Colonialism and Postcolonialism

This is the first draft of a paper presented in an international conference in West Bengal.

A credible fear test is an in-depth interview process given to undocumented people of any age arriving at a U.S. port of entry to determine qualification for asylum-seeking. Credible fear tests as a typical immigration procedure demonstrate not only what structural epistemic violence looks like but also how this violence lives in and through the design of asylum policy. Key terms of credible fear tests such as “significant possibility,” “evidence,” “consistency,” and “credibility” can never be neutral in the context of (...) colonial administrative violence. We argue that these terms function as mechanisms of exclusion and demonstrate that the capacity to be violent (i.e. to be an instrument of violence) is built into these tests, ready to be deployed when an administration wants to stop certain people from certain places from entering without regard to their own ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands. Not only are such practices instruments of violence, but the concept of ‘violence’ continues to be organized, defined, and conceived within settler colonial epistemologies so as to exclude these administrative forms of violence deployed against Indigenous peoples and people of color from recognition and nameability. We argue that this is an intentional strategy of colonial power preservation that is functionalized through social processes that remain structurally stable and self-regenerating across historical and political changes. (shrink)

---- I ---- Once upon a time, there was a most elegant lady who had a most majestic dog on leash standing but distracted by something other than the dog. The dog struggled impossibly but forcefully to loose free and chase a most ordinary rabbit. ------ II ------ Another time the elegant lady dines at a fancy restaurant. Then she was walking on the sidewalk when she encountered an ordinary homeless in the state of minimal energy giving all in to (...) gravity. She gave him her left-over. He nodded or something. Then she cheerfully and vigorously and most innocently and heartwarmingly and charmingly wished the homeless guy a GREAT night. ----- III ----- IF the rabbit and the homeless guy are the same ordinary entity, and the elegant entity is to represent acutely concentrated political power and the Majestic entity is to represent the free market THEN a fair contract would be: ask for food and security and shelter in exchange for mindless work and give up money or capital and the privilege of procreation. Excursus: cryptocurrency features the rabid dog. (shrink)

A Cultural Criticism --- Clearly there can be nothing more praiseworthy than conferring virtues on things. Then the most celebrated strand of ecstasy of communication can be identified as the factor responsible for conferring an extra virtue to an already virtuous. This is problematic because, according to Nietzsche, one virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to. Excessive communication is the antipode of authenticity. Because where there is (...) reinforcement there is lack. (For instance: talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself). (shrink)

According to Borges' "Three Versions of Judas": The Redeemer could feel fatigue, cold, confusion, hunger and thirst; it is reasonable to admit that he could also sin and be damned. The Redeemer, the infinite ascetic, lowered himself to a man completely, a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of being reprehensible—all the way to the abyss. In order to save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the uncertain web of (...) history; but He chose an infamous destiny: He was Judas. Who with a terrible lucidity premeditated his offense. ·------- Lets agree with everything EXCEPT that there was no lucidity involved. Because the Redeemer must have no regrets, no guilt (Nietzsche: "likewise sinners and bad consciences! the sting of conscience teaches one to sting"). No guilt, no regret just forgetfulness means that Judas' act of identifying Christ involved a causally deviant chain, an awkward nervous non-intentional gesture, a comic-tragic act. So it merely appeared as dishonorable but internally or psychologically was not dishonorable. (shrink)

A Democratic-party counterstrategy against consolidation of power by the Republication party in the USA. ---- Dear Senator Sanders, please not with AOC. Just a recipe for disaster. ----- Gender is a fact (Dave Chappelle etc). Legalize weed instead of guns (Bill Maher) ----- Disclaimer: this text has nothing to do with academic philosophy.

Clearly nature does not care about human suffering. Culture does not care either due to the pressures of marketplace. ------ It has been said that God's omnipotence, omniscience and perfect goodness is not reconcilable with suffering and existence of evil. The only solution seems to be that the most divine attribute is indifference. Contra Leibniz, the world is not the best possible world but the most indifferent possible world. ------ Habermas says the 'Never Again' principle must lead to a German (...) commitment to protecting Jewish life and Israel's right to exist. We know what German commitment means in the current political climate ... then the reports of the end of world war II are greatly exaggerated. ------ Strategy I: Mend the marketplace. Strategy II: Do not reproduce and die ASAP. Leave this beautiful world to those who want it so badly (colonials). (shrink)

This article, composed six months after the Oct. 7th Hamas operation “Al-Aqsa Flood,” in the shadow of Israel’s retaliatory genocide, was catalyzed by a viral social media video with alternating clips of Palestinian and Native American people dancing in defiant resistance to ongoing white settler colonial ethnic cleansing and genocide, in loving embrace of their own Indigenous ways of being. After an introductory setting of the stage for this video, the first section rehearses the two historical chapters of dance scholar (...) Jacqueline Shea Murphy’s The People Have Always Danced, emphasizing the paradoxical late nineteenth-century campaigns (1) criminalizing Indigenous American dances, and (2) appropriating these dances and dancers for non-Indigenous audiences. The second section then pivots to Australian choreographer Nicholas Rowe’s Raising Dust: A Cultural History of Dance in Palestine, emphasizing the appropriation of a traditional shepherd dance (Dabke) into the Zionist project of fabricating an orientalist tradition to justify their colonization. Finally, the concluding section spotlights Palestine’s Birzeit University and the El-Funoun folkdance troupe as exemplars, captured in the Palestinian hip hop song’s neologism “Palest-Indians,” of loving Indigenous death-defying dance resistance. (shrink)

