Walia Undoing Border Imperialism Selection and Secured Borders Book Paper this is the link for the book undoing border by waliahttps://www.tampabaydsa.org/
Walia Undoing Border Imperialism Selection and Secured Borders Book Paper this is the link for the book undoing border by waliahttps://www.tampabaydsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Walia-Undoing-Border-Imperialism-selection.pdfand I attached below the other article. please make sure to answer the question and think of how Walia and torress argue how we can undo the border. Prompt: What is border imperialism (Walia) and how does Walia and MaldonadoTorres argue we undo it? This paper is not to be a summary of the book
and/or article, but rather an opportunity for you to explain a key connection
that you see in both texts Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Rutgers University and University of South Africa
For: Critical Transitions: Genealogies and Trajectories of Change. Ed. Marc Botha and Patricia
Waugh. Bloomsbury Press.
Decolonization
In her brief but widespread account of decolonization, M. E. Chamberlain notes that
decolonization is commonly understood to mean the process by which the peoples of the Third
World gained their independence from their colonial rulers (Chamberlain 1985, 1). In contrast
to those in the former colonies who worry that decolonization can be taken to imply that the
initiatives for decolonization
were taken by the metropolitan powers and who prefer the
concept of liberation instead, Chamberlain poses that a historian must try to hold the balance
between the examination of the policies of the colonial powers and the ideas and initiatives
which came from the colonized (1). She also argues that historians should view the problem in
a longer perspective, which means, apparently different from the non-historian decolonial
activist and liberationist, tracing the roots of the movements of decolonization that took place
between 1947 and 1965 (1).
Chamberlains call for balance and for a longer perspective are apt, however, very
obvious limits appear in her study when one considers that: a) European empires remain her
main unit of analysis, b) that most of the book focuses on the British Empire, and c) that while
the longer perspective that she invokes goes back to at least the expansion of the first maritime
empires in the late fifteenth century, the vast Spanish and Portuguese empires are only mention
briefly and mainly in a chapter entitled The Empires of the Smaller European Powers.
Therefore, the text offers no serious consideration of the ways in which doctrines of discovery
as well as previous expeditions and conflicts played a role in the transformation of the forms of
conquest and colonization that emerged with the shift from the centrality of the Mediterranean to
that of the Atlantic Ocean in European history and commerce, and with the formation of a New
World. This longer perspective is crucial to understand colonization and decolonization,
especially as colonized and formerly colonized groups tend to experience parts of this history,
not as some past that exists as a trace, but as a living present. This transformation of time itself,
from chronological historical time to what seems like a form of anachronic temporality whereby
groups are exposed to logics and conditions that are considered non-existent anymore, is part of
the legacies of colonization and a key target of critique in decolonization efforts. This is how the
perspective of the decolonial activist becomes indispensable to any intellectual effort, including
that of historian, which is also why one cannot be satisfied with the relation that Chamberlain
poses between liberation and decolonization or between historical enquiry and activism.
Taking the lead from Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth (2004), I here take
decolonization as a concept that is fundamentally aligned with the concept of liberation, at least
in the ways that it has been used by movements that oppose colonization. Liberation expresses
the desires of the colonized who wish, not to reach maturity and become emancipated like
Enlightened Europeans who denounce traditionnot that this is the only way to conceive of
emancipation, but to organize and obtain their freedom. A typical goal of these efforts has
been either political or economic independence. Independence, however, does not necessarily
entail decolonization, as there are colonial logics and representations that can continue existing
even after the climax of specific liberation movements and the achievement of independence. In
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this context, the concept of decolonization offers two key reminders: first, it keeps colonization
and its various dimensions clear in the horizon of struggle, and second, it serves as a constant
reminder that the logic and the legacies of colonialism can continue existing even after the end of
formal colonization and the achievement or lack of political or economic independence. This is
why the concept of decolonization still plays an important in various forms of intellectual work,
activism, and art today.
