Cultural decolonization is a process that is not only about objects and artifacts and, therefore, specific choices of museums and cultural institutes, but refers to a change of political perspective that questions the hierarchies between cultures, thus cultural coloniality, according to the category elaborated by scholar Anibal Quijano.
It is this gaze to be radically changed that I would like to focus on here. In this sense, cultural decolonization means acting on two fundamental fronts. On the one hand, it requires recognizing the partiality of knowledge productions, particularly in the sociopolitical and philosophical fields, criticizing self-defined claims to universality. In other words, for example, there is not Philosophy and then indigenous philosophy or Sociology and then the sociology of developing countries, but there are the different philosophical or sociological propositions that contribute to a necessarily plural knowledge-world. On the other hand, it is an action oriented toward questioning the relations of power that, throughout modernity, have separated cultural forms worthy of recognition and, therefore, of intrinsic value from cultural forms devoid of value and, therefore, erasable even by force and violence. This separation has been constructed, in particular, through military, and consequently economic, conquests and related processes of colonization.
Practical recognition of this cultural imperialism, which has gone hand in hand with economic-military imperialism, can facilitate the building of alliances between actors fueling decolonization processes in former or current colonies and those working to sustain the critique of colonization in former or still dominant territories by acting for a break with imperialist and supremacist relations and ideologies.
The challenge is great, it subjects the entire ideological purview of modernity to critique, but it is necessary if it is to contribute not only to repairing the violence-including epistemic violence-of the long colonial history, but also to building a world free of neo-imperialist tendencies. These tendencies have been reinforced in recent years, both by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the intensification of the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories: two politico-military thrusts that go beyond the specific territories concerned, but with global consequences. However, these tendencies have found affirmative alternatives in their way, active also on the level of defining collective memory, as shown, for example, by the mobilizations in different parts of the world aimed at tearing down the statues of those who were the colonizers, claiming the need to stop glorifying their actions and the systemic violence to which they contributed.
The process of cultural decolonization is a still-moving field of political tension, the direction of which is, however, very clear. It registers the fact that, as explained by Achille Mbembe in his book “Critique of Negro Reason,” “Europe is no longer the center of gravity of the world,” and, as a result, the cultural hierarchies built within colonization and imperialism are no longer consistent with the new system-world under construction. The actors engaged in this conflictual process are, therefore, already moving into the future, helping to construct an alternative that not only proposes a reparation of colonial brutalities, but also defines a common destiny based on the plurality of cultural forms.
This contribution was originally published in No. 23 of our print magazine Finestre Sull’Arte on paper. Click here to subscribe.
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.