This essay is part of larger project in which I attempt to show that Western formal logic, from its inception in Aristotle onward, has both been partially constituted by, and partially constitutive of, what has become known as racism. More specifically, (a) racist/quasi-racist/proto-racist political forces were part of the impetus for logic’s attempt to classify the world into mutually exclusive, hierarchically-valued categories in the first place; and (b) these classifications, in turn, have been deployed throughout history to justify and empower (...) racism/quasi-racism/proto-racism. In other words, (a) an important part of the chaos and messiness that so troubles logic has been the natural bio-cultural diversity of human beings as described by concepts such as race and ethnicity; and (b) once these concepts were historically in place, taken for granted, buttressed with pseudo-science, and had their origins forgotten, they became tools for the oppression of diverse human groups. The central thesis of this essay is that close readings of a variety of Leibniz’s writings (including several essays and one letter) will reveal a pattern of mutual dependency and creation in regard to logic and racism in Leibniz. My conclusion will be that there is a meaningful connection between logic and racism (or at least between logic and politics in general) in Leibniz such that one should be skeptical of his logic’s claim to offer transparent and neutral descriptions of the world as well as imperatives for action. Put differently, I want to ask the following specific question: how do Leibniz’s own racially-informed political goals, along with the emergence of race-centric European colonialism, both invest and disguise themselves within Leibniz’s mathematizing of logic? (shrink)

In his influential history of the post-1967 history of the Palestinian Occupation, radical Israeli architect Eyal Weizman show how even well-meaning decolonial efforts from privileged allies can be coopted by the colonizers, in what I call “de-decolonizing.” Here I focus on one of his examples, namely IDF (Israeli Defense Force) military professors repurposing the anarcho-communist philosophy of French postmodernist Gilles Deleuze into a weapon against Palestinian guerrilla resistance. My conclusion is that attempted decolonizing via (inevitably complicit) privileged allies must include (...) what Weizman calls “co-resistance,” and I call “reconstruction.” In other words, when a Deleuzian “line of flight” to “escape” is impossible, as arguably for Palestinians today, then one should follow the heroic example of the Bedouins, who (as Weizman acknowledges) are the only Arabs who have never stopped rebuilding their Palestine. (shrink)

A wide-ranging interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age and Provincializing Europe. Dipesh Chakrabarty is one of the leading thinkers on climate change in the humanities. He is responsible for introducing concepts like the "Anthropocene," "geological force," and "species history" into history, philosophy, and literary theory.

Agrarianism, according to Paul B. Thompson, is an environmental philosophy focused on agri-culture and the nurturing of food, fuel, and fiber. Agrarianism hopes to reestablish our fundamental connection to the land, helping us approach a tenable understanding of sustainability. Thompson enlists Albert Borgmann’s notion of “focal practices” to discuss farming and the culture of the table. With this, comes a critique of “the device paradigm,” the modern technological way of life that (i) alienates us from quotidian beauty, lifecycles and seasonality, (...) and vital place-based insights embedded in focal practices and (ii) obscures how techno-industrial capitalism limits our opportunities for rich, intimate experiences with our biotic communities. In this paper, the author will outline the contours of Thompson’s agrarian philosophy in light of Borgmann’s focal practices, noting the enduring wisdom in this position. But the author will evoke Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the hegemonic techno-industrial order of things to conjure alternative conceptions of decolonial agrarian futures (that will not foreground bucolic settler-colonial farms). (shrink)

In light of the acquisitiveness, the imperialism, and social hierarchies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Dewey claims that a new psychology of human nature is required, and that education is the most effective and organized way to bring about this change. In this chapter McBride suggests that Dewey proffers insights into the ways in which impulses, habitual conduct, and social institutions condition and circumscribe the dominant mode of being human (and the ordering principles that enjoin the relations therein). (...) McBride maintains that these Deweyan insights may be helpful in changing the way we conceive human nature. While Dewey himself was not concerned with the reach and effect of Euroamerican techno-industrial coloniality, McBride believes that these particular Deweyan insights could potentially help us to conceive an education-based path toward a decolonial anthropos (human being). (shrink)

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for (...) a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women. (shrink)

