The decolonial subject and the problem of non-Western authenticity. Issue 2 (3rd April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vieira, Marco
• Is Part Of: Postcolonial studies. Volume 22:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 150
• Page End: 167
• Publication Date: 2019-04-03
• Subjects: Authenticity -- postcolonial psychology -- post-Western subjectivity -- decolonial thought; Postcolonialism -- Periodicals; 325.3
• DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2019.1608795
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1368-8790

Abstract

ABSTRACT: It is argued in this paper that some decolonising strategies in the study of global politics are precluded by the problem of non-Western authenticity. I question the idea of an identifiable non-Western geo-cultural context that could significantly reconstitute what already is a post-Western subject. I claim that in most cases the asymmetrical encounter between the colonised and the coloniser has fundamentally and extensively redefined human subjectivity in a way that largely negates decolonial emancipatory projects. This is the result of the all-encompassing penetration of Western coloniality (in its political, economic and cultural representations) into the spaces of pre-colonial or uncolonised forms of subjectivity. I draw from Frantz Fanon's and Jacques Lacan's theories to argue that attempts to recover non-Western forms of self-identification are useful albeit illusory psychological mechanisms to stabilise hybrid postcolonial subjectivities rather than an actual restoration of non-colonial and purified forms of existing in the world. I suggest that an effective anticolonial politics of resistance will necessarily entail the understanding of post-Western subjectivity in terms of psychological 'hybridity' rather than decolonial 'authenticity'.