Boomerangs and blind spots: Reconsidering Hannah Arendt’s imperialism thesis for decolonising education

This paper revisits Hannah Arendt’s reflections on imperialism and colonial violence to explore their relevance for contemporary debates on decolonising education. While Arendt has been critiqued for her Eurocentric blind spots – particularly her neglect of anti-Blackness and settler colonialism – her ‘boomerang thesis’, which describes how imperial practices abroad return to haunt the metropole, offers a provocative entry point for considering how colonial logics persist within educational systems. Drawing on Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism , this paper situates her insights within broader decolonial debates, comparing them with key perspectives from Latin American, African, and Indigenous decolonial thought. Rather than discarding Arendt altogether, the paper argues for a critical appropriation of her work to reflect on how colonial violence and bureaucratic dehumanisation continue to structure postcolonial education systems. This approach offers conceptual tools to critique depoliticised or co-opted versions of decolonisation and to reassert its radical potential.