As several scholars have argued, far from being antithetical to American values, the torture of nonwhite peoples has long been a method through which the United States has enforced (at home and abroad) a conception of what I will call “white moral citizenship." What is missing from this literature, however, is an exploration of the role that the erasure of torture, and the political and public narratives that are used to justify torture, plays in this function. -/- As I will (...) demonstrate in this article, the erasure of American torture takes at least three different but mutually reinforcing forms: erasure of the fact of torture, erasure of the experience of torture, and erasure of the victims of torture. Erasure of the fact of torture occurs when lack of education and public discussion creates widespread ignorance about the history of torture in America, as has occurred in relation to the post-9/11 torture program. Erasure of the experience of torture occurs when victims’ experiences of extreme suffering, and practices or institutions that inflict extreme suffering (such as solitary confinement), are not acknowledged as forms of torture. Erasure of the victims of torture occurs when victims are treated with indifference and even contempt, even when what they suffered is acknowledged to be torture, and their perspectives and experiences are dismissed, minimized, or ignored. -/- As I shall argue, both the use of the torture and the forms of erasure described above are essential components in the ongoing enforcement of the normative boundaries of American white moral citizenship and the myth of American exceptionalism and civilization. The repeating pattern of the use and erasure of torture leads to the ongoing toleration of practices that constitute torture and that overwhelmingly impact people of color. Until this pattern of justification and erasure is recognized and confronted, torture will continue to be embedded within American culture and institutions. (shrink)

Structures of oppression and administrative systems in white supremacist settler colonial societies rely on epistemological foundations to orient them toward their goals of containment and land dispossession. Structural gaslighting refers to the justifying stories and mythologies produced in these societies to normalize, obscure, and uphold structures of oppression. Such epistemic legwork often works by naturalizing socially produced inequalities through positing biological or cultural deficiencies in the target populations. This paper develops the concept of structural gaslighting introduced in Berenstain (2020) as (...) “any conceptual work that functions to obscure the non-accidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm that they produce and license” and explores its relationship to scientific and philosophical knowledge production. Case studies including historical and contemporary forms of scientific racism, philosophical justifications for ableist violence, and the link between disableization and dispossession for the purpose of settler colonial land theft are considered. (shrink)

El artículo actualiza y redescubre la figura controversial de Bartolomé de las Casas, el dominico rebelde, su relevancia educativa y filosófica en el tercer milenio y el futuro civilizatorio. La primera tesis es su modo sustancialmente moderno de educar signado en la afectividad por el otro, la argumentación racional y la agencia. La segunda tesis es educar en la catástrofe moderna de la conquista, las violencias y resistencias, con cierto uso de la lógica contrafáctica de la ucronía y las memorias, (...) como oportunidades para abordar lo contingente y necesario en la filosofía de la historia y la educación. La tercera tesis es el problema de la diferencia y del vivir-con-otros, tanto en la vida de Bartolomé como en los dilemas neolascasianos de crisis de la modernidad y el futuro civilizatorio de las ciencias, tecnologías y sociedades (CTS). (shrink)

Both Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani can be said to belong to the second generation of anti-colonial leaders in the wave of independence movements that characterized the second half of the twentieth century. In this essay I show that not only was there a significant overlap between their primary concerns, particularly revolving around the need for a theoretical analysis of the limitations of the leadership of the first wave of independence movements, but also, a convergence with respect to their understanding (...) of the importance of social analysis, and, more specifically, class analysis in the struggle for liberation from colonialism. In fact, one of the things that they wanted to point out when they claimed that the leaders of the first wave of independence movements did not develop an adequate ideology was that these leaders failed to understand the social structure of their own societies; in particular, they failed to understand that liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism was not in the interests of all members of the colonized societies and that appeals to an amorphous entity called “the people” were likely to backfire. In fact, both Cabral and Kanafani pointed out that there were some classes in their respective societies who benefitted from colonialism and who therefore could not be expected to support the struggle against it. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on an important problem in the intellectual history of the Global South, namely the relationship between modern scientific knowledge and colonialism. This problem was of concern to theorists from the Global South, such as Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, who were active during the high tide of decolonization in the middle of the twentieth century, and it continues to be of relevance today. This chapter shows how this problem has deep historical roots in the Global South, beginning (...) from at least the late eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century. This chapter focuses on two intellectuals, Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) from Egypt, and James Africanus Beale Horton (1835–1883) from Sierra Leone. Tahtawi and Horton, despite coming from societies with different histories, found themselves confronting similar problems having to do with their encounter with modern European societies. The main problem that they faced was how to make use of the elements of modern European societies that they admired, especially in relation to the social organization of knowledge production about nature, while rejecting European justifications for colonization. Both Horton and Tahtawi sought to de-associate modern scientific knowledge, which they obviously admired, from claims of racial superiority and justifications of despotic colonial rule. (shrink)

Digital immortality and transhumanist longevity proposals are currently researched and debated independently. This essay claims that both ideas represent two sides of the same cultural denial of death, reconceptualizing them as interconnected forms of thanato-colonialism. The first form includes the digital immortality industry, in both its passive and active versions. Interpreted from the framework of data colonialism, digital immortality represents a masterful maneuver, guaranteeing that the dead can continue to contribute to the extractive logic of this new economy by endlessly (...) generating data and serving as bait for the appropriation of human lives. In this way, data colonialism is no longer constrained by physical disappearance—transforming death itself into a profitable colonization strategy. The second kind of thanato-colonialism surfaces within the transhumanist imaginaries, which inherit the violence of historical colonialism and resort to the argument of progress to justify their ends. Nick Bostrom’s fable of the Dragon Tyrant allegorizes old age as a mythological beast, an archetype of the “other”—fundamentally different, threatening, and impossible to negotiate with—who must be subdued without contemplation. A team of engineers—humanity’s saviors—is tasked with slaying it. (shrink)

