Decolonising the state: subversion, mimicry and criminality

Abstract

This special issue brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reflect on the decolonization of nation-states through acts of subversion, mimicry and criminality in the colonial and postcolonial world. Since the birth of nation-states, emerging in conjunction with the first wave of globalization and the height of European colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century, avant-gardists have problematized the role of the nation-state. With the split between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin in the First International in 1872, anarchism's challenge to parliamentary politics and the nation-state rapidly spread across the colonial world. i For instance, during the 1870s, Jewish, Italian and Spanish labour migrants to Egypt brought with them discourses of radical social emancipation, merging with local labour movements and promoting internationalist activism that resisted the nationstate as an organizing principle. ii Meanwhile, in the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America, railway and maritime workers confronted formations of state bureaucratization with autonomous union democracies, contributing to working class solidarities across ethnic and national divides at the end of the nineteenth century. iii In Europe's southern gateways to overseas colonies, other challenges to the state emerged in the shape of criminal underground organizations such as the Italian Camorra. Structured much like the Japanese Yakuza and Chinese Triads and organized around ethnic and national identities, such organizations simultaneously subvert and mimic the state, presenting problems for our understanding of legal regimes and their vested interests. iv Across South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, anti-colonial rebellions, labour strikes and boycotts during the interwar years contributed directly to the decades of formal decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. v

Identitas Keindonesiaan dalam Pidato Soekarno pada 1 Juni 1945

“…(Said, 2010) menganggap penjajahan yang dilakukan oleh bangsa Barat telah memunculkan hegemoni yang mempengaruhi kehidupan Timur sebagai bangsa yang terjajah. Konsep hegemoni Barat kepada Timur dari Said, kemudian dilanjutkan oleh (Bhabha, 1994) yang mengeksplorasi superioritas bangsa Barat yang mendorong bangsa Timur untuk meniru (mimikri) dan menyesuaikan diri mereka engan wujud Barat yang lebih superior (Bhabha, 1994;Galvan-Alvarez et al, 2020).…”