I will here try to address some of these problems and offer a view of decolonization that
strongly considers the significance of the condition of colonization and the agency of the
colonized. This will involve a serious engagement with the longer perspective that
Chamberlain invokes, which is one that has been part and parcel of many a liberation struggle,
but also an effort to consider it through theoretical lenses produced by thinkers from the former
and current colonized world, a number of who were or are also activists and artists. Theoretical
insight offers two important contributions, among others. First, it helps counter the flattening of
temporality that is part of doctrines that are still part and parcel of the European sciences:
historicism, empiricism, and positivism. Historicism, empiricism, and positivism tend to
approach knowledge as the sum of data that is observed, quantified, and analyzed. Data has been
the predominant way of referring to potential objects of knowledge as they appear in a field of
linear temporality, which makes it extremely difficult to explore phenomena that reflects or is
found at the intersection of temporalities. From this point of view, colonization and
decolonization are the sum of the visible and/or quantifiable events that take place within a
certain time period, both of which fundamentally belong at this point to the past. Decolonization
as a living struggle in the midst of competing views and modes of experiencing time, space and
other basic coordinates of human subjectivity and sociality, needs a different approach.
Decolonial theorizing, as I will approach it here, critically reflects about our common
sense and scientific presumptions regarding time, space, knowledge, and subjectivity, among
other key areas of human experience, allowing us to identify and accounting for the ways in
which colonized subjects experience colonization, while also providing conceptual tools to
advance decolonization. This simultaneous critical and constructive engagement is a second
fundamental contribution and a key function of decolonial thinking and theorizing. More
specifically, decolonial thinking and theorizing call for a robust critical engagement with theories
of modernity, which also tend to serve as epistemological frames in the European humanities and
social sciences. The time/space of decolonization does not take place within Western modernity;
it rather enacts a rupture with modernity. From a modern perspective, however, decolonization is
often depicted as the attempt to return to the past or as an effort in receding to pre-modern social
and cultural formations. And so, I will start here with an effort in clarifying the relationship
between modernity and colonization.
Western Modern Civilization as Modernity/Coloniality
Western modernity is commonly understood as the epoch of the highest form of
civilization in comparison to which other socio-cultural, political, and economic arrangements
appear as less civilized, not-civilized, savage or primitive. Rejection of the theses of a hierarchy
of cultures and of the superiority of Western modernity may be necessary, but is by no means
sufficient to challenge the basis of an international order and of institutions that have this kind of
colonizing logic and ethos. The reason for this is that the meaning and structure of modern
Western institutions, practices, and symbolic representations already presuppose concepts of
progress, sovereignty, society, subjectivity, gender, and reason, among many other key ideas that
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have been defined with the presupposition of a fundamental distinction between the modern and
the savage or primitive, whether hierarchically understood or not. And like this, there are
multiple other ways in which the concept of civilization and of modernity have been defined
through dichotomies and essentialistic definitions. It is therefore necessary to critically reflect on
the entanglement of markers of civilization with ideas that posit other people as primitive or
savages, and on the ways in which Western modernity always already presuppose colonial
definitions and distinctions of this nature.
Typically, the European Enlightenment is considered to be the main, and sometimes the
only, relevant historical period for the understanding of the modern Western idea(l) of
civilization. This is why analyses of modern colonialism tend to focus on eighteenth and
nineteenth century empires and nation-state formations that played a major role in that process,
namely, England and France. However, as Brett Bowden (2009) demonstrates, key to the
establishment of the the standard of civilization that was characteristic of all the modern
European empires went back to the discovery of the New World and the conquest of the
Americas.
The discovery had multiple profound implications as well as a major impact on the
notion of being civilized. As Bowden puts it: Once it was determined that the colonial world
lacked civilization and thus lacked sovereignty, it was almost inevitable that international law
would create for itself the grand redeeming project of bringing the marginalized into the realm
of sovereignty, civilizing the uncivilized and developing the juridical techniques and institutions
necessary for this great mission (Bowden 2009, 128). More specifically, The precedents and
laws established following contact by Europeans with the peoples of the New World would
thereafter inform the nature of subsequent European encounters with indigenous peoples around
the globe (Bowden, 2009, 131).