With the rising tide of scholarly and societal interest in the history and legacy of colonialism and slavery, this collection offers a much-needed diachronic analysis of the cultural representations of the lives and afterlives of those subjected to slavery and indenture. It focuses on the history of the ‘neerlandophone’ space, defined as the complex linguistic space spanning former Dutch colonies. This collection gives a longue durée overview, with cases from the early modern period to the present day, revealing the deep (...) roots of the colonial ‘cultural archive’. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines demonstrate how attention to the layered and polyphonic qualities of narratives can reveal silent and disruptive voices in colonial discourse, as well as collective emotions and imaginations that have hitherto remained unrecorded in historical sources. They discuss different aesthetic, poetic, and storytelling practices, including literature, archival and legal documents, performance, architecture, photography, and philosophy, formed both in the metropolis and by enslaved and indentured peoples in the colonies. [This is an open access book.]. (shrink)

The special issue you have in your hands arose from a somewhat peculiar premise: we preferred not to be very clear, beforehand, about what it was going to be about. It may seem a risky bet for a “thematic” issue, but the truth is that we only had a set of concerns related to the cultural imperative of monogamy that, on closer inspection, did not even seem to point in the same direction. We knew, for example, that we did not (...) want to focus on polyamorous relationships, open couples or free relationships, nor on ethical or political non-monogamy, consensual or non- consensual. Nor did we want to focus on the relational styles of swinger networks, kink sexualities or BDSM. Neither did we want to focus on the proposals of relationship anarchy. In the same way, we did not want to dedicate this issue to the legal life of monogamy, nor to the intimate relations between state, citizenship and mononormativity. We also decided not to limit our proposal to exploring the intersections - and tensions - that arise between resistance to monogamy and feminist, anti-racist or LGBTQIAPN+ struggles. Similarly, we did not feel it appropriate to devote this issue to something like the study of “non-monogamy” in Brazil, Abya Yala or the multiple souths of the planet, or to the possible coalitions between decolonisation and de-monogamisation of the world. It is true that we wanted to open up a space where we could talk about all of this, and other things. But, above all, we hoped that this issue would serve to raise a question that underlies these topics without ultimately being reduced to any of them. (shrink)

Ideal theory in social and political philosophy generally works to hide philosophical theories’ complicity in sustaining the structural violence and maintenance of white supremacy that are foundational to settler colonial societies. While non-ideal theory can provide a corrective to some of ideal theory’s intended omissions, it can also work to conceal the same systems of violence that ideal theory does, especially when framed primarily as a response to ideal theory. This article takes a decolonial approach to exploring the limitations of (...) non-ideal theory in its ability to respond to and redress the continuing harms done to Indigenous peoples by settler colonialism, including by outlining non-ideal theory’s relationship to a colonial politics of recognition. (shrink)

This chapter considers the fact that Benedict de Spinoza does not begin with the standard Enlightenment premise that all human beings are born free and equal. By maintaining that we are all born in bondage, Spinoza treats freedom as a fragile social accomplishment rather than an inalienable right. Nevertheless, by universalising bondage and considering right in terms of power, Spinoza’s philosophy offers avenues for claiming freedoms that differ from the standard model. This chapter concludes by reflecting on various interpretive efforts (...) to think with Spinoza about resistance to oppression, domination, and colonial slavery. (shrink)

In cases where structural oppression conditions the broader public sphere, the democratic ideal of a receptive public may be threatened by at least two possible outcomes which appear to undermine its stated goal of increasing understanding of counterhegemonic ideas amongst mainstream, oppressive groups. Either (a) counterhegemonic ideas are defanged to make them sufficiently palatable to a new audience, or (b) counterhegemonic ideas are taken up intact, and as a result the extant networks of publics which depend on oppressive structures and (...) hierarchies will be destroyed. As we will argue, in certain cases of colonialism such as the Straits Philosophical Society in colonial Singapore, the conditions which receptive publics are supposed to ameliorate: (i) the social costs of speech, (ii) inequality of epistemic labour, and (iii) the antagonism between groups, are not only an irreducible feature of counterhegemonic efforts, but are in fact increased in the attempt to maintain receptive publics. However, this may be more a feature than a bug: receptive publics need not be seen only as communicative intermediaries for oppressed groups, but as a possible dialectical step towards new modes of socio-material life. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the sustainability of employing Philosophy for Children (P4C) to address the ongoing ecological crises affecting Guam. I argue that although P4C aims to foster a more ecological form of living, its failure to cultivate contemplation and dialogue grounded in specific ecosystems renders it incapable of fostering generative and sustainable inquiry that pushes against the serializing forces of capitalism and colonialism. I further draw on Austronesian seafaring traditions and the works of Indigenous CHamorus to reconceptualize the (...) community of philosophical inquiry as a community of philosophical wayfinding. Within such a community, the participants navigate an ocean of harmful ideas in an empowering and sustainable manner by emphasizing the local mental, social, and environmental conditions of their inquiry. I begin by first motivating the question of P4C's ecological sustainability for Guam through the history of capitalism's and the Brown Tree Snake's co-colonization of CHamoru subjectivity. I specifically use Félix Guattari's The Three Ecologies to identify the semiotics of power through which capitalism pollutes CHamoru Ecology to further Americanize CHamoru existential cartographies. While P4C offers a potential pathway for creating new subjectivities, I argue that the community of philosophical inquiry's abstract nature turns it into a source of capitalist expansion on Guam. Finally, I draw from Austronesian seafaring and CHamoru ecopoetry to reimagine the community of philosophical inquiry as a more locally grounded and impactful practice, capable of addressing Guam's ecological crisis through the creation of invested subjectivities. (shrink)

