WAI Think Tank on Decolonization is not a Metaphor
24 June, 2021
Decolonization is not a Metaphor questions decolonization discourses without action, settler-moves to innocence, and problematizes how the ‘decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people’, can be entangled in ‘resettlement, reoccupation, and re-inhabitation that further settler colonialism.’ As decolonization can only start by relinquishing the occupied land, the authors argue that the metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or settler moves to innocence, that ‘problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity.’ Tuck and Yang engage with common academic and scholar practices while also focusing on iconic works by Freire, Fanon, and others, that may be replaced for decolonization in other spheres than land relations.