‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’: Introduction to key concepts and overview of the module

In this first session, we will approach the term ‘decolonisation’ and its meaning. We will do so by unpacking the word from the root to how it’s understood and by making connections to case studies that will illustrate the different meanings of the word, and the different forms decolonisation can take.

Required Readings:

• The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Feminist postcolonial theory: a reader, 25, 27.
• ‘Fuck/Empire’, from The Actual.
• What is Decolonisation?

Suggested Readings:

Rhodes Must Fall:

• The real meaning of Rhodes must fall
• Oxford’s Cecil Rhodes statue must fall

Delhi coronation Park:

• Coronation Park and the forgotten statues of the British raj
• Delhi’s Coronation Park highlights how urban governance ignores both history and the public

Various topics:

• Mignolo, W.D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 449-514.
• Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3), 168-178.
• Decolonization is a global project: from Palestine to the Americas
• What is decolonization? Decolonization is not a metaphor