Cis moves to innocence are rhetorical moves by which cisgender feminists falsely position their failure to engage with structures of transmisogyny as epistemically and morally virtuous. The notion derives from Tuck and Yang’s (2012) concept of settler moves to innocence and Mawhinney’s (1998) concept of white moves to innocence. This piece considers the case study of Manne’s (2017) work, in which she purports to offer a unified account of misogyny while explicitly refusing to consider transmisogyny. The justification she provides is (...) that she lacks the “requisite authority to do so.” I identify three functions of Manne’s cis move to innocence: i) to allow her to appear to be in solidarity with trans women and transfeminine people without taking on any of the obligations that requires, ii) to structurally reproduce the epistemic exploitation of trans women and transfeminine people, and iii) to reduce the obligations of allies to affect rather than action. (shrink)

The author shows how phenomenologists from Edmund Husserl to Edith Stein are indebted to Samkhya. He reiterates the case for Bhagavan Buddha, the Sakya Muni, for being a Samkhya Yogi. The editor specially commissioned this essay from the author.

The Qing dynasty scholar Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) has received little recognition in the English-speaking world, and even less in the philosophical community. Raised to be a Ruist (or Confucian) scholar official, he gave up this path to pursue the study of the “new learning” (xīnxué 新學) from the West and became enamored with German aesthetic philosophy, especially the works of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. However, by the start of the modern Republic period in China, Wang had denounced all (...) his previous research interests and dedicated himself to “old learning” (jiùxué 舊學), fearing for the future of China’s traditions and cultures. Taking Wang Guowei as a case study, my dissertation functions as an exercise in decolonial philosophy, highlighting the impacts of coloniality on his thinking while attempting to revitalize his theories from the perspective of decoloniality. -/- The Introduction sets up this case study by clarifying the points laid out in the title: Who is Wang Guowei, what is coloniality, and why is this case study “philosophical?” To begin, it details the specifics of Wang’s life and explaining his approach to comparative thinking, which became a target of criticism for later Chinese thinkers, including Qian Zhongshu. Next, it offers an overview of the concept of coloniality, referring to thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Maria Lugones, Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado-Torres. From this point, this chapter moves into the literature on colonialism in China, emphasizing Anne Reinhart’s understanding of China’s situation as one of “semi-colonialism.” To end, it briefly outlines the earliest and latest periods of Wang’s life, in order to bookend my own discussion, which focuses on the period after he became invested in new learning and before he abandoned it for old learning. -/- Part I centers on Wang’s philosophical essays, all of which were published in the journal Education World between 1903 and 1908. Chapter 1 focuses on Wang’s earliest writings on “philosophy” (zhéxué 哲學), wherein he aims to properly introduce this imported discipline to his peers and make them aware of its value. Chapter 2 concentrates on the earliest of Wang’s major philosophical influences: Kant and Schopenhauer. Although Wang was attracted to Kant’s demarcation of the limits of reason, he could not accept his reimagining of the demands of reason as regulative principles. And while he sympathized with Schopenhauer’s criticisms of Kantian philosophy, he eventually came to regard metaphysical pessimism and the will to life as flawed theories. Chapter 3 deals with the two thinkers who shaped Wang’s views the most in his later philosophical essays: Nietzsche and Schiller. After rejecting Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, Wang came under the influence of Nietzsche and adopted a psychophysiological worldview. However, even though he accepted Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power, he could not accept Nietzsche’s view of overcoming. For Wang, consolation is all we can hope for in this life, and the best means to attain it is through the creation and appreciation of art, which prompts him to look to Schiller and his doctrine of aesthetic education. -/- Part II revolves around Wang’s mature aesthetic writings, specifically his Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World (1908–1909), a work in the “remarks on lyrics” (cíhuà 詞話) genre of literary criticism, which he published just before the Qing dynasty fell in 1911. Under the influence of decoloniality, Chapter 4 examines this work through the lens of praxis, highlighting the specifics of the traditional “remarks on lyrics” genre. After discussing the unique praxical features of this work, Chapter 5 analyzes it through the lens of theory, discussing its most significant ideas, such as its reimagining of the beautiful and the sublime, and the concept of “poetic worlds” (jìngjiè 境界). -/- The Conclusion examines everything discussed in Chapters 1 through 5 from the perspective of coloniality. It begins by determining how, and to what extent, colonial modernity impacted Wang’s thinking, in terms of both theory and praxis. It then provides some ways in which Wang’s theories and practices can contribute to the development of intellectual “worlds otherwise.” Beyond this, it aims to demonstrate how investigating the scholarly endeavors of non-Western thinkers caught in confluence of tradition and modernity can give us glimpses of alternatives to our modern intellectual and ontological modalities, thereby furthering the movement of decoloniality. (shrink)

