Decolonial Constitutionalism

Abstract The author proposes an understanding of decolonial constitutionalism that accounts for the history of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism not only as historical injustices but also as constitutive forces of power, knowledge, and being. The 1661 Barbados Slave Code as a “slave constitution” institutionalized racialized violence in the slave society to render the Black human as nonhuman through the law. The author critiques the coloniality of Independence Caribbean constitutions and challenges the reformist approaches to decolonial constitutionalism that fail to disrupt this coloniality. Employing Charles W. Mills's use of the creole concept of smadditizin’—the struggle for recognition of personhood where it was denied because of race—the author advocates for a refounding of Caribbean constitutions. This refounding must center the Caribbean person as “somebody” (smaddy), as individual and collective agents of their own liberation. The author therefore envisages decolonial constitutionalism as a transformative project to create a new blueprint for the way of life of a political community, that is, a constitution that affirms the sovereignty of the people. Decolonial constitutionalism is not merely legal reform; it must be an ontological rupture grounded in Caribbean-centered epistemologies.