Colonialism, Modernity, and African Agency: Does Decoloniality Still Make Sense?

Abstract: The move to “decolonize” is sweeping across academic disciplines, but scholars are becoming wary, suspecting that the term may have lost its value. Olufemi Taiwo may be the most subversive critic of decolonization discourses, which he derides as mere tropes. On the one hand, this essay underscores the cogency of his case and even parries some of the most critical remarks it has received; on the other hand, it parts ways with him, taking the concept of coloniality as its point of departure. While he remains unimpressed with coloniality and studiously sidesteps such murky waters, this essay—paradoxically—sees in coloniality a concept that may furnish the proper justification for any responsible decolonial efforts. Hence, it retheorizes coloniality, elaborates how such an old and subtle global phenomenon reinvents itself, and so defies much of the weapons Taiwo mobilizes against decolonization. It then argues that the fact of coloniality indeed legitimizes any responsible effort in the service of decoloniality. A responsible and worthwhile effort at decoloniality would judiciously embrace modernity and uphold Africa’s agency, the issues Taiwo seems most concerned with.