Chapter 10 : Postcolonial and decolonial approaches

Introduction

Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to the field are seen as forms of critical theory because they
challenge the very foundations of the field.

- Decolonization usually refers to the processes of formal colonial and imperial withdrawal
from many countries in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, especially in the
twentieth century.
- As a result of decolonization struggles and processes, the number of states recognized in the
international system increased from around 70 in 1945 to more than 190 in 2018.
- The decolonization’s struggles involved :
● the mobilization of huge numbers of people
● the development of intellectual critiques of empire and colonialism
● armed struggles against imperial rule where colonial powers attempted to maintain
their control

What are postcolonial and decolonial approaches ?

- Postcolonial and decolonial approaches can be understood as being united by three levels of
theoretical engagement—epistemological, ontological, and normative :
● epistemologically :
˃ the way that many people know and represent the world depends on hierarchies
established by colonial attitudes, and the perspectives of the colonially or racially
privileged.
˃Some postcolonial and decolonial approaches identify these epistemological habits
as deeply rooted in the racialized and supremacist assumptions of influential Western
philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, who saw white Europe as the pinnacle of
humanity, and nonwhite peoples as backward or uncivilized.
˃ Postcolonial approaches have emphasized the importance of subaltern
perspectives as a site for thinking through relations of power. These can include
criticisms rendered back in the language of the colonial power.
˃ In decolonial approaches, more emphasis is put on retrieving indigenous
epistemologies and cosmologies with which to think about relations among humans
and, often, non-humans
● antologically :
˃ Postcolonial and decolonial approaches take issue with the ontological assumptions
of conventional social science and IR—that is, what it is that is being studied, who is
being studied, and more generally what the world consists of.
˃ Decolonial approaches engage the idea of ‘modernity/coloniality’ as a way of
talking about how the modern world is structured fundamentally by colonial
hierarchy
˃ For postcolonial and decolonial approaches, then, colonialism and imperialism are
crucial ontological foundations for understanding world politics
● normative or ethical foundations :
 ˃Postcolonial and decolonial approaches have tended to understand the attitudes,
practices, and structures supporting Western supremacy in the world as unequal,
racist, and dehumanizing.

-Postcolonial and decolonial approaches seek to understand things from the perspectives of the
colonized/ formerly colonized and to challenge the ways that such people are often represented in
mainstream approaches.

- They seek to think about world politics by keeping imperialism and colonialism in view as a
structure of power which influences and shapes many other forms of power in the world, such as
sovereignty.

- They challenge the West in terms of its moral responsibility for inequalities in the world today,
arguing that the West is often hypocritical and dehumanizing because it fails to recognize the bases
for its own wealth and power, which are rooted in domination over and exploitation of people and
resources around the world

Where did postcolonial and decolonial ideas come from ?

- Postcolonial and decolonial approaches are inspired by the history and practice of
decolonization struggles, which entailed intellectual, political, and military strategies against
colonial empires.
- Colonial and imperial rule had a number of common political, economic, cultural, and social
features, most of which were functionally related to the control of territories and people,
despite differences in historical context.
- Resistance to imperialism and colonialism took place at many historical moments, but picked
up organizational and political momentum in the early twentieth century due to improved
infrastructures and mobility as well as the growth of anti-colonial ideas.
- Anti-colonial movements also contributed to and were influenced by Marxist critiques of
imperialism and capitalism, which were associated with left-wing movements around the
world.
- Anti-colonial intellectuals had many transnational influences and connections which shaped
their ideas, political strategies, and material capabilities for resistance. Many were linked to
communist organizations in the USSR and China.
- W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and M. N. Roy saw the development of global capitalism as
fundamentally dependent on colonial structures. Such views were shared by some European
leftists such as Rosa Luxemburg, and the climate of anti-imperial and anti-capitalist thought
was also cultivated among Chinese thinkers such as Liang Qichao.
- A Third World identity and way of thinking continued after formal political independence,
consolidated at conferences such as the Bandung Conference in Indonesia and the
Tricontinental Conference in Havana.
- the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was established in
1964 and led by Raúl Prebisch, an Argentinian economist who had contributed to the
development of dependency theory, which explained why formerly colonized countries
remained relatively poor and in many cases got poorer.
- Postcolonial and decolonial approaches are strongly influenced by this history of
transnational anti-colonial activity.
 - in Latin America a range of interconnected intellectual projects associated with liberation
were growing, including liberation theology, radical pedagogies, and the recovery of
indigenous philosophies.
- In Western scholarship, the field which became known as ‘postcolonial studies’ evolved in
the 1980s and 1990s, in dialogue with debates within history, philosophy, and literature.
Famous thinkers in these circles included Ranajit Guha, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and
Gayatri Spivak. In the years that followed, writers from Latin America such as Aníbal Quijano
and María Lugones developed ‘decolonial’ thinking, which functioned as a sympathetic
critique both of dependency theory and of the cultural emphasis in postcolonial studies.

