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Decolonisation: Revolution and Evolution
Offers a comparative analysis of the processes and aftermath of decolonisation from philosophical, historical, literary and legal perspectives.
280 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 1, 2023
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April 17, 2024
As debates an discussions of colonialism, coloniality, de- and postcolonisation weave themselves through academia and wider settings, those of us in the fields were these concepts have most resonance are confronted with an increasingly diverse range of topics, approaches, and contested meanings. This useful but uneven collection grapples with some of these questions, and in places helpfully unpacks approaches that help us make better sense.
The collection’s principal strength lies in its closeness and clarity of focus, with a heavy emphasis on perspectives grounded in (but not necessarily limited to a focus on) Southern Africa. It likely reflects my disciplinary orientations and emphases that I found the essays building on specific historical circumstances most satisfying. Here I especially welcome discussions by Christopher Allsobrook and Camilla Boisen and by Ian Spears of colonial borders, and Paul Patton’s piece on legitimacy focussing on settler colonial states – but then these are also the pieces that resonate most directly with my own work. No doubt I approach these with more nuanced understanding. I expect readers whose focus lies elsewhere will find similar multiple ways into pieces closer to their focus. More generally, Amber Murray’s discussion of pedagogical disobedience, dangerous ideas, and curricula silences is sharp, insightful, and inspiring.
Even so, with the pieces that are more inclined to abstraction the issue, for me, was not this abstraction as such but the limitations of a chapter-length essay, limiting the ability to explore the full range of connections and implications of an analysis. For instance, in Sule Emmanuel Egye’s useful discussion of aspects of legitimation in African (here, mainly west African) literature he makes the useful point that almost all African originating authors working successfully in the USA have to do so on the back of academic and teaching posts. What he fails to note is that this is not a condition unique to this group, and that it is not uncommon across the field, regardless of the writer’s country of origin. This constraint of space (I assume that is the reason for Egya’s oversight) finished up undermining the power of the analysis.
The second, but more serious, consequence of this form is that many of the (again, here, the more abstract but importantly conceptualising) pieces is that the theoretical explorations might resonate better if they were able to be more grounded in specific instances. So, much as I enjoyed David Boucher’s discussion of the ways Fanon’s work can be used to unravel questions of legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial contexts, I am left unclear as to how these approaches might be deployed to make sense of particular cases. Similarly, Michael Elliot’s discussion of tensions between and around the politics of location in the development and shape of forms of critical social and political theory feels like a teaser for a larger and more nuanced study.
So, much as I appreciate the multi-disciplinary approach, it is also a weakness, perhaps also linked to the origin of the collection in a conference. I know from editing symposia drawn from conferences that it is often hard to build coherence across the collection, and that is the case here. While there is a broad and productive engagement with question of decolonisation, the diversity of approaches and styles makes it hard to locate common threads beyond the very general. The conference context was no doubt productive and stimulating – I can see and hear highly productive exploratory discussions riffing off many of the ideas advanced here, but they do not really come through in written form, even at the general level of the subtitle; I did not see how the evolution/revolution these provided coherence to the whole. That’s not to undermine the quality and richness of the individual pieces, but to caution against expecting too much of the collection as a whole.
There are valuable and important contributions here, and Boucher and Omar have drawn together work that will no doubt resonate in their specific fields. For that I am grateful.
The collection’s principal strength lies in its closeness and clarity of focus, with a heavy emphasis on perspectives grounded in (but not necessarily limited to a focus on) Southern Africa. It likely reflects my disciplinary orientations and emphases that I found the essays building on specific historical circumstances most satisfying. Here I especially welcome discussions by Christopher Allsobrook and Camilla Boisen and by Ian Spears of colonial borders, and Paul Patton’s piece on legitimacy focussing on settler colonial states – but then these are also the pieces that resonate most directly with my own work. No doubt I approach these with more nuanced understanding. I expect readers whose focus lies elsewhere will find similar multiple ways into pieces closer to their focus. More generally, Amber Murray’s discussion of pedagogical disobedience, dangerous ideas, and curricula silences is sharp, insightful, and inspiring.
Even so, with the pieces that are more inclined to abstraction the issue, for me, was not this abstraction as such but the limitations of a chapter-length essay, limiting the ability to explore the full range of connections and implications of an analysis. For instance, in Sule Emmanuel Egye’s useful discussion of aspects of legitimation in African (here, mainly west African) literature he makes the useful point that almost all African originating authors working successfully in the USA have to do so on the back of academic and teaching posts. What he fails to note is that this is not a condition unique to this group, and that it is not uncommon across the field, regardless of the writer’s country of origin. This constraint of space (I assume that is the reason for Egya’s oversight) finished up undermining the power of the analysis.
The second, but more serious, consequence of this form is that many of the (again, here, the more abstract but importantly conceptualising) pieces is that the theoretical explorations might resonate better if they were able to be more grounded in specific instances. So, much as I enjoyed David Boucher’s discussion of the ways Fanon’s work can be used to unravel questions of legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial contexts, I am left unclear as to how these approaches might be deployed to make sense of particular cases. Similarly, Michael Elliot’s discussion of tensions between and around the politics of location in the development and shape of forms of critical social and political theory feels like a teaser for a larger and more nuanced study.
So, much as I appreciate the multi-disciplinary approach, it is also a weakness, perhaps also linked to the origin of the collection in a conference. I know from editing symposia drawn from conferences that it is often hard to build coherence across the collection, and that is the case here. While there is a broad and productive engagement with question of decolonisation, the diversity of approaches and styles makes it hard to locate common threads beyond the very general. The conference context was no doubt productive and stimulating – I can see and hear highly productive exploratory discussions riffing off many of the ideas advanced here, but they do not really come through in written form, even at the general level of the subtitle; I did not see how the evolution/revolution these provided coherence to the whole. That’s not to undermine the quality and richness of the individual pieces, but to caution against expecting too much of the collection as a whole.
There are valuable and important contributions here, and Boucher and Omar have drawn together work that will no doubt resonate in their specific fields. For that I am grateful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review