Colonizing and Decolonizing Minds - Dascal
Colonizing and Decolonizing Minds - Dascal
Marcelo Dascal
Tel Aviv University
The colonization of each others minds is
the price we pay for thought.1
Mary Douglas
Whereas the most visible forms of political colonialism have for the most part
disappeared from the planet by the end of the millennium, several of its consequences
remain with us. Criticism of colonialism, accordingly, has shifted its focus to its more
subtle and lasting manifestations. Prominent among these are the varieties of what
came to be known as the colonization of the mind. This is one of the forms of
epistemic violence that it is certainly the task of philosophers to contribute to
identify and struggle against. Postcolonial thinkers have undertaken not only to
analyze this phenomenon, but also to devise strategies for effectively combating and
hopefully eradicating colonialisms most damaging aspect the taking possession and
control of its victims minds.
My purpose in this paper is to contribute, qua philosopher, to both of these
undertakings. I begin by trying to clarify the nature of the colonization of the mind
and its epistemic underpinnings and the typical reactions to it. Next, I examine
examples of these reactions with their corresponding analyses and strategies. The
assumptions underlying them reveal certain inherent paradoxes, which call into
question the possibility of a full decolonization of mind. I conclude by suggesting an
alternative strategy and a series of means to implement it.
1
The New York Times, 22 May 2007, front page; quoting the British anthropologist Mary Douglas on
occasion of her death on 16 May 2007 at the age of 86.
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the
teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqus and makes deposits
which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the banking concept of education,
in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing
the deposits. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who
consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. The teacher
presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he
justifies his own existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their
1.2 The banking model displays the characteristic epistemic nature of mind
colonization: What grants the colonizer (in this case the teacher) the right to intervene
in the pupils mind, thereby colonizing it, is the fact that the former possesses and the
latter lacks knowledge. This is a commodity that everybody is presumed to desire by
virtue of its epistemic properties, namely truth and universality, whence its
applicability and utility derive.
Analogously, parents have the experience their children lack, customs and
traditions embody proven methods of survival in natural and social environments,
religion grants transcendental validity to human behavior, language provides reliable
tools for mental operations such as identification, conceptualization, classification,
and inference, science supplies the basis of technologies that work, and ideologies, of
policies that are presumed to work. The expressions in italics refer to epistemic
warrants that yield epistemic legitimacy and thereby endow teacher, family, tradition,
religion, language, science or ideology each with its brand of epistemic authority.
Notice that in most of these cases those who perform the colonizing are either
not aware of the nature of their action or of the epistemic and other damaging
consequences of their action.3 Quite on the contrary, they believe they are helping the
colonized, by providing them with better beliefs and patterns of action that improve
their ability to cope successfully with the environment. Furthermore, they are also
unaware of the fact that for the most part their minds have themselves been colonized
by others, whose agents they become by attributing to them the same epistemic
authority they rely upon vis--vis those they colonize.
In order for any of these sources of authority to become, in turn, an effective
vehicle of mind colonization, it must, in addition, obtain the support of power
structures capable, by a variety of means, of transmuting epistemic authority into
social authority and so to ensure its enforcement. These means range from semiotic
displays of authority, through overrating some sources of epistemic authority and
devaluating others, up to appealing to overt and covert forms of discrimination,
making use of socio-economic rewarding or punishment, and sheer violent coercion.
ignorance as justifying the teachers existence but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they
educate the teacher Freire (2004: 72). For a discussion of this paradigm and its consequences, see
Dascal (1990).
3
See characteristic (e), in 1.1.
For a definition and discussion of this concept, see Dascal (1991). Anthropological terminology
abounds in terms implying invidious comparison, as points out Overing (1987: 82): If you think about
it, most of our jargon designates primitiveness and therefore lesser. We wish to capture the
difference of the other; yet in so doing we often (unwittingly) denigrate the other through the very
process of labeling him/her as different. I think it is certainly true of such labels as kinship-based
society, magical rites, mythology, shaman, and so on. None of these labels have anything to do
with levels of technological advancement, but rather they refer to social roles, frameworks of thought,
symbols, systems of morality, axioms, values and sentiments all areas of life and related theory that
may well be more sophisticated than the same areas of life and relate theory in our own society.
