Decolonization necessitates a transhistorical colonial continuity that never existed -pretending that it does reinforces colonial power, makes decolonization impossible

(Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University. His research interests and writings cover Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, Marxism, and African and Africana Philosophy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 57, Spindel Supplement (2019), 135–159)

Colonialism, the common anchor, for both Ngũgĩ’s and Wiredu’s respective cases for decolonization is problematic. There is a near absolutization of the concept in the literature such that little, if any, care is taken to accommodate the complexity and historicity of the concept or the differential paths that colonialism and modernity traversed in different parts of the continent, not to talk of the other parts of the world, especially Latin America, where decolonization talk has issued a whole new theory designated as “decolonial theory.”21 What is problematic about it is not easy to see. Here it is. Decolonization, as Fanon points out, is a negation. The affirmation is colonialism/colonization. The central significance that is given to colonialism in our framing of discourse about Africa’s phenomena from history to politics, from philosophy to religion, from literary theory to education, is not justified by the historical evidence nor by the differential experience of colonialism in different parts of the continent nor the different forms of colonialism that abound in the continent.22 It was the late doyen of African historians, J. F. Ade Ajayi, who, in 1969, inaugurated a debate among historians on this matter by arguing that colonialism was a mere “episode” in African history and that the continuing talk of it having enacted severe breaks—an epochal break, as it were—in African history and experience is not justified by the evidence. He argued that African history is to be noted more for its continuities and less for discontinuities attributable to colonialism.23 For example, about the story I told at the beginning of this discussion, in spite of the colonial borders foisted on our minds and spaces, Yorùbá culture and its usages on either side of the border have persisted, and the narratives that supply their agglutinating element continue to mark life and thought, including but not limited to indigenous modes of governance, rules of succession, grounds of legitimacy, and so on, even though Yorùbá are now Nigerians and Béninois(e), respectively. Furthermore, the connection between colonialism and continuity was not a noble one. Ajayi made the historical case and I offered a philosophical explication of the continuity that colonial authorities imposed on colonized Africans against the normal evolution of social formations and the clamor of the colonized to enact changes in their lives, institutions, and practices as they saw fit. I styled it “sociocryonics.”24 If what I just said is true, then to turn colonialism into the singular or even the most salient element in explaining social phenomena in the African world cannot be plausible, adequate, or correct. Here, I hope, is an apt analogy. Moorish rule in the Iberian Peninsula and much of present-day France lasted for over 700 years. Does anyone periodize the history of Spain or Portugal according to that long history of colonial rule? Or do we wish to deny that it was an instance of colonialism? Meanwhile, nowhere in Africa, except South Africa, did European colonialism last for up to 100 years. Yet, we periodize African history with colonialism as its singular pole. That cannot be right. I do not need multiple examples. But it is instructive that South Korea, instead of using Japanese colonialism as a significant or defining element in its history, treats it as a mere unfortunate interlude and maintains a periodization regime that is indigenous to its dynastic history, religious, and intellectual movements. Neither does India periodize its history by prioritizing British colonialism even though it lasted longer there and had a much more lasting impact— chieftaincy is no longer part of India’s governance, for instance—on Indian life and thought. I would like to suggest that our preoccupation with decolonizing is inseparable from our placing colonialism as the singular pole for plotting the grids of understanding and narrating African life and thought. Our past— designated “precolonial”—is understood in terms determined by it and our future—postcolonial—is tied to our obsession with leaving it behind. How we expect to do the latter while privileging it in periodizing our history and characterizing our discourses beats me.