Course Overview
Decolonial theory has become an increasingly relevant tool in imagining a world different from the one created by the dominance of Western modernity. However, it is not necessarily obvious what Europe can contribute to this process as the decentering of Europe and its intellectual traditions is one of the tenets of decolonial theory. Additionally, the continent arguable is the only one in which Europeans do not appear as colonizers.
In this class, following authors such as as Aimée Cesaire, Stuart Hall, and Houria Bouteldja, we will approach Europe as a space that is key to the global process of decolonization. A return of land in the former colonies that includes actual sovereignty instead of exploitative postcolonial relationships would fundamentally change the European economy, which is built on a model of prosperity at the expense of non-Europeans, justified through a model of meritocracy that makes invisible the violence of the colonial project. But beyond that, Europe as a concept collapses without a colonial framework – what Europe stands for today (and has since early modernity) would be meaningless without the Western knowledge model that decoloniality aims to dismantle.
So, how could a different, decolonized Europe look like? For potential answers, we will turn to the practices of European activists and artists of color like the French Indigènes de la République, the German Romani Phen, Spain’s Diásporas Críticas and others. Among our themes will be Europe’s investment in whiteness, museums and the question of repatriation of artefacts and human remains, queer Roma artists in Eastern Europe and the postsocialist legacy, and the so-called refugee crisis and reparations.
This is a reading and discussion heavy course, your engagement throughout is expected. There will be no final paper.
This course is supported by the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, which allows us to bring in speakers.
Lectures are organized in collaboration with the Race, Migration, and Coloniality in Europe working group and will take place Wednesdays, 12:00-1:30.
Syllabus
Jan 18 - Introduction to Other Stories
- Walter Mignolo, “Coloniality of Power”
- Gurminder Bhambra and Darshan Vigneswaran, “Decentering Europe.”
- Wayne Yang/Eve Tuck, “Decolonization is not a Metaphor”
Part 1 White Innocence and Racial Amnesia
Jan 25 - Europe’s Other (Self)*
- Josef Böröcz, “Goodness is Elsewhere"
- Stuart Hall, “Europe’s Other Self”
- Santiago Zabala, “Slavoj Zizek and the role of the philosopher”
- Slavoj Zizek, “A leftist Plea for Eurocentrism”
- Hamid Dabashi, “Can non-Europeans think?”
- Walter Mignolo “Yes, we can: Non-European thinkers and philosophers”
Feb 1 - Origins
- Leerom Medovoi, “Dogma-Line Racism. Islamophobia and the Second Axis of Race”
- Edward Said, Orientalism, Introduction
- Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other, Chpt. 1
Feb 8 - The Great Forgetting: Europe and Slavery
- Susan Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti”
- Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “An Unthinkable history. The Haitian Revolution as a Non-event.”
- Gina Ulysee, Illuminating the Past
- Haitian declaration of independence
Feb 15 - The Great Forgetting: Europe and Colonialism Facilitator(s): Simona, Gabriela
- Gloria Wekker, White Innocence, excerpts
- Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents, excerpts
- Sasha Huber, Demounting Agassiz
- Eunsong Kim, “Found, Found, Found. Lived, Lived, Lived”
Feb 22 – Colonialism and Fascism*
- Aimee Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism
- Georgio Agamben, The Remnants of Auschwitz: “The Muselman”.
- Jill Jarvis, “Remnants of Muslims: Reading Agamben's Silence”
March 1 - 1961 (The Great Forgetting continued)
- House/MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory
- Michael Hanneke, Caché
- Ipek Celik, “"I Wanted You to Be Present": Guilt and the History of Violence in Michael Haneke's Caché”
- Ticktin/Marshall/Bacchetta, “A transnational Conversation on French Colonialism, immigration, Violence and Sovereignty”
March 8 – Postcolonialism and Postfascism: “Anti-white Racism,” Israel/Palestine, and European Memory*
- Michael Rothberg, “From Gaza to Warsaw”
- Anna Younes, “European Lebensraum as a White Settlement”
- Esther Romeyn, “Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Spectropolitics and Immigration” Sonja Zekri, “Interpreting Trauma”
- Denijal Jegic, “Colonial discourses are stifling free speech in Germany.”
- Achille Mbembe, “The society of enmity”
- “Islamo-leftism and Debates on Class, Gender, and Religious Hierarchies in France: Heating Up Culture Wars, France to Scour Universities for Ideas That ‘Corrupt Society’”
Guest speaker: Anna Younes
Part III Decolonizing Europe
March 29 - (Post)Colonialism without Race: Eastern Europe and Anti-Roma Racism
- Marina Gržinić, Tjaša Kancler, Piro Rexhepi, “Decolonial Encounters and the Geopolitics of Racial Capitalism”
- Alyosxa Tudor, “Queering Migration Discourse. Differentiating Racism and Migratism in Postcolonial Europe”
- Catherine Baker, “Postcoloniality without Race? Racial Exceptionalism and Southest European Cultural Studies”
- Tayo Awosusi-Onutor / Mariya Atanasova / Lazlo Farkas: Panel: Roma, Resistance & Intersectionality
Guest Speaker: Piro Rexhepi
Apr 5 – The Indigenous of the Republic*
- Houria Bouteldja, “Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR) Key Concepts”
- Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us. Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love
- CJ Gomolka, “Queer (af)filiations: Houria Bouteldja and decolonial feminism “
- Olivier Cyran, “Charlie Hebdo not racist? If you say so…”
- Mayanthi Fernando, “Liberté, Egalité, Féminisme? ”
- Decolonial Translation
Guest speaker: Houria Bouteldja (on April 6, 4pm)
April 12 –Black Europe
- Akwugo Emejulu/Francesca Sobande, "On the Problems and Possibilities of European Black Feminism and Afrofeminism"
- Ida Danewid, “White innocence in the Black Mediterranean: hospitality and the erasure of history”
Guest speakers: Black Studies Curriculum Group
April 19 –Decolonizing the museum
- Will Furtado, “What’s at Stake in Decolonizing an Art Institution?”
- El-Tayeb, ‘The Universal Museum.‘ How the New Germany built its Future on Colonial Amnesia,”
- Nii Kwate Owoo, You Hide Me .(1971)
- No Humboldt 21
- Traces of Violence
Guest speaker: Eunsong Kim
April 26 – Reparations, the “Refugee Crisis” and European Neocolonialism*
- Peo Hansen/Stefan Jonsson, “EU Migration Policy Towards Africa: Demographic Logics and Colonial Legacies”
- Hamza Hamouchene, “Green Hydrogen: The new scramble for North Africa”
- Ian Urbina, “The Secret Prisons that keep migrants out of Europe .”
- Refugees in Libya Strike Committee
- The Migrant Files
- CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice
- Maurice Stierl, The Mediterranean as a carceral seascape
- Dagmawi Ymer, Asmat – In Memory of All Victims of the Sea (2015)
Guest speaker: Maurice Stierl (via zoom)