In order to substantiate his thesis, Bowden considers various judgments about the
discovery of the Americas. One of them is Tzvetan Todorovs idea that the discovery of
America, or of the Americans, is certainly the most astonishing encounter of our [European]
history. We do not have the same sense of radical difference in the discovery of other
continents and of other peoples (cited in Bowden 2009, 48; Todorov 1999, 4). English
intellectuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries themselves attested to the enormous
significance of the event. Bowden cites John Locke who stated that in the beginning all the
World was America (Bowden 2009, 48; Locke 1965 [1690], book 2, 343) and one can add
Adam Smith who argued that The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies
by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the
history of mankind (Smith 2005 [1776], 508). The impressions do not attenuate when one goes
closer to the moment of discovery. In 1551, Francisco López de Gómara asserts that The
greatest event since the creation of the world, save the Incarnation and death of Him who created
it, is the discovery of the Indies that are thus called the New World (López de Gómara 1979, 7,
translation mine).
Echoes of these views about the significance of the discovery of the Americas can be
found in the work of Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, who have proposed that The impacts
of the meeting of Old and New World human populations
may serve to mark the beginning of
the Anthropocene (Lewis and Maslin 2015, 175). The Anthropocene refers to the epoch of
world history when human beings become the main agents of geological change. A usual date for
the start of such a moment is the Industrial Revolution, but Lewis and Maslin reject it because,
like other historical moments proposed, it is not derived from a globally synchronous marker
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(177). After citing the various implications of The arrival of Europeans in the Caribbean in
1492 (174) and the massive changes that have occurred since then, they suggest naming the
dip in atmospheric CO2 the Orbis spike and the suite of changes marking 1610 as the beginning
of the Anthropocene the Orbis hypothesis, from the Latin for world, because post-1492 humans
on the two hemispheres were connected, trade became global, and some prominent social
scientists refer to this time as the beginning of the modern world-system (175). The
implications of these theses are clear for the authors. For them, The Orbis spike implies that
colonialism, global trade and coal brought about the Anthropocene (177).
These considerations support Jahn Beates claim that Against the deeply held beliefs of
(almost all) European scholars it is the discovery of the American Indian that triggered a
revolution in, or perhaps even the emergence of what would later become, the modern social
sciences (Beate 2000, 95). Jahn identifies three levels in which this revolution took place: the
epistemological, the ontological, and the ethical (Beate 2000, 95). These levels resonate with
basic dimensions of reality that have been identified by decolonial theorists, artists, and activists
as major columns of coloniality in the modern/world: knowledge, power, and being (see, for
example, Lander 2000; Maldonado-Torres 2007; Mignolo 2000; Quijano 1991 and 2000; Wynter
2003). The collective work of these and other authors lead one to consider that rather than
conceiving colonialism as something that happens in modernity along with some other historical
periods, it is more accurate to state that modernity itself, as a major revolution entangled with the
paradigm of discovery, became colonial in character. This leads to a shift in the way of
referring to Western modernity: from modernity simpliciter, as opposed to the pre-modern or
non-modern, to modernity/coloniality as opposed to what lies beyond modernity. It is this
beyond modernity, rather than simply independence that becomes the main goal of
decoloniality.
Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality
The shift in the understanding of modernity, discovery, colonialism, and decolonization
requires the definition of multiple ideas as part of an analytics of coloniality and decoloniality.
