»The idea of decolonization can be easily applied to the context of racism, because everyday racism lies exactly in this experience of becoming the Other. One feels as if one is being invaded, appropriated and alienated by dominant fantasies, which place one as subordinate or as exotically strange. Decolonization here means, undoing the process of alienation, of disappointment and misrepresentation.« Grada Kilomba, 2010
DECOLONIALIZING
Colonialism was not a unique event, not a clearly defined era, not a geo- graphically limited phenomenon. Colonialism was and is a global system of domination by a power that culminates in the subjection and exploitation of others. It is a phenomenon deeply ingrained in both the colonizing and colonized societies – in social, political and economic relations, in laws, decrees and administrative processes, in architecture and monuments, in our mindsets and our actions. This colonialization renews itself constantly so that it still survives. At the same time, it is being superseded and subverted by decolonizing processes and practices.
Decolonializing means uncovering the remnants and vestiges of colonialism in minds and societies, and eliminating them. Decolonializing means liberating and reconceptualizing, i.e. actively discarding the colonial and racist world views, modes of thinking, practices and privileges that we have adopted both consciously and unconsciously. Decolonialization is therefore at once a process and the goal of that process.