Unpacking Decoloniality
Since the nineteenth century, knowledge, medicine, and science have sometimes been tools for domination, inextricably linked to Europe’s imperial expansion into the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Moreover, anti-colonial movements and theorists from the Global South have challenged colonialism, Orientalism, neoliberalism, and more. For subsequent theorists from Frantz Fanon to Angela Davis, decolonization has functioned as a form of theory and praxis for people who are critically examining the continuation of colonialism through capitalism, imperialism, and uneven power dynamics.
As calls for decolonizing science become more prominent, this podcast probes the decolonial approach as a reflective method within history, science, and the arts. The overall aim of this project is to unravel the history of the term decolonial, how it has been used, and the ways that historians, scientists, artists and other practitioners have incorporated decolonial theory into their work. More broadly, we seek to explore the conditions of possibility for decolonizing knowledge, medicine, and science in their various formations.
On Decoloniality
Azoulay, Ariela. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2020)
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism (2000 [1955] )
Davis, Angela. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2016)
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth (2005 [1961] )
Mignolo, Walter and Rolando Vazquez. “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings” (2013)
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999)
Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) (forthcoming August 2020)
Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor” (2012)
Wekker, Gloria. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016)
Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being / Power / Truth / Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresetnation – An Argument” (2003)
Yamattha-Taylor, Keeanga. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016)
Decolonial Aesthetics at Universität der Künste Berlin
Decoloniality (Theory), Global Social Theory webpage, organized by Gurminder K Bhambra
Collectives, organizations, and Resources
Center for Intersectional Justice, Berlin: see also Publications
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society: see also Further Readings
Decolonize this Place: see also Resources
Each One Teach One, Berlin: see Literature for information about the Vera Heyer Archive and EOTO Library
Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland: see Media for recent press releases and articles
International Women* Space, Berlin: see also Books, IWS Radio, and Resources
Project NIA: see also Tools for Action
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“Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root'.”
– Angela Davis, Moe Lecturship in Women's Studies, Gustavus Adolphus College (2006)
“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”
– Frantz Fanon
“Decolonial feminism arrives at a similar conclusion that gender is not an innocent concept.”
– Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016)
photo by edna bonhomme