Also needed is a sense of the relationship between these ideas and at least a basic conceptual
architectonic that can serve as reference in the effort to advance decoloniality. Here I submit ten
theses that aim to contribute to this work.1
First thesis: Colonialism, decolonization and related concepts provoke anxiety
Western empires and modern nation-states have used multiple mechanisms to instill a
sense of security and legitimacy in its subjects and institutions. Colonialism, decolonization and
related concepts question the sense of legitimacy on which the modern citizen-subject, the
modern nation-state, and other modern institutions are built, thereby unsettling them. This
includes heroic accounts of the origins and purpose of modern institutions. In these accounts,
right is always on the side of the power that led to their formation. Indigenous territories are
presented as discovered, colonization is depicted as a vehicle of civilization, and slavery is
interpreted as a means to help the primitive and sub-human to become disciplined. Raising the
question about the meaning and significance of colonization challenges the usual meaning of
discovery and, with it, raises the question of the problematic character of the appropriation of
lands and resources and their implications up to this day. It also challenges the legitimacy of
state boundaries and the respectability of every normative concept and practice through which
1
A short version of these theses appear in the website of the Frantz Fanon Foundation.
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modern citizens and institutions justify the modern/colonial order, including normative sense of
race, gender, class, and sexuality, among other sociogenically generated markers of difference.
In short, raising the question of colonialism disturbs the tranquility and security of the modern
citizen subject and modern institutions.
A second reason why colonialism, decolonization and related concepts raise anxiety is
because, behind the question of the meaning of colonialism or decolonization stands the
colonized as a questioner and potential agent. This is remarkably different from their expected
position as docile sub-human entities. The order of things in the modern/colonial world is such
that the questions about colonization and decolonization are not supposed to appear other than
merely as historical curiosity. The colonized or former colonized is supposed to be both, docile
and grateful. Specific pathological connotations are given to different bodies and different
practices, depending on the specific gender, sex, race and other markers.
As it will be made clear in other theses, raising the question about the meaning and
significance of colonialism indicates a decolonial turn in the subject and the start of a decolonial
attitude that raises questions about the modern/colonial world (Maldonado-Torres 2011a, 2011b,
2015, 2016, and forthcoming). There is nothing more terrifying for modern-citizen subjects than
the possibility of this turn. Their imagination fills with images of revenge and the most basic
claims of justice are taken as evidence of reverse discrimination.
The anxiety raised by the concepts of colonization and decolonization is therefore linked
to the phobia towards colonized and enslaved peoples and with the terror that citizen-subjects
feel when they conceive the colonized as an agent. Responses to this situation are visceral and
aim to relativize the question about colonialism and decolonization as well as to undermine the
position of the colonized as a questioner. This happened in the past and we need to move
forward,
but my ancestors were also colonized, my parents were poor, I am also
othered, in truth, we are all racists, my wife (or husband, or best friend) is one of you, I try
to join, but they reject me, etc., etc, are some samples of the responses. Another related
response that is very popular today is All lives matter in face of the assertion that Blacks lives
matter in a context where Blacks are disproportionally killed by police.
Taking a clue from Césaire, who starts Discourse on Colonialism with an account of
civilization and decadence, we can refer to these responses as forms of murderous and genocidal
decadence (Césaire 2000, 29). Stuck in a decadent colonial attitude promoted by the also
decadent modern Western civilization, most citizen-subjects engage in what Fanon referred to as
a cat and mouse game the goal of which is to forever delay the moment when the questions of
colonialism and decolonization are taken as truly fundamental (Fanon 2008, 99) and when the
colonized appears as a legitimate questioner.
The reason why the anxiety-producing character of the concepts of colonialism and
decolonization as well as of the colonized as an agent/questioner is the first thesis, is that it calls
attention to what represents a performative a priori in the approximation to all the theses. The
performative a priori is a demonstration of a decadent colonial attitude which tends to be
expressed through multiple forms of evasion and bad faith where the standards of reason
constantly change in the effort to make the questions about colonialism and decolonization inert
and irrelevant. In that sense, this first thesis is the result of a meta-reflection on the very act of
pronouncing any thesis regarding colonization or decolonization. It would be normal for most
readers to fall into various forms of decadence when they go through each of the theses. A fair
engagement with the theses would in fact be an…
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