Decolonisation course

The lecture examines how cultural practices and relations continue to establish and maintain colonial relations even after colonial independence. It also identifies decolonizing approaches to colonial cultural relations and practices. The lecture is based on Edward Said’s “Introduction” in Culture and Imperialism, John Tomlinson’s “Cultural Imperialism,” and some parts of Raoul Peck’s documentary film I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, Mat Diop’s documentary film Dahomey, and Ruben Hordijk’s video essay “The Green Mile: white masculinity and the myth of the black rapist.”

This lecture will identify colonized political practices and offer decolonizing alternatives. More specifically, we will explore ways to unlearn colonial ways of thinking and practicing politics. Among others, the lecture is based on Ariella Aisha Azoulay’s “Unlearning Imperialism” in Potential Histories. 

The lecture will focus on a decolonized/decolonizing history, specifically examining parts of the Middle East/Mediterranean. This lecture focuses on the entangled histories problematizing notions of “Europe” and “Middle East” as separate geographic entities. Instead, it reveals how the concept of the “Middle East” was constructed in relation to Europe and its perception of the Oriental Other. The lecture also revolves around interactions and connections between these worlds without sidelining the power inequalities that have marked their relationship. The lecture is based on Rashid Khalidi’s “The Middle East as a Framework of Analysis.”

In this lecture, we focus on Palestine and specifically discuss what we mean by the colonization and decolonization of Palestine. We learn about the differences between colonialism and settler colonialism, briefly discuss Palestinian anti-colonial movements, and then explore why decolonizing Palestine resonates so profoundly with ordinary citizens worldwide. The lecture draws on the arguments of Rashid Khalidi’s book “Hundred Years of War on Palestine.” 

This lecture will focus on a decolonized/decolonizing history, specifically examining Africa, with a particular emphasis on the Democratic Republic of Congo. The course will focus on Congolese independence in 1960, with an emphasis on the perspectives of key historical actors, such as Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, as well as underrepresented women, including Andrée Blouin. Students will be invited to reflect on the larger historical context of Congolese decolonization struggles, their direct aftermath, and their contemporary manifestations. 

This lecture discusses the decolonization of gender. We will discuss how, besides historians and biologists, decolonization scholars have demonstrated that the binary gender system is a cultural construct, not a natural fact. In The Invention of Women, sociologist Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí explains how, for example, age rather than sex defined social order in the Yoruba culture before British rule. We will not only consider the historical contingency of the binary gender system but also the specific oppressive character it acquired in the colonial context. As Maria Lugones has argued, colonizers imposed the binary gender system as part of an oppressive strategy, effectively merging the goals of colonialism, exploitative capitalism, patriarchy, and racism (as was explained in the introductory class). In collaboration with Val Plumwood and other feminist scholars, we will explore ways to overcome oppressive gender dualism within a postcolonial conceptual framework.