Decolonial Literature: Borders, Violence, Decoloniality
In On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh write that the definitions of “decolonality" should be understood as “multiple, contextual, and relational; they are not only the purview of peoples who have lived the colonial difference but, more broadly, of all of us who struggle from within modernity/coloniality’s borders and cracks, to build a radically distinct world” (5). In this course, we will focus on one instrument of colonial power and decolonial worldmaking: the border. Borders might take the form of lines and partitions separating countries; enclosures such as asylums, refugee camps, prisons, spaces of domestic labor, quarantine zones, and walls; forced displacements such as deportations, transfers, and renditions; they might also include practices of divide and rule; split and fragmented psyches; and inter-generational divides. This course will consider how literature and culture invites us to think about the topic of borders, violence, and decoloniality. Through interdisciplinary engagement with works of creative expression (namely, novels, short stories, poetry, films, and the graphic novel), we will also reflect on the theme of transgressing borders through modes of refusal, resistance, and futurity. Students will be invited to make connections between the course readings and a wide range of issues and contexts.
Potential Readings
Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony
Neferti X. M. Tadiar, "Decolonization, 'Race,' and Remaindered Life under Empire"
Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives
Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements
Liat Ben-Moshe, Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition
Potential Readings
Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony
Neferti X. M. Tadiar, "Decolonization, 'Race,' and Remaindered Life under Empire"
Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Macarena Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives
Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements
Liat Ben-Moshe, Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition
All material © Y-Dang Troeung, 2021