What are the main ideas underpinning postcolonial and decolonial thought ?

In line with the idea that postcolonial and decolonial approaches are a way of thinking about the
world rather than a rigid theory, they are guided by a number of key concepts and ideas :

- Colonialism as a system of (total) violence :

● Frantz Fanon argued that, as a system, colonialism represents a totalizing form of violence.
●In Fanon’s view, a trained psychiatrist, there was no possibility of political reconciliation or
accommodation with colonialism since it was founded on this fundamental negation of the
humanity and rights of the colonized. This situation meant that the colonized needed to
completely overturn colonialism, ultimately through forms of violent resistance which could
form the basis for a more equal, fraternal footing in the future.

- Neo-colonialism as an economic and political structure :

● The term ‘neo-colonialism’ was coined by Kwame Nkrumah, an anti-colonial activist and
the first leader of independent Ghana, in the early 1960s.

● The essence of neocolonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory,
independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its
economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.

● Nkrumah was specifically referring to situations (often former French colonies) where,
despite independence, foreign military troops had stayed in the country, where foreign
investors or corporations owned land, industries, and mining concessions, and where policies
on a range of domestic and international affairs were being directed by external forces—
typically the former colonial power, but also often superpower interference.

● Neo-colonialism was seen as a key driver of violence and economic impoverishment in

newly independent countries.

- Orientalism and Otherness as modes of representation :

● The word ‘Orientalists’ at one time referred to scholars who studied Eastern cultures,
religions, and languages in Western universities.

● In Edward Said’s famous work, Orientalism (Said 2003 [1978]), he argued that Orientalism
was a way of imagining and representing the world in ways that justified and supported
imperialism.
- Eurocentrism as an intellectual habit/ practice :

●‘Eurocentrism’ can be understood as the widespread tendency to treat Europe as the

primary subject of and reference point for world history, civilization, and/or humanity.

● The use of the term was popularized by a number of critical thinkers associated with
dependency theory, such as Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein, although it is also
associated with postcolonial historians such as Dipesh Chakrabarty

- Subaltern as the social position of the colonized :

● The term ‘subaltern’ is often connected with the thought of Sardinian Marxist thinker
Antonio Gramsci (1891– 1937).

● Gramsci reflected on how power was exercised not just through violence but also through
culture and ideology in society. He described the forms of ideological and cultural domination
exercised by the ruling classes as ‘hegemony’, and those groups excluded from these forms
of representation as ‘subaltern’.

- Modernity/coloniality as overarching historical/philosophical structure :

● ‘Modernity/coloniality’ is a term developed among Latin American thinkers, principally

Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and María Lugones.

● Contrary to the conventional view of modernity as progressive, equalizing, and democratic,

it says that the philosophical and political project of modernity is foundationally premised on
coloniality—that is, a racialized, hierarchical binary that empowers people and ideas seen as
‘modern’ over those seen as ‘non-modern’.

- ‘Border thinking’ as a way to think decolonially :

● ‘Border thinking’ is a term coined by Chicana thinker Gloria Anzaldúa (2012 [1987]) and
associated with Walter Mignolo, which can be understood as thinking from the ‘underside’ of
modernity.

● It means to think with the perspectives of people who are marginalized, undervalued, or
excluded by the ideals of modernity— for example, indigenous peoples, non-white migrants,
and women.

● The concept of border thinking resonates strongly with longer-established historical

practices of resistance to colonial ideas and systems of rule.

- Decolonization as practices to overturn colonialism and coloniality :

● In the midtwentieth century, during the widespread struggles against colonialism,

‘decolonization’ usually referred to processes of gaining political independence in the
framework of national self-determination.
 ● it was also used by intellectuals such as Fanon, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Ashis Nandy to refer
to the psychological and intellectual struggle against colonialism through the retrieval of
indigenous agency, language, and spirituality—that is, to ‘decolonize the mind’.