Losurdo analyzes the debate which took place in 1954 between Galvano Della Volpe and Palmiro Togliatti (the General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party) over the relationship between Marxism and liberalism. Della Volpe championed the standard position that liberalism enshrined formal (negative) freedom which Marxism seeks to preserve while also extending social rights (or positive freedom). Togliatti recognized the main problem with this view: the majority of people who lived under the rule of states which purportedly adhered to Western liberalism (...) were colonized peoples who did not share in the experience of exasperation with the merely formal nature of bourgeois negative freedom, because it was never extended to them in the first place (pp. 94–95)! In a sense, we can say that the problem with Marxism in its Eurocentric form is that it is too charitable towards liberalism. It attributes to liberalism achievements that it is innocent of (p. 216). Losurdo remarks on the irony of the date of this debate, for 1954 was the year of the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ when the Việt Minh forces defeated the French in a war of independence which was fought, at least partly, in the name of the formal bourgeois freedom which Western liberal states had, according to Della Volpe and other Western Marxists, already actualized in the world. (shrink)

The failure to effectively confront major challenges facing humanity, most importantly, the global ecological crisis, it is argued, is due to the failure of those analysing the root causes of these challenges to engage with and invoke political philosophy to find a way out, and concomitantly, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics actually operative in the current world-order. It is claimed that this is due to a tacit acceptance (...) of a cultural dualism manifest in the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, with the humanities having been marginalized by the sciences. To overcome this dualism and marginalization of the humanities, and to defend communitarian ethical and political philosophy in a way that both challenges mainstream thinking and engages with the world as it is, with the potential to inspire and orient people for effective action, it is shown how communitarian ethical and political philosophy can be defended and developed through ecology incorporating the notion of ecopoiesis. It is shown how this can serve to create an effective counter-hegemonic culture, integrated as a dialogic grand narrative, uniting and orienting people to create a multi-polar world-order as an ecological civilization. (shrink)

Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic has been of especially great interest to progressive and radical Hegelians—broadly speaking, politically left-leaning interpreters of Hegel who object to certain social hierarchies and demand their abolition. They read Hegel as giving an account of how ‘lordship’ over others is an inherently unstable and unsatisfying social formation, even for its supposed beneficiaries. Marxists, feminists and post-colonial theorists have all found inspiration in Hegel's analysis of the lord and bondsman by applying it to concrete relations of oppression, such (...) as capitalism, patriarchy, or racism. In contrast, recent scholarship on Hegel's views on race and colonialism has cast doubt on whether his systematic political philosophy and philosophy of history can be of similar use to progressives. Hegel was undeniably a Eurocentric thinker, but philosophers like Robert Bernasconi and Alison Stone have convincingly shown that he was also a racist and a defender of colonialism. Crucially, however, few of the scholars who write on Hegel's pro-colonialism have analysed this feature of Hegel's thought in connection with the lord-bondsman dialectic. In this article, I argue for two connected theses. First, I argue that contrary to the hopes of some progressive defenders of Hegel, we cannot easily separate the lord-bondsman dialectic from Hegel's pro-colonialism. This is because Hegel himself appealed to the lord-bondsman dialectic to argue that colonial slavery educated its victims, and could therefore be temporarily justified. Second, I argue that this pro-colonial reading of the dialectic, though largely ignored by contemporary interpreters, was in fact recognized and embraced by a group of Hegelians in North America known as the St Louis Hegelians. They used the lord-bondsman dialectic as a basis for a qualified defence of pre-Civil War American slavery. (shrink)

Cultural appropriation occurs when an individual from one culture uses another culture's ideas. Often the ideas relate to artifacts, clothes, food, and symbols. Frequently, critics of cultural appropriation claim that it is a type of theft. The critics also claim that it disrespects minorities and also is similar to or involves colonialism. In this paper, we argue that it is neither wrong nor bad to culturally appropriate. It is not wrong because no one owns cultural symbols, not all cultural appropriation (...) involves insult or ridicule, and it is unclear what makes something an instance of cultural appropriation. It is often not bad because a free market in cultural goods frequently maximizes the good. (shrink)

The European tradition makes a sharp distinction between animism and science. On the basis of this distinction, either animism is reproved for failing to reach the heights of science, or science is reproved for failing to reach the heights of animism. In this essay, I draw on work in the history and philosophy and science, combined with a method from the sociology of scientific knowledge, to question the sharpness of this distinction. Along the way, I also take guidance from the (...) research of North American Indigenous scholars. As it turns out, there is a rich, if largely overlooked, tradition of Aristotelian animism running through the history of modern European science, and this tradition sometimes resonates with Indigenous perspectives. By challenging the entrenched distinction between animism and science, I aim to help reconcile ongoing tensions between Indigenous and European scientific groups, and so strengthen prospects for their mutually beneficial cooperation. (shrink)