5
Bodei (2002: 249), for instance, wonders about the high number of those who have chosen, without
trauma, to give up their autonomy: come mai siano stati cos numerosi coloro che hanno scelto di
perdere, spesso senza eccessivi trauma, la propria autonomia.
they deserve special attention because, though on the face of it contrary to each other,
they are widespread and equally instinctive or natural.
Prima facie, the two reactions are indeed radically opposed.6 While the former
acknowledges the epistemic superiority of the colonizer and adopts it as a principle of
colonized belief formation, the latter denies the alleged asymmetry, argues that it is
groundless because based on an invidious comparison procedure that is necessarily
biased, and therefore refuses to adopt the presumption of epistemic inferiority of the
colonized. While the former assumes the compatibility of adopting the colonizers
conceptual framework with the preservation of the colonized identity, the latter
stresses the incompatibility between these two attitudes, arguing that the adopted or
adapted colonizers mind ultimately expels the original mind of the colonized, and
thereby obliterates the latters true or authentic identity. As far as the political
consequences are concerned, while the resigned acceptance reaction does not
recognize in the adoption of the colonizers beliefs and forms of thinking one of the
ways through which colonizers enhance their control over colonized behavior, the
resistance reaction denounces it as a means of acquiring control over the will of the
colonized, thus becoming a powerful tool of oppression, which must be combated.
2. Between colonization and decolonization
In this section, a version of the acceptance strategy, namely, the accommodation of the
colonized with the colonial system is described; the fact that the evils of this system
persist even after the political decolonization of many states suggests the unsuspected
depth and influence of mind colonization; the opposite reaction, the radical approach
to mind decolonization, based on the total rejection of foreign thinking patterns and
contents, is then examined and its underlying assumption of a double mental
colonization is pointed out; finally, the possibility of intermediate alternatives,
admitting some interaction between the two minds is discussed.
2.1 Albert Memmi, who experienced personally French colonialism as a native of
Tunis and later as a teacher in Algiers, provides invaluable first person insight into the
intricacies of the relationship between colonized and colonizer. The contrast between
his first book (1957, transl. 1967) on the topic, written at the time of the Maghrebs
6
Nevertheless, as we shall see (see 3.6), they can be traced back to similar mental mechanisms.
struggle for decolonization, and the second (2004, transl. 2006), well after it, raises
questions directly pertinent to the issue of mind colonization that are worth being
explored here.
In the first book, Memmi portraits colonizer and colonized as living in the grip
of a colonial relationship that chains them into an implacable dependence, which
molded their respective characters and dictated their culture (p. ix). Reaffirming his
belief that colonialism is primarily an economic enterprise,7 with no moral or cultural
mission whatsoever (p. xii), he stresses that the colonial system determines and
controls their mental attitudes. Even the colonizer who refuses, on moral or political
grounds, to endorse the exploitation of the colonized population and tries to do
something about it, is dominated by the system, for [i]t is not easy to escape mentally
from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual
relationships (p. 20). This is a situation in which his humanitarian romanticism is
viewed by the colonizer who accepts as a serious illness and his moralism is
condemned as intolerable (p. 21). Under these circumstances, the well-intentioned
colonizer soon finds himself sharing his companion oppressors derogatory image of
the colonized: How can one deny that they are under-developed, that their customs
are oddly changeable and their culture outdated? (p. 24), even though one is aware of
the fact hat this is due not to the colonized but to decades of colonization (ibid.).
The colonizers, whatever their persuasion, inexorably develop a distorted
portrait of the colonized that explains and justifies the roles of both in the colonial
system as civilizer and civilized. Nothing could better justify the colonizers
privileged position than his industry, and nothing could better justify the colonizeds
destitution than his indolence (p. 79). The myth of laziness and incompetence is
elaborated and expanded into an essential inferiority and its alleged effects.8 The
incongruity thus generated inevitably leads, by obvious logic (p. 121), concludes
Memmi, to a fundamental need for change,9 which will necessarily bring about the
destruction of the colonial system: The colonial situation, by its own internal
inevitability, brings on revolt (p. 128).
