"Decolonization is not a metaphor"
by Eve Tuck (State University of New York at New Paltz) & K. Wayne Yang (University of California, San Diego)
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society
Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40
Key Points (approximate time stamps):
00:00:40 Title/Abstract
00:03:17 Introduction
00:11:50 The set of settler colonial relations
00:30:00 Break 1
00:30:26 Settler moves to innocence
00:34:24 Moves to Innocence I: Settler Nativism
00:44:20 Moves to Innocence II: Settle adoption fantasies
00:58:18 Moves to Innocence III: Colonial equivocation
01:05:18 Moves to Innocence IV: Free your mind and the rest will follow
01:15:07 Break 2
01:15:34 Moves to Innocence V: A(s)t(e)risk peoples
01:21:07 Moves to Innocence VI: Re-occupation and urban homesteading
01:31:37 Incommensurability is unsettling
01:39:25 More on incommensurability
01:51:57 Conclusion
Abstract
Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non- white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space- place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances.