● More recently, ‘decolonization’ has been used to refer to a range of critical projects across
many social, cultural, and scientific fields that seek to interrogate and overturn the legacies
of colonialism, such as decolonizing the curriculum

- key points :

• Postcolonial and decolonial approaches have developed their own conceptual apparatus for
understanding the world through terms such as ‘neo-colonialism’, ‘Orientalism’, ‘Eurocentrism’,
‘modernity/coloniality’, and others. These terms have specific meanings when used by writers in this
context, but are sometimes used in a more general way.

• Postcolonial and decolonial approaches emerge in slightly different geographical and historical
locations, with postcolonial approaches mostly associated with thinkers from regions formerly
colonized by Britain or France such as Asia and Africa, and decolonial approaches associated with
thinkers from regions formerly colonized by Spain or Portugal such as Central and South America.

• There are some different emphases between postcolonial and decolonial approaches in terms of
vocabulary and thinking, such as the emphasis in decolonial thought on the cosmologies of
indigenous peoples.

• Decolonization is a contested term with multiple meanings, but it is a term increasingly applied to
activity in different spheres such as art, education, and culture that seeks to dislodge the centrality of
Western epistemologies and viewpoints

Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to studying world politics :

- Questions of empire, race, and colonialism were pressing issues in the early twentieth
century, when International Relations was being established as a scholarly field.
- Robert Vitalis (2000) has shown in political science, there was a distinct subfield of study
known as ‘Colonial Administration’.
- In 1902, Du Bois argued that the ‘global colour line’ was the major problem of the twentieth
century. In his analysis, he argued that one of the main causes for war between European
states was competition for control of colonies and imperial possessions, and that this itself
was driven by racial discrimination and a sense of white superiority.

International relations theory :

- Krishna (2001) argued that IR theory abstracted too much from reality when it treated states
as independent units and only wrote about the Western states.
● This enabled IR scholarship to depict the nineteenth century as a ‘Hundred Years’
Peace’ in the international system, for example, completely ignoring the dynamics of
empire.
● It also allowed a view of international law that saw it as part of the civilizing
influence of the West (Grovogui 1996)
 - By contrast, viewed from the perspective of colonized peoples, the nineteenth century was
anything but peaceful, involving the violent, sometimes genocidal, suppression of resistance
to imperial control.
- Instruments such as international law and trade were not developed because the West was
naturally civilizing, but because it was attempting to assert sovereign rule over non-European
spaces on sea and land.
- From this perspective, international relations theory was part of the problem of imperial
violence, allowing Western intellectuals to sanitize and limit their understanding of
international order through selective forgetting.
- Other scholars further developed the idea that Eurocentric or colonial thinking was a
constitutive part of Western IR theory, and even forms of ‘critical’ theory (Gruffydd Jones
2006; Hobson 2012; Sabaratnam 2013). They argued that many theories created a
mythologized image of the West (either positive or negative) which was then the only focus
of attention in developing theory.
- Many postcolonial and decolonial scholars in IR have suggested alternatives. These different
mechanisms can help widen perspectives and historical understandings :
● taking an approach to historical development which incorporates non-Western
political, economic, and military formations (Bhambra 2007; Zarakol 2010; Phillips
and Sharman 2015)
● studying the thought, perspectives, and practices of people and scholars outside
the West (Shilliam 2010, 2015; Tickner and Blaney 2012, 2013; Persaud and Sajed
2018)
● imagining different geographical starting points for analysis (Ling 2002, 2013; Laffey
and Weldes 2008; Acharya 2014b; Niang 2018)
● widening our understanding of where ‘politics’ takes place (Agathangelou and Ling
2009).

Theory Similarities Differences from this theory

Realism Agree on the self-interested character of Emphasize system as hierarchical and imperial rather than
elites and states, and the centrality of power anarchic and sovereign, and power as much more
multifaceted
Liberalism Agree that cooperation is possible and Emphasize that cooperation is only generally among states
durable considered ‘developed’/‘civilized’ for the purposes of
securing their privileges
Marxism Agree in general that capitalism is a major Emphasize roles of racialization and colonial expansion in
organizing structure in world politics and determining the character and pattern of exploitation (such
that its tendencies are exploitative and as enslavement of Africans, poor conditions for workers in
immiserating Asia)
Feminism Agree that patriarchy is a major element in Emphasize (as many feminists do) that gender intersects
structuring international politics with race, class, and nationality in producing structures of
power/entitlement
Constructivism Agree that world is ‘socially constructed’ in Emphasize the asymmetric, colonial, and purposive
important ways—particular images produce character of these constructions
political possibilities (for example, portrayal
of Muslims as violent/irrational)
Poststructuralism Agree with critique of knowledge and power Emphasize the material as well as discursive character of oppression,
as being always intertwined, and the idea of exploitation, and violence, plus the importance of strategic essentialism in
advancing critical claims (rather than only deconstruction)
meaning as being intertextually produced
The table represents the similarities and differences between postcolonial and decolonial approaches
compared to other approaches to IR.