7
[T]he best possible definition of a colony: a place where one earns more and spends less. You go to a
colony because jobs are guaranteed, wages high, careers more rapid and business more profitable
(Memmi 1967: 4).
8
The ideological aggression which tends to dehumanize and then deceive the colonized finally
corresponds to concrete situations which lead to the same result (ibid.: 91).
9
How can one believe that he [the colonized] can ever be resigned to the colonial relationship; that
face of suffering and disdain allotted to him? In all of the colonized there is a fundamental need for
change (ibid.: 119).
While revolt is for him clearly the preferred and necessary alternative, he does
not overlook the other of the two historically possible solutions (p. 120), which the
colonized tries to put into practice, and with top priority: The first attempt of the
colonized is to change his condition by changing his skin (ibid.). And this changing
of skin consists mainly in a change of mind, i.e., in the adoption of the forms of
thinking and behaving of the colonizer, in the hope that this will carry with it the
corresponding privileges.10 Nevertheless, Memmi argues, imitation and compromise
are ruled out as real possibilities. [R]evolt is the only way out of the colonial
situation, and the colonized realize it soon or later. His condition is absolute and cries
for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise (p. 127).
Although Marxian assumptions and libertarian themes dominate his analysis,
leading to the conclusion that revolt is the only way, Memmi is aware of the powerful
role of characteristically mental factors in the unfolding of colonial drama. He
describes the absoluteness of the colonized situation as a loss of his traditions and
culture,11 a loss of self,12 a loss of authenticity, unity and belonging.13 However, even
at the height of his revolt he points out the colonized still bears the traces and
lessons of prolonged cohabitation. The colonized fights in the name of the very
values of the colonizer, uses his techniques of thought and his methods of combat (p.
129). Furthermore and more importantly from the point of view of mind
colonization he ends up inheriting from the colonizer the dichotomous form of
thinking that serves as the grounding of racism and xenophobia of all sorts.14
Memmis second book reflects his deep disenchantment with the fact that the
evils of the colonial system, instead of disappearing with political decolonization,
not only persist but have even worsened. Here is a sample of these evils, as seen by
Memmi in 2004: Widespread corruption and tyranny and the resulting tendency to
use force, the restriction of intellectual growth through the adherence to long-standing
10
There is a tempting model very close at hand the colonizer. The latter suffers from none of his
deficiencies, has all rights, enjoys every possession and benefits from every prestige. The first
ambition of the colonized is to become equal to that splendid model and to resemble him to the point of
disappearing in him (ibid.: 120).
11
He has been torn away from his past and cut off from his future, his traditions are dying and he
loses the hope of acquiring a new culture (ibid.: 127-128).
12
[T]he colonizeds liberation must be carried out through a recovery of self and of autonomous
dignity. Attempts at imitating the colonizer required self-denia; the colonizers rejection is the
indispensable prelude to self-discovery (ibid.: 128).
13
The important thing now is to rebuild his people, whatever be their authentic nature; to reform their
unity, communicate with it and to feel that they belong. (ibid.: 135).
14
Being considered and treated apart by colonialist racism, the colonized ends up accepting this
Manichaean division of the colony and, by extension, of the whole world (ibid.: p. 131).
If the economy fails, its always the fault of the ex-colonizer, not the systematic bloodletting of the
economy by the new masters (Memmi 2006: 20).
16
[I]ntellectuals seem to be afflicted by the same paralysis of thought and action that has affected
everyone else. The most common excuse was that of solidarity. One shouldnt overwhelm ones fellow
citizens when they are living in such misery. That would be like supporting their enemies (ibid.: 30).
