Coloniality

Postcolonialism makes statements about the ontology of world politics. As to ontology, a distinction can be made between the material and discursive dimensions of colonialism and its legacy. Both are closely related, since discourses support material relationships and inequalities. Here it is useful to bring in the concept of ‘coloniality’, which encompasses both dimensions. The relationship between colonialism and coloniality can be understood as follows:

Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality refers to long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breath coloniality all the time and everyday (Maldonado-Torres, 2007).

Or in the words of Zondi:

Coloniality is, therefore, not the same thing as colonialism: the former is an organizing principle underpinning exploitation and domination exercised in multiple dimensions of social life, including economic and political organization, sexual and gender relations, structures of knowledge, households and spirituality. It is the hidden dark underside of European global modernity. Colonialism is the reorganization of politico-administrative power in order to enable the matrices of power mentioned above. Coloniality is evident in the organization of power, of identity or humanity and humanism, and in the structures of knowledge; hence the idea of coloniality of power, identity and knowledge. The latter has expressed itself most emphatically in the evolution of Eurocentrism and its ability to conceal itself as a narrative of the modern, the rational-objective and the universal (Zondi, 2016).