As the normative literature on immigration has matured over the last twenty plus years, it’s become increasingly hard to make interesting, plausible, and original claims. Most issues have been discussed, and most plausible positions staked out. Valeria Ottonelli and Tiziana Torresi’s book is, then, a pleasant surprise. In a brisk 173 pages they make important tech- nical contributions and argue for an insightful approach to thinking about some problems relating to migration. I will suggest worries about both their conclusions and (...) the approach, but anyone interested in normative migration theory should read the book. (shrink)

The development and deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence (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. (shrink)

This paper examines whether, and how, Foucauldian genealogy travels to contexts and problematizations beyond the method's European site of articulation. Our particular focus is on the work of Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez, whose work includes both a systematic defense of the usefulness of Foucauldian inquiry for decolonial study and genealogical inquiry in a Foucauldian spirit but in a context beyond Foucault's own horizon of study. We show that taking up Foucault's work in the context of Latin America leads Castro-Gómez to (...) significantly change Foucauldian concepts, categories, and methods. We further survey the potential synergies of decolonial thought and Foucauldian critique, while also highlighting how their joint mobilization requires a revision and problematization of key commitments of both approaches. (shrink)

Anchored in a decolonial framework, we understand race and gender as co-constructions of colonial modernity. Drawing on María Lugones’ concept of the colonial/modern gender system, we show that non-normative racialized trans subjects are pathologized through the imposition of a racial-colonial system of binary gender. We argue that coloniality, when adopted into the medical-psychiatric apparatus, takes shape as transnormativity: an individualized, medicalized form of trans identity which is rooted in a white, Western understanding of gender. Building on Jasbir Puar’s framework of (...) homonationalism and trans(homo)nationalism, and critiques of assimilationist queer politics through the lens of racial capitalism and anti-imperialism, we argue that trans(homo)nationalism is the absorption of transnormativity into the broader operations of state power, and see transnormativity as an extension of coloniality, operating as neo-colonialism. We argue that the political implications of trans(homo)nationalism include the sanctioning of violence against and the marginalization of non-normative and racialized trans subjects, and the continued imposition of a regime of racialized normative gendering. This assimilationist nationalist agenda is funneled through the for-profit medical-psychiatric apparatus wherein transition is co-opted into a curative, progress-based temporality. Looking to theorizations of trans temporality, we critique notions of linearity and futurity insofar as they bolster the deployment of racist, nationalist, imperialist state agendas. We articulate a vision for futurity grounded in a trans of color framework which resists assimilation into normativized gender, and call for truly radical futures for trans people which resist medicalized forms of trans identity which subscribe to the colonial, white, Western ideals of gender. (shrink)

This paper addresses the phenomenological experience of precarity and vulnerability in racialized gender-based violence from a structural perspective. Informed by Indigenous social theory and anti-colonial approaches to intergenerational trauma that link settler colonial violence to the modalities of stress-inducing social, institutional, and cultural violences in marginalized women’s lives, I argue that philosophical failures to understand trauma as a functional, organizational tool of settler colonial violence amplify the impact of traumatic experience on specific populations. It is trauma by design. I explore (...) this through the history of the concept of trauma and its connection to tragedy. I give a brief overview of prominent theories of trauma and contrast these with the work of Indigenous feminist scholar Dian Million (2013), who highlights functional complicity of settler colonial institutions in shaping accounts of trauma in the west. I begin the piece with an important illustration of the kinds of lives and experiences that call for a politicized understanding of trauma in anti-colonial feminist theory. I end by offering an expansive notion of structural trauma that is a methodological pivot for conducting trauma-based gender-based violence research in a decolonial context, which calls for an end to narratives of trauma that are severed from the settler colonial project of Native land dispossession and genocide. [Volume 23, no.1]. (shrink)

Enduring social inequalities in settler colonial societies are not an accident. They are produced and maintained by the self-repairing structural features and dynastic character of systemic racism and its intersecting oppressions. Using methods from diverse anticolonial liberation movements and systems theory, Structural Violence theorizes the existence of adaptive and self-replicating historical formations that underwrite cultures of violence in settler colonial societies. Corresponding epistemic forces tied to profit and wealth accumulation for beneficiary groups often go untracked. The account offered here argues (...) that these epistemic forces play a central role in producing and maintaining massive health inequalities and the maldistribution of disease burdens―including those associated with sexual violence―for marginalized populations. It upends the widespread view that structural racism can be dismantled without addressing gendered violence. It also advocates for a theory of change rooted in reparative action and models of structural competency that respond to the built-in design of structural violence and the ecosystems of impunity that allow it to thrive. (shrink)

Political philosophy has long treated the nation-state as the starting point for normative inquiry, while paying little attention to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. But given how most modern states emerged, normative discussions about migration, for example, need to engage with the colonial and imperial history of state immigration controls, citizenship practices, and the nation-state more generally. This article critically reviews three historical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, and Nandita Sharma that engage in depth with this history. (...) The studies historicize concepts that are central to discussions in political philosophy: the categories of citizen and migrant, the concept of ‘nationality,’ and the principle of self-determination. I argue that this historicized form of conceptual analysis helps us challenge the default authority of concepts that are deeply embedded in the political structures that we inhabit. (shrink)