17
We shall ultimately find ourselves before a countermythology. The negative myth thrust on him by
the colonizer is succeeded by a positive myth about himself suggested by the colonized just as there
would seem to be a positive myth of the proletarian opposed to a negative one. To hear the colonized
and often his friends, everything is good, everything must be retained among his customs and
traditions, his actions and plans; even the anachronous or disorderly, the immoral or mistaken
(Memmi 1967: 139).
18
He also mentions, for example, the fact that the political model i.e., a conceptual tool, courtesy of
the colonizer for the new nations remains the one provided by the West. For instance: There is yet
another paradox to the decolonizeds national aspiration: his nation has come into existence at a time
when the Western national ideal that served as a model has begun to weaken throughout the rest of the
world (Memmi 2006: 55); The presidents of the new republics generally mimic what is most
arbitrary about the colonial power (ibid.: 60).
that come to its shores face are not only economical, but also and perhaps mainly
due to the incapacity of both sides to deal properly with the phenomenon of mind
colonization, especially with the stereotypical thinking it engenders and sustains both
ways.
2.2 Decolonization, if it is to be successful as a reaction against such a deep,
powerful, and long lasting colonization of the mind, cannot but be itself as radical as
its opponent. It must, therefore, eradicate not only its surface manifestations and the
concomitant colonial system, but its epistemic roots as well.
Frantz Fanons (1965, 1967) vigorous anti-colonial position fully
acknowledges the need to combat the sources and effects of the colonization of the
natives minds and argues for the intimate relationship between this cultural combat
and the struggle for independence. His speech at the congress of Black African
Writers (1959), Reciprocal basis of national culture and the fight for freedom,19
begins with a very clear statement of the incompatibility between a colonial situation
and the independence of a creative cultural life, [c]olonial domination, because it is
total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion
the cultural life of a conquered people, and stresses that [e]very effort is made to
bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture. Nothing short of
organized revolt and violent struggle can put an end to the colonization of his mind
achieved through this admission, which is in fact precisely the initially mentioned
total and over-simplified submission to the forcefully imposed colonizers epistemic
authority.
The conclusion appears to be ineluctable: In the colonial situation, culture,
which is doubly deprived of the support of the nation and of the state, falls away and
dies. The condition for its existence is therefore national liberation and the renaissance
of the state. To the one remaining essential question he identifies, what are the
relations between the [liberation] struggle whether political or military and
culture?, Fanons reply is predictable: It is the fight for national existence which
sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. This fight is decisive not
only because it is a fight for the national consciousness which is the most elaborate
form of culture, but also because it is through it that the nation will free its mind
19
The quotations in this and the following paragraph are all from this speech (as printed in Fanon
1965).
from colonization and thus pave the way for recovering its epistemic autonomy.
Ultimately, this is why [a]fter the conflict there is not only the disappearance of
colonialism but also the disappearance of the colonized man.
Another example of an uncompromising rejection attitude designed to achieve
a total, radical decolonization of the colonized mind is the strategy developed by
Uhuru Hotep (2008).20 Unlike Fanon, he does not strive either for a political or for an
armed struggle solution. Instead, he focuses on the mental aspects of colonization and
his proposals, accordingly, are directly intended to overcome them. The motto chosen
for his paper couldnt be more explicit about Hoteps main concern: The central
objective in decolonizing the African mind is to overthrow the authority which alien
traditions exercise over the African.21 Of course the achievement of this aim also
requires action in other areas of life, as the motto further stresses: This demands the
dismantling of white supremacist beliefs, and the structures which uphold them, in
every area of African life.
Hoteps discussion targets the psychology of African liberation and,
accordingly, he dubs the ensemble of techniques developed by Europeans with the
purpose of creating the authority capable of subordinating the African mind, a
method of psychological manipulation. Yet, the obstacle to liberation he identifies
and seeks to overthrow is roughly the same I denote by the expression epistemic
authority, whereby I emphasize its philosophical underpinnings. According to him,
the method was designed to gain control of the African mind through disconnect[ing]
Africans from their heritage and culture, which would achieve the colonizers
purposes because people who are cut off from their heritage and culture are more
easily manipulated and controlled.22 This process of deculturalization, alias
seasoning (in American slaveholders jargon) and brainwashing (in todays
vernacular), comprises three main steps: feel ashamed of yourself, admire and respect
the whites, and be rewarded with more indoctrination if successful in the former steps.
