»We acknowledge that colonialism led to racism, race discrimination, xenophobia and the intolerance that accompanies it [...]. We acknowledge the suffering caused by colonialism and declare that colonialism, wherever and whenever it appeared, is to be condemned and its recurrence to be prevented.« Declaration of the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban, 2001
SPECTERS OF COLONIALISM
Colonialism is dead yet it still lives on. As a shadow of the colonial past, it continues to haunt minds and societies, at times hardly noticed: in the colonial chic of furniture stores, delicatessens and restaurants, revived in commercials, films and documentaries, and in a determined clinging to colonial monuments, street names and racist appellations and epithets.
Time and again attempts to exorcize these specters, in disputes about street names or racist terms in children’s books, demonstrate how flexible, protean and yet persistent they are. Colonialism is dead and yet it still spreads calamity.