group that is marginalised, negatively labelled and deemed ‘disposable’ under neoliberal capitalist structures. This article draws on data from interviews held with 21 participants who work in the informal recycling sector in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) in South Africa. It investigates the participants’ own perceptions of their societal role, of which four became prominent, namely: (1) cleaners of the environment, (2) providers for dependents, (3) informal environmental educators and (4) community uplifters. We argue that the participants’ positive self-views can be seen as a powerful counter-narrative that challenges harmful prevailing stereotypes, which allows for a more nuanced perception of their lives and labour. Their positive self-perceptions and resourcefulness should not be interpreted as an endorsement of neoliberal capitalism that compels them to actively combat stigmatisation. Instead, their determination to resist negative stereotypes simultaneously underscores the necessity of confronting stigmatisation in society.Transdisciplinary contribution: The parallel themes of agency and autonomy in both informal recycling and entrepreneurship prompt a reconsideration of the conventional entrepreneurial discourse and its applicability to marginalised communities. We recommend that informal recyclers’ accumulated knowledge, skill set and well-being be acknowledged to ensure their dignity and that their labour is valued.
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