In Black America, the main instrument, though not the only one,23 of deculturalization
20
In what follows, I will quote from the downloaded version of this paper, indicated in the references.
This is a quotation from Chinweizu, a Nigerian critic and journalist, author of Decolonizing the
African Mind (1987). For further bio-bibliographical information, see
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/images/Chinweizu.jpg .
22
Hotep mentions Ajamu (1997) who employs the expression intellectual colonialism for this
procedure.
23
The media, of course, shouldnt be omitted: Literally from birth to death, African Americans are
awash in a sea of European-designed, mass media disseminated disinformation, misinformation, halftruths and whole lies about the people, history, culture and significance of Africa.
21
conquest of their societies. It is by recovering and reconnecting in this way with the
best of traditional African culture that European dominance of the African psyche
will end for Africans in the Americas; for them, therefore, decolonization is ReAfricanization (authors boldface).
Behind the fascinating logic of total revolt they argue for, it is no less
fascinating to notice that neither Fanon nor Hotep are aware of the double
colonization of mind upon which their argument is in fact based. If we recall that, in
the extended characterization of colonization of the mind (see 1.1, 1.2), the
colonizer performing the external intervention that inserts in the colonized mind
contents and patterns of thinking endowed with epistemic authority that will serve as
a model for that mind, need not be the typical colonizer of a colonial situation. As
we have seen, there are many other kinds of situation where mind colonization may
take place. One of them is the transmission of accepted beliefs, patterns of behavior
and thought, ideologies, etc. that are considered constitutive of a communitys,
societys or nations culture or identity. One cannot but wonder whether, after
decolonizing ones mind through its complete cleansing from the foreign model, the
following step in Fanons or Hoteps strategy, namely re-filling the liberated space
with another set of contents, whatever their origin, does not amount to re-colonizing
the just liberated mind.
2.3 In the light of the problems faced by both options full acceptance and total
rejection of mind colonization we should look for alternatives to them. Of course,
such alternatives are not easy to formulate and defend, especially in situations of acute
conflict; after all, in comparison to the appealing simplicity of the two poles of the
much simpler dichotomy such alternatives purport to overcome, they must not only be
rather complex, but also involve a degree of uncertainty that renders them problematic
for guiding political action.28 Still, valuable suggestions for such intermediate
alternatives do exist.
When referring (in 2.2) to the motto of Hoteps paper, I deliberately omitted
one sentence of Chinweizus quote. My intention was to highlight the mutually
exclusive, dichotomous way in which Hotep opposes the European and the African
worldviews. Chinweizu, in this respect, is more nuanced. He distinguishes between
28
See Barghouti (2005) for an argument defending, on ethical grounds, the dichotomous position in
cases of conflict.
rejecting the allegiance to foreign traditions and advocating that they shouldnt be
learned at all. Here is his missing sentence: It must be stressed, however, that
decolonization does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; it simply means denial
of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them. Hotep, on the other hand,
though also combating the mind colonizing effect of granting unwarranted epistemic
authority to foreign scholarship, suggests a policy of segregation towards it,
presumably on the grounds of a sweeping attribution of falsehood to whatever
emanates from the hidden intentions of the colonizer.
The practice Hotep recommends consists in protecting the decolonized African
mind from any contact with beliefs that might call into question the legitimate,
authentic African perspective. The rule he advises the African youth to follow in order
to keep his mind decolonized might be phrased exactly in Peirces (1877: 235) words:
systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions.
