decolonisation Archives - Rewriting peace and conflict

Decolonial Solidarity

This entry sheds light on the concept and practice of decolonial solidarity. Drawn from Indigenous theory, settler colonial theory and critical race theory, decolonial solidarity interrogates the involvement of dominant, privileged actors who attempt to act ‘in solidarity’ with oppressed, colonised and marginalised groups. This entry first outlines the contradictions and problems that emerge from solidarity across power asymmetries. It then shows that through a process of decolonising solidarity, both in the actions of activists and through a political and ethical commitment to challenge structures of domination, it may be possible to engage in effective solidarity.

Systems of Conflictivity

Beyond the state-centric categories of war/peace, the ongoing genocide against Indigenous and African-descendent populations on the continent which Lélia Gonzalez renamed ‘Améfrica Ladina’ – recognised neither as a civil war nor as an international conflict – calls for methods of analysis which respond to what and whom has been excluded from the debate as a condition of possibility for its reproduction. By means of transnational and diasporic perspectives – which neither begin nor end at state borders and limits, nor rely on universal or particular/relative decrees – it effectively repositions inherited Eurocentric categories for thinking about violence towards instead relational accounts of systems of conflictivity.

Transitional Justice and Decolonisation

This entry outlines the key debates with respect to transitional justice (TJ), a range of processes that a society may undertake to reckon with the legacies of gross and large-scale violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the past. Although the literature on transitional justice and postcolonialism is emerging, this entry explains why transitional justice might not sufficiently address the complex issue of decolonisation. The entry argues that true decolonisation requires a more radical approach to the future of the field. Transitional justice should not only engage more with genealogies of decolonial thinking; it also needs to be decolonised in itself.