Dekolonisation

Post-imperialism, postcolonialism and beyond: Towards a periodization of cultural discourse about colonial legacies

“…There are nevertheless good reasons to ask ‘to what extent … a persistence of “colonial-like” behaviours after a formal end to colonialism’ might not also be seen in other European countries (Schilling, 2014: 199). Furthermore, the question can be raised as to whether ‘a desire to preserve or return to the practice of informal influence’ in the former colonies (Schilling, 2014: 201), along with particular patterns of remembering and ‘forgetting’, might be more widely typical of the first stage in the long transition from empire to postcolonialism in Europe (Jansen and Osterhammel, 2013: 124–5). Unlike in Germany, post-imperial discourse may not have dominated an entire period in the history of those nations which lost their empires after World War II, but post-imperial networks, concerns and voices arguably played a role in the European response to the conflicts and politics of decolonization during the 1950s to 1970s.…”

“…The resurgence of such a memory discourse ‘From the late 1970s on’ (2010: 93) reverses the order of interwar post-imperial and 1960s anti-colonial discourse in Germany, bringing British post-imperial and postcolonial voices in direct conflict with one another. In the French context the role of the ‘pieds noir’ comes to mind: those repatriated from Algeria and France’s other African colonies, and their role in the ‘memory battle’ (Jansen and Osterhammel, 2013: 125: ‘Erinnerungskrieg’) between post-imperial and anti-colonial or postcolonial accounts that came to a head in the colonial law debate of 2005 (Bertrand, 2006; Blanchard et al, 2006). Portugal’s ‘retornados’ are similarly significant for that country’s memory work with regard to its African colonies and their late and violent independence (Medeiros, 2014: 158–62).…”

“…Emerging from the end of the visions associated with the era of liberation and decolonization from the 1940s to the 1970s, postcolonial discourse builds on the anti-colonial discourse of the preceding decades, but is nevertheless distinct both in its socio-cultural context and in its discursive formation. From the perspective of international historiography, Jansen and Osterhammel point out that postcolonial criticism, unlike its anti-colonial antecedent, works with the epistemology of post-structuralism and discourse analysis, rejecting the ‘essentialist’ tropes that often defined anti-colonial sentiment and focusing on the cultural and epistemological rather than the political, social and economic dimensions of colonialism (Jansen and Osterhammel, 2013: 115–16). It is therefore not only the German road from empire to postcolonialism that makes distinctions useful between the post-war decades and the contemporary period.…”

“… 3 See, for example, Jansen and Osterhammel (2013), where the use of the term for the ‘De-Kolonisation’ (2013: 27) of the former colonizers and their imperial metropolis is only an occasional extension of the regular use for the former colonies, their struggle for independence and their histories of nation-building. The basis for this extended use is clearly what Jansen and Osterhammel call the ‘normative’ side of decolonization: emerging from metropolitan politics during the mid 1950s and then embraced by the anti-colonial movements in the former colonies, by the end of the period of decolonization, i.e.…”

“…The basis for this extended use is clearly what Jansen and Osterhammel call the ‘normative’ side of decolonization: emerging from metropolitan politics during the mid 1950s and then embraced by the anti-colonial movements in the former colonies, by the end of the period of decolonization, i.e. by the end of the 1970s, the term came to stand for a ‘radical transformation of the international order’ reflected in the moral and political banning of colonialism and racism (2013: 15).…”