Decolonization is not a metaphor.

La descolonización no es una metáfora.

Published 2021-07-21

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No. 38 (2021): Abril - Junio
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Artículos
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Tuck, E., & Wayne Yang, K. (2021). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Tabula Rasa, 38, 61-111. https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n38.04
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https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n38.04
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Eve Tuck
University of Toronto
    K. Wayne Yang
    University of California
      Show authors biography

      Eve Tuck,

      Ph. D. The City University of New York.

      K. Wayne Yang,

      Provost and Professor

      This article aims to remind readers how distressing decolonization is. Decolonization brings with it the repatriation of Indigenous life and land. It is not a metaphor of other things we want to do to advance our societies. An easy adoption of the decolonizing discourse –which is made evident in the increasing number of calls to «decolonizing our schools», using “decolonizing methods” or “decolonizing thinking”– turns decolonization into a metaphor. No matter how significant its goals, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches, decentralizing the settler’s perspective has a set of goals that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Since settler colonialism is built upon a tangled triadic settler-native-slave structure, white, non-white, migrant, post-colonial, and oppressed people’s decolonial desires may get similarly entangled throughout resettlement, re-occupation, and reinsertion, which are indeed promoting settler’s colonialism. Turning decolonization into a metaphor allows for a series of evasions, or “settlers’ moves to innocence”, which problematically attempt to reconcile settler’s guilt and complicity, thus rescuing settler’s futurity. This article analyzes varied settlers’ moves to innocence in order to foster “an ethics of incommensurability”, acknowledging what is different and sovereign for decolonization projects as related to social justice projects based on human and citizen’s rights. Also, we point out some concerning issues in transnational/ Third World decolonization, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, challenging coalescing efforts for social justice, giving room to potential more significant alliances.

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