This is one of the ways to implement what Peirce called the method of tenacity,
whose basic principle is to cling tenaciously, not merely to believing, but to
believing just what we do believe (ibid.: 231). Yet, as Peirce points out, the
application of the belief protection rule is not easy, for whoever tries to apply it will
find that other men think differently from him and will realize that their opinions
are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief (ibid.:
235). Chinweizus distinction, however, is compatible with this observation of Peirce,
for it would permit at least in principle a practice of open examination of the
epistemic authority of any set of beliefs, without prejudging its acceptability on the
grounds of their being foreign or native. Evidently, to take advantage of this
possibility and develop on its basis an alternative to the acceptance vs. rejection
dichotomy requires much more cognitive effort than that demanded by the tenacity
method. Philosophers may have contributed their share to this effort.
Among African philosophers, there is indeed much concern with the issue of
colonization and decolonization of the mind, which is at the background of
philosophical reflection in the continent.29 An interesting question is whether this
29
After giving an appalling example of a missionary imposed translation that renders in Lue creator
by no other than Rubanga, a hostile spirit, Wiredu (1998a: 201) observes: Disentangling African
frameworks of thought from colonial impositions such as these is an urgent task facing African
thinkers, especially philosophers, at this historical juncture. Clarifying African religious concepts
should be high on the agenda of this kind of decolonization. On a similar case, he comments: African
thinkers will have to make a critical review of those conceptions and choose one or none, but not both.
Otherwise, colonized thinking must be admitted to retain its hold (ibid.: 195).
background concern does not itself affect the range of alternatives that are considered
valid (should I say politically correct?). Doesnt the fact that philosophy is
supposed to deal with the universal necessarily contest the legitimacy of
philosophical accounts from whose scope certain cultures are excluded? And if this is
the case, wouldnt extreme particularistic positions regarding mind colonization rule
themselves out as acceptable within a broad philosophical discussion of the topic? Or
doesnt the fact that the discussion takes place in a former colonized environment, say,
in the African context, require participants to assume that mind colonization is wrong
and that, whatever the arguments presented in the inquiry or debate, the conclusion
must be in conformity with its condemnation?
All these questions are in fact present and easily recognizable in the
philosophical debate about what is or should be African philosophy that runs through
the pages of the Coetzee and Roux (1998) excellent reader, which thus exemplifies
the variety of possible positions towards the thorny issue of what should be expected
if at all from the decolonization of African philosophy. Let us consider a few
instances.
In contradistinction to ethnophilosophy, which sees African philosophy as
comprising essentially the collection and interpretation of traditional proverbs,
folktales, myths and similar materials, Kaphagawani (1998: 87) discerns another,
modern, multi-perspective conception of African philosophy as a joint venture and
product of traditional as well as modern trend philosophers, of divergent world
outlooks and who employ different methods in debates and research of
relevance to the cultures and nationalities of Africa. Appealing as this program is, it
turns out that its followers insist, in a frighteningly fanatical way at times, that
rationality, rigour, objectivity, and self-criticism be properties of the African
philosophy they have in mind (ibid.). That is to say, they are perceived by
Kaphagawani as mind colonization agents, who import European or North-American
criteria of philosophizing. He is afraid bowing to these conditions confines the
conception of philosophy to just one aspect.30 In support for this claim he appeals to
Wiredu (1980: 6): If we demand that a philosophy has to have all these attributes by
definition, then we are debarred from pointing out, what is a well known fact, that
some philosophies are unrigorous or unsystematic or dogmatic or irrational or even
30
Among the excluded aspects, besides ethnophilosophy, also sage philosophy i.e., the sagacious
and philosophical thinking of indigenous native Africans whose lives are rooted in the cultural milieu
of traditional Africa (Oruka 1998: 99) would be certainly in the list.
of the struggle against colonization. If the slightest value is admitted to any part of the
colonizers scheme, this part might be accepted and thus incorporated into the
colonizers mind, which would thus become at least partly colonized. This would, in
turn, justify collaboration with the colonizer on those aspects acknowledged as
valuable by the colonized. Given the interconnection of the components of the
colonization system, the legitimacy thus granted to one of them would easily extend
to others. This would expand mind colonization as well as collaborationism. The
result would be the corruption of the cause and the debilitation of the liberation
struggle.
