Postcolonial approaches oppose persisting worldwide asymmetrical power structures. They are concerned, on the one hand, with material aspects and, on the other, with mental aspects, without completely isolating one from the other. The material aspects focus on unequal economic and political relationships, and how these affect the lives of people in the Global South. The mental aspects can be seen through the dominance of particular ways of thinking and forms of knowledge, which minimize or outshine the already existing wealth of knowledge in the Global South in a form of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988; de Sousa Santos, 2008; Grosfoguel, 2007b). In other words, postcolonial approaches claim to point out independent and adamant alternatives with respect to knowledge and practical life, based on the recollection of colonialism and the experiences of postcolonial subjects. These suggested alternatives are not limited to the revitalization of cultural traditions, nor the evocation of alleged origins. Rather, they proceed with the hope of demonstrating a ‘trans-modern’ and ‘intercultural’ perspective. This perspective attempts to reach beyond the segregating and absolutist thought pattern of Western modernity, without negating it (see Dussel, 1980). Postcolonial approaches are associated with anticolonial resistance but always emphasize ‘the diversity and heterogeneity of the “we” and that of the enemy. The postcolonial analysis therefore ranges from multicentrism to the decentering of every center’ (Kwan, 2014: 5). If it represents an oppositional position or desire, says Ania Loomba, ‘than it has the effect of collapsing various locations so that the specificities of all of them are blurred’ (Loomba, 2005: 20).
The book Orientalism, first published in 1978, by Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said (1978, 1985) is considered one of the fundamental works of postcolonial theory.5 In the text, Said explains how, through the creation of an entire academic discipline called Orientalism, Europeans create a world of the ‘Other’; this ‘Orient’ becomes the projection screen for the West’s own fears, desires, and feelings of superiority. This generated image has little to do with the real-life worlds of the people living in this region; however, it served European colonial powers well, and today provides the US ‘imperium’ with a means to validate its own superiority and legitimize continued political and military interventions. ‘Othering’ is a postcolonial concept introduced by Said, which gained meaning in this context. It implies that people and ways of life which appear to be different to the ‘normal’, prevailing lifestyle become exoticized and are thereby ostracized. They are made the object of measures seeking normalization and control.6
As a follow-up to Edward Said’s Orientalism critique, the literary scholar Walter Mignolo, born in Argentina, introduced the term ‘postoccidentalism’ from the South American perspective, which refers to the fact that the Spanish Kingdom once named its ‘American’ colonies Indias Occidentales (Mignolo, 2000; 2005). In a project that Mignolo calls ‘de-colonial’, an effort is made to break down discursive forms of postcolonial dependence. Hegemonic, Eurocentric and modernist thought patterns are to be replaced using a critical approach, which takes ‘colonial wounds’ (for example, the manifold, harmful and destructive effects of colonialism) seriously and, from there, imagines a different, horizontal and diverse world, or ‘pluriversum’ instead of the Western dominated ‘universum’. In the words of the Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar (2018: 29): ‘a vision of a world where many worlds fit in’.
Yet, in what way are such critical approaches expressed in the form of postcolonial theories connected to social movements, and how can they become a force for movement and change? With her famous question, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, which she formulated as early as the 1980s, Indian literary scholar Gayatri Spivak appealed against the widespread assumption that the living situation and thoughts of postcolonial subjects were brought to light by simply ‘giving them a voice’ or speaking in their name – as their intellectual or modern advocates (Spivak, 1988).7 In doing so, her aim was not to doubt that these subjects could express themselves. Rather, she wanted to underline that for the subaltern, as result of being subject to existing power structures and ‘epistemic violence’, it is not readily possible to make heterogeneous concerns visible or heard. Under the given circumstances, Spivak argues, the subaltern cannot succeed in being heard, nor can they exercise influence as complex people (see also Spivak, 1990; 1999; 2004; Morris, 2010; Smith, 2010).
The problem of the internalization of power structures by the repressed subjects themselves had already been mentioned at the beginning of the 20th century by Afro-American writer and sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois ([1903]1996). In his work, he referred to the lasting effects of racism in the USA following the abolition of slavery. To illustrate the exclusion of black people from the world of white people, Du Bois imagined a picture of an ‘enormous veil’, which black people were not permitted to step in front of. He considered the formation of a ‘double consciousness’, the feeling of, ‘only ever seeing oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s own soul on a world-scale, left merely with mockery and pity’ (DuBois [1903]1996: 194; see Morris, 2015).
A half-century later, Frantz Fanon, a medical practitioner from Martinique, who was active in the 1950s and 1960s in the Algerian struggle for liberation, described quite similarly the mental effects of everyday racism. In his first book, Black Skins, White Masks ([1952]1986) first published in 1952, he investigated daily life in the French-Caribbean colonies and the living conditions of black immigrants in France.8 He characterized the basic situation of black people in the French colonial world as alienated, as blacks being trapped in their own blackness. This became a noteworthy issue, as whites generally saw themselves as superior to blacks and thus based all their interactions and aspirations on this idea. This, in turn, led to the internalization of one’s own inferiority. The associated ‘division’ of consciousness resulted in blacks constantly fighting against their own image and behaving differently towards white people than towards other black people. Based on his own experiences, Fanon spoke of one’s self-representation as an object, the feeling of defencelessness and frustration, the feeling of being dissected and fixated, walled-in and loathed. This led to feelings of shame and self-contempt. Blacks and whites alike could only work against this alienation by refusing to allow themselves to be locked in the ‘substantialized tower of the past’.
Although Fanon’s diagnosis was related to colonial contexts, it nevertheless proved to be relevant for addressing postcolonial self-images and relationships and it has been referred to time and again, for example in Paul Gilroy’s equally influential text, The Black Atlantic (1993). Gilroy sees the image of the Black Atlantic, which he uses to symbolize the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath, as characterized by moments of movement, resettlement, repression and helplessness. Accordingly, he characterizes the identities that arise in this environment as fluid and in movement, as opposed to fixed and rigid – called by him routes, rather than roots. A widespread topos in postcolonial thoughts includes such a rejection of closed, rigid concepts of personal and collective