This video series will give insight into postcolonial dynamics of peace and conflict in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The episodes will feature interviews with researchers investigating regional topics and actors from the respective fields. As research in the Postcolonial Hierarchies Network progresses, the videos will furthermore present findings on the themes of dynamics of violence, security governance and peace consolidation, and transformative justice.
Selbi Durdiyeva
02:15 Postcolonial Melancholia: coined by British sociologist Paul Gilroy to describe a society mourning the loss of its colonies.
02:26 Melancholia: described by Sigmund Freud as someone not being able to fully process a loss.
03:13 Destructive Drives: refer to Freud’s theory of the Death Drive, an unconscious drive towards self-destruction and dissolution.
03:55 Chosen Glory: by Vamik Volkan & Jana Javakhishvili (2022), referring to a shared feeling of triumph among large-group members, whose events and heroic persons become mythologized and create a sense of group identity.
04:58 Article by Selbi Durdiyeva (2025): “The shadow of the object fell upon the ego:” colonial melancholia, reading Freud through Fanon’s sociogeny, and implicit memory.
05:00 Sociogeny: coined by Frantz Fanon to describe how the individual psychic condition is predetermined by social, cultural and political climate.
Jie-Hyun Lim
06:54 Postcolonial Memories: refers to an extensive field that encompasses the (differentiated) memory of colonial pasts and conflicts in East Asian countries.
07:21 Victimhood Nationalism: concept coined by Jie-Hyun Lim to understand nationalism and its political instrumentalization of suffering.
08:41 Nationalism Metamorphosis: explained by Jie-Hyun Lim as the transformation that nationalism undergoes, from a narrative of heroism to one of victimhood.
09:22 A-bombed victims, victimised in the POW (Prisoners of War) camps in Siberia, repatriation of Japanese civilians in Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula in the aftermath of the second World War
09:40 Vertriebene is the German term for displaced people and refers to the displacement of German speaking populations during and after World War II.
Siddharth Tripathi
11:24 The Global South: as a postcolonial political project and a political identity to challenge old colonial hierarchies and imagining new ways of world order.
12:13 India as a nation claiming to lead the Global South as seen with the G20 presidency.
See article by Siddharth Tripathi (2024): India’s Diplomatic Strategies and Foreign Policy: Decoding the “Saffron” Elephant.
Teresa Jopson
17:56 Epistemic Violence: coined by Gayatri Spivak (1998) to analyse and critique dominant epistemic infrastructures , which highlight particular ways of knowing while silencing others. See entry by Claudia Brunner (2023).
18:00 Pluriversality: the plural ways of knowing and being that connect people to one another. See entry by Garrett Fitzgerald (2024): Pluriversal Peacebuilding.
See article by Teresa Lorena Jopson (2023): Moro Women’s Participation and Legitimation in the Bangsamoro Peace Process.
Manuela Boatcă
01:35 Coloniality: see Tag ‘Coloniality’
03:03 Transatlantic trade in enslaved people: see Project Slave Voyages
05:25 France sells Louisiana (a much larger territory than today’s Louisiana) to the US in 1803 (source).
Betty Ruth Lozano
07:50 Abya Yala (land of fertile blood) originates from the Kuna people indigenous to Panama and Colombia and refers to the Americas (source).
07:58 Aníbal Quijano: Peruvian sociologist. He coined the notion of Coloniality of Power
08:39 Modernity: coloniality and modernity as two sides of the same coin: See for example Walter Mignolo (Argentinian Semiotician).
08:54 Othering/Other: for a reflection on the construction of the Other, see for example Stuart Hall on the West/Rest-Dichotomy, or Edward Said on Orientalism.
10:30 Police violence in Brazil; See entry on Systems of Conflictivity by Andréa Gill
Diana Ojeda
14:57 Vivir sabroso: An Afro-Colombian community philosophy.
15:11 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: Bolivian sociologist and activist.
17:43 Desalambrar: a Spanish word meaning ‘to unfence’, or ‘to tear down the fences’. It is mostly used in the context of struggles for land ownership and the idea of social movements and communities taking back the land.
18:50 Community Feminisms:
19:10 Beatriz do Nascimento: Afro-Brazilian academic and activist.
20:17 Thinkers of peace
20:54 Colombian peace movements
Delmy Tania Cruz Hernández
24:11 Body-land-territory.
Karina Bidaseca
28:00 Améfrica Ladina, concept coined by Lélia Gonzalez (Brazilian anthropologist and feminist activist)
29:00 Crisis of the Orthodox Consensus – Anthony Giddens (British sociologist).
29:28 Subaltern Studies Group
29:40 Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (Bolivian sociologist and activist) and Rossana Barragán (Bolivian historian)
29:57 A Subaltern Studies Reader edited by Ranajit Guha (Indian historian).
30:22 The Subaltern: originally coined by Antonio Gramsci. The concept has been used in various contexts to refer to the most oppressed people in various societies.
30:44 The postcolonial movement and its founding scholars:
31:27 Concepts of “the other” (see 08:54) and “the nation”
31:40 The Manifest of the Subaltern Studies Group
31:51 Aníbal Quijano (see 07:58)
32:17 María Lugones (Argentinian Feminist philosopher) – The Coloniality of Gender
33:00 Decolonial and Anti-Racist Feminism
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