Secondly, total elimination of any trace of mental colonization is necessary for
accomplishing the return to the original traditions that were belittled, corrupted, and
replaced by colonization. For the colonized to be able to recover the uncorrupted roots
of his traditions and to render operative again the worldview embedded in them, it is
necessary to suppress the whole set of beliefs, desires, fears, and mental habits that
became part of his mind through a long and continuous contact with the colonizer. If
any of these elements remain in the colonizeds mind, it will continue to fuel the
colonizers derogatory sapping of the formers roots, traditions, and wisdom. This
mental presence of colonization would be a Trojan skeptical agent permanently
casting doubt on the authenticity of the revived worldview and therefore on the
unquestionable allegiance due to its fundamental status.
Third, and most important, the complete demolition of the colonizers
conceptual system is required in order to suppress its presumed epistemic authority.
Once the colonized mind realizes that it is the whole system, with its principles,
categories, argumentation practices, values, and attitudes that crumbles, rather than
just some of its components, it loses its architectonic coherence and can no longer be
trusted. Its judgments especially those that delegitimize the colonizeds can and
must be questioned; the onset of epistemic revolt announces the end of mind
colonization.
3.2 This totalizing set of absolute demands might seem to presume that the
comparison between the mental sets of colonizer and colonized are objectively
comparable and therefore can be treated as a rational choice. But this is far from being
the case. Whatever they are, worldviews and cultures are comprehensive, complex,
multi-dimensional systems, for whose comparison no clear set of epistemic criteria is
definable. For such criteria to exist and be properly applied, one would have to rely on
a neutral point of view, a sort of Rawlsian veil or ignorance insulating the applier
from the knowledge of his personal contingencies. In their absence, however, we are
not in a position to determine objectively not to say absolutely whether one of the
systems actually has more epistemic authority than its competitor or overcomes it
according to other, well grounded standards of excellence.
It follows that the choice between them comports necessarily an important
degree of arbitrariness. This shows up in the strong reliance upon contingency in
making such choices, especially in situations like the colonized-colonizer
confrontation, which are necessarily asymmetrical. For example, perceiving oneself as
the underdog may determine which of the instinctive reactions to opt for; personal or
collective resentful or empathetic relations play a role; and in general the choice is
guided not by the question what is better but by attaching to it the coda for me or
for us and coupling it with the further question what is worse for them. It is in this
way that one replaces firm but unavailable criteria by a circumstantial and rather
arbitrary anchor for a choice, granting it the aura of authority needed in order to
command the allegiance of the relevant constituencies.
Alternatively, one appeals to simplified dichotomies and argumentative
manipulation. Totalizing conditions intended to establishing clear cut definitions is a
case in point (see 3.3). Another is the appeal to authenticity, identity, and the high
value assigned to temporal priority, an idea akin to fundamentalism all of them
apparently intuitive and unproblematic notions, to which I shall return later (see 3.5).
3.3 The total cleansing of the colonized mind from colonizer imported elements as a
sine qua non for decolonization (see 3.1) in Hoteps succinct definition, the
reversion of seasoning consists in fact in inverting the direction of application of
invidious comparison. It is no longer the dirt of the African mind, but the European
or Arab cultural infestation (Hotep 2008) that must be removed; it is the former, not
the latter, that is superior in its wisdom, and therefore worth allegiance and imitation.
The same kind of argument that was (and still is) responsible for the discrimination
and exploitation against which decolonization purportedly struggles is thus turned
against someone else. Does the fact that this someone else happens to be no other than
the colonizer who made use of the same kind of argument for justifying the
oppression of the colonized justify this procedure? And, in any case, arent we here
way around; it is the latter, along with the changing circumstances, that define the
identity. The reactivation of an identity allegedly emaciated by mind colonization,
therefore, cannot single out in a univocal way the aim of a decolonization drive. At
most, it is a vague formulation of a program that decolonizers in different
conjunctures will interpret and implement at their convenience.