Alternative takes on mainstream issues :

- Most conventional views of US foreign policy in IR at the time were either realist or liberal,
with some looking at bureaucratic elements in foreign policy making.
- Roxanne Doty, however, demonstrated, using a form of discourse analysis, that aspects of US
foreign policy, as well as that of Britain, were enabled by imperial, racialized representations
of the Philippines and Kenya.
- The utility of postcolonial and decolonial approaches to world politics became more
pronounced in light of the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and the global
war on terror that ensued.
- Following these attacks, conservative and liberal US intellectuals actively encouraged the US
to see itself as a benevolent kind of empire and to embrace the assertion of its power in
different spaces.
- Leftist intellectuals, however, attacked the US for its imperialist policy towards the Middle
East, which they considered illegitimate, criticizing the 2003 invasion of Iraq in particular.
- Postcolonial and decolonial scholars were, however, able to contextualize US policy in a
longer historical structure of imperial and colonial power in Iraq and Afghanistan (Gregory
2004; Khalili 2012; Manchanda 2017), demonstrating the significance of those relations to
the kinds of decisions made about the region, including the techniques of counter-
insurgency.

Retrieving the (formerly) colonized as subjects of IR :

- Robbie Shilliam, who examines the political thought and practice of the descendants of
enslaved Africans around the world. This examination reveals alternative forms of
sovereignty, rights, solidarity, and justice which are attentive to histories of colonial violence
and the possibilities of rethinking the ‘human’.
- This work serves as a counterpoint to liberal narratives that see ideas for emancipation,
rights, and solidarity as fundamentally Western in their origins and orientations.
- Rahul Rao has looked at Third World cosmopolitanisms as a series of creative responses to
the twin problems of nationalism and imperialism.

Key points :

● Colonialism and empire were central to the early discipline of IR, particularly among African-
American thinkers such as Du Bois and the Howard School, but later ignored by the central traditions
in the field.

• The cold war environment meant that criticisms of the West were often suppressed because of a
real or imagined relationship with communism, which had a chilling effect on the development of
International Relations as a field of study.

• Postcolonial and decolonial scholarship in international relations has been growing steadily since
the 1990s alongside other critical traditions, with an increasing presence of scholars with heritage in
the Global South.
• Postcolonial and decolonial scholarship has challenged mainstream IR theory in terms of its
fundamental categories and assumptions, developed alternative readings of particular issue areas
such as war and security, and paid attention to the political thought of (formerly) colonized people as
a basis for analysing global order. As such, it offers many alternative perspectives from which to view
central problems in the field.

Decolonization : the struggle continues ?

- It is an interesting historical fact that the rise of postcolonial and decolonial approaches has
continued, and perhaps even grown, several decades after many countries successfully
claimed political independence from European empires. This has coincided with the fall of
many leaders associated with decolonization struggles, either through death or a political fall
from their image as liberator (such as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe).
- It has also coincided with the growth of many countries in the Global South to positions of
relative wealth and power, such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. In fact some of
these countries are themselves accused of acting in an ‘imperial’ manner towards others.
- For postcolonial and decolonial approaches, in each case the field is structured through the
assumptions of Western superiority and rationality developed during the colonial period, and
through forms of collaboration among formerly imperial powers.
- The conceptual tools developed by postcolonial and decolonial approaches may also be
critically applied to the behaviour of non-Western governments.
- Relatedly, an explosion in anti-racist movements and activities across the world have also
generated more interest in the global and historical dimensions of empire and colonialism.

Key points :

● Postcolonial and decolonial approaches have remained popular despite the achievement of
political independence, the fall in popularity and stature of anti-colonial leaders, and the rise of non-
Western powers such as China, India, and Brazil.

• Postcolonial and decolonial approaches seek to explain many features of the contemporary world
order through a consideration of relations of imperialism and colonialism, which they see as
persisting in global institutions, international trade, identities in the West, arms control, and other
issues.

• Increasingly, decolonization struggles have turned against non-Western governments for their
continuation of, or complicity with, forms of colonial development, such as in the struggles over land
in Brazil and education in South Africa.

• There are on-going political struggles which link their objectives to the overturning of imperial and
colonial hierarchies, particularly where these relate to the unequal and violent treatment of people
who are racialized as non-white in both ‘international’ and ‘domestic’ contexts.