In The Problematics of Enlightenment: Human Reason, North African Philosophy, and the Global South , Mourad Wahba explores the relevance of the philosophy of the Enlightenment to contemporary issues in Egypt and the Global South more generally. Wahba provides a historical account of the reception of Enlightenment philosophical discourse in the Arabic-speaking world through the study of the work of Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi, Muhammed Abdu, Farah Antun, Abbas Mahmoud al-ʿAqqad, and Louis Awad. Wahba argues that the claim that human reason is (...) the ultimate source of justification—trumping the authority of inherited social institutions and the claims of historical revelation—is a universalizable principle whose actualization would make progress possible in Egypt and elsewhere. This book, translated by Zeyad el Nabolsy, provides Anglophone readers access to a philosophy from the Global South that does not take the alleged Eurocentrism of Enlightenment philosophies as its central problematic. Moreover, Wahba is concerned with situating the problems that emerge in the context of contemporary Arabophone North African philosophy in the larger context of African philosophy, including engagement with the work of Senghor and Nkrumah. (shrink)

I argue that if we claim colonialism is per se wrong, then we face a dilemma that stems from the fact that many states today are a result of past colonialism. We believe that postcolonial states have a right to self-determination such that it is wrong to colonize them. But this entails that there is a process that can turn a colonial state into a rightful state, and so we admit that there is a way to carry out colonialism that (...) is not wrongful. To avoid this conclusion, we must accept that the wrongness of colonialism has been superseded or remedied. These options either entail instrumentalism, which admits that colonialism is not per se wrong, or they are implausible. (shrink)

Cosmopolitanism – the view that moral concern, and consequently moral duties, are not limited by borders – seems to justify colonialism with a ‘civilizing’ mission, because it supports the enforcement of moral norms universally, with no distinctions between territories, and settler colonialism, because it promotes ideas like common ownership of the Earth and open borders. I argue that existing attempts to defend cosmopolitanism from this worry fail, and that instead the cosmopolitan should embrace a cosmopolitan instrumentalist defence. According to cosmopolitan (...) instrumentalism, colonialism is wrong (when it is wrong) for instrumental reasons: it has all sorts of terrible effects. There is nothing per se wrong with colonialism itself, so cosmopolitanism need not worry about licencing it in principle. There is much that is wrong with colonialism in practice, so cosmopolitanism can easily condemn colonialism as egregiously wrong, although it cannot condemn it as per se or necessarily wrong. (shrink)

Much of how sexual violence against Black lesbian women in South Africa comes to be understood is through narratives that position them as perpetual victims, as women without agency, and as disembodied beings. Their lived experiences and voices become lost in this narrative of violence. However, a counter-narrative has emerged in South Africa, particularly through visual activism. Such activism plays an important role in recognising the lived experiences of queer South African individuals, creating awareness of issues affecting queer communities, and (...) giving voice to those who are often silenced by hegemonic narratives and discourses. Although research has and continues to be done related to visual activism, this article aims to explore the ways in which visual activism contributes to a feminist standpoint that is specifically South African and begins from the voices of those who are most marginalised. Such a standpoint has the possibility of illuminating heteropatriarchal systems of power that contribute to the oppression of and violence towards Black lesbian women, queer individuals, and women more generally. In this article, I argue that a standpoint that incorporates the voices of Black lesbian women, particularly as they emerge through visual activism, is useful for understanding knowledge of violence in South Africa and for challenging dominant ideologies and systems of power. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the Guam Department of Education's (GDOE) decolonization efforts and the potential role of Philosophy for Children (P4C) as a strategic tool for its advancement. I begin with a discussion of Guam's colonial context and its implications for contemporary education on the island. While the GDOE's current attempts to decolonize Guam's public education emphasize the need for an "official body of knowledge," many CHamoru scholars and activists have argued that it is not enough. This paper agrees (...) that such content-based reforms are insufficient and advocates for a more nuanced approach to education through P4C. Drawing on the P4C literature and decolonial education, I argue that while P4C alone may not bring about structural change, its pedagogical framework offers a promising alternative when adapted to indigenous contexts. The paper proposes that P4C can serve as a "Trojan Horse" within public schools, fostering decolonial acts of resurgence by elevating indigenous knowledge, welcoming indigenous masters, and empowering CHamoru students within a Westernized educational setting. (shrink)

I argue that the temporality of colonialism is a disabling duration. To elaborate, I focus on a site in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks where disability/debility and racism intertwine – Fanon’s refusal of “amputation” in his experience of cinema. While such disability metaphors have been problematized as ableist, I argue that amputation is more than a metaphor of lack. It extends what racializing debilitation means and makes tangible the prosthetics that colonialism imposes and the phantoms and affects of colonized (...) life that it attempts to sever. Engaging with disability studies, especially Black and anticolonial theories, I articulate racism and (dis)ability as more than parallel or analogy and conceptualize a debilitating colonial duration, as instanced in our pandemic time. By reconfiguring the possibilities foreclosed through colonialism, I ask what routes there may be to make colonial duration hesitate and destabilize its inevitability, while dwelling with its wounds and ruptures. (shrink)