Decolonization and Its Discontents: The Limits of Independence

Abstract This special issue seeks to probe the nature of the ostensible transition from ‘anticolonial’ to ‘postcolonial’ and its implications, focusing on historical actors who sought to remobilize across multiple political and spatial scales: that is, actors who thought and acted locally and globally. It asks: What discontents did decolonization bring in its wake, and what opportunities persisted for political activism across borders as the world shifted from one of empires to one of (nation-)states? It traces transformations – of imaginaries and networks, of ideas and modes of mobilization – that occurred alongside or because of the formal transfer of power and explores how this transition reshapes the interplay between different scales of decolonization. In other words, how did actors attempt to operate in, and stitch together, international, regional, national, and local spaces in the postcolonial era, and what new limits that they find themselves up against?