Unlike identity, religious orthodoxy and certain specific traditions have the
advantage of being systematically codified and quite accurately recorded. This might
turn them into reliable objective criteria for defining the cultural aims of
decolonization. Yet, fundamentalism notwithstanding, the history of religion and
culture demonstrate that neither orthodoxy nor tradition are immune to the vagaries of
multiple interpretation and should no more than identity be relied upon as solid
anchors for decolonization aims.
It would be otiose perhaps to add to this list of unstable criteria and vaguely
defined aims the search for authenticity, given the undisputable effect of taste,
fashion, zeitgeist, subjectivity and other equally variable factors on any decision about
what is and what is not an authentic expression of a culture, identity or religion.
What is certainly not otiose is to inquire why should these clearly contingent
and unstable notions function as prominent signposts precisely of those versions of
decolonization thinking that proclaim to have absolute aims and precise criteria for
their definition and achievement. Part of the answer was already given (see 3.2): the
need for anchors, for mental structures upon which to base individual and collective
cohesion; for the second part, I follow Peirce. According to him, humans are
profoundly uncomfortable when they are in a state of doubt; consequently, he claims,
the irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief
(1877: 232). This need to overcome doubt is so profound, it seems, that whether the
anchors provided are actually solid and absolute in their reliability is irrelevant, for
they are designed, presented and perceived as if they were which is what counts. In
any case there are no doubt plenty of methods for what Peirce calls the fixation of
belief, which can be used for disguising a belief as reliable.32
32
Peirce discusses four methods, the method of tenacity, the method of authority, the a priori method,
and the scientific method. Needless to say that he criticizes the first three and considers only the fourth
to be reliable. In Dascal and Dascal (2004) we criticize also the fourth, arguing that what we need are
methods or means not to fixate, but to de-fixate beliefs. See section 4 for further reference to defixation.
3.6 I wish to conclude this section by suggesting an additional factor that might
contribute to understand the etiology of both the acceptance and the rejection
instinctive reactions vis--vis the colonization of mind. In this respect my suggestion
here, based on the work of Kaufman (1973) is presumably closely related to Peirces.
In spite of the evident differences between the two kinds of reaction, if we
reflect about the underlying causes, mechanisms and effects of the two reactions, we
may discover some unsuspected similarity. The acceptance attitude, as we have seen
(cf. 1.3), implies submission to the colonizers supposed epistemic superiority. The
adoption of this alien but authoritative set of beliefs and pattern of thought is
hardly the result of the careful examination of its merits and weaknesses, whence their
alleged epistemic authority should emerge; rather, it is usually performed without a
systematic, conscious deliberation. The advantage of such an adoption lies precisely
in bypassing the need for such an energy consuming mental process; instead, one
buys an apparently certified mental device, which one assumes to be capable of
correctly deciding for oneself. In Walter Kaufmans terms, this is one of the strategies
used by those who dread the autonomy and responsibility required for making with
open eyes the decisions that give shape to ones life a disease he considers
catastrophically widespread and calls decidophobia (Kaufman 1973: 2-3).
Assuming that my diagnosis is correct, one might argue, it only shows how
deeply different is the accepting/adopting attitude from the rejecting/resisting one.
Those who choose the latter, the argument would go, far from conforming like the
former to the asymmetric colonization condition and its implications, actually choose
a course of thinking and of acting that courageously fights against the stream, thus
making a non-conformist decision that gives shape to their life. But is this choice
indeed a case of autonomous decision-making, free from any trace of decidophobia?
Furthermore, regarding the specific issue of our present inquiry, is it free from mind
colonization?
As for the first question, Kaufman leaves no room for doubt. The all out
resistance attitude exemplifies one of the most potent of the ten strategies that
according to him decidophobes often employ in order to avoid decisions. This is the
Manichaeist strategy. To be sure, it is characteristic of Manichaeism to imperiously
demand a decision between god and evil, light and darkness, true and false. But, as
Kaufman (1973: 18) puts it, it arranges the alternative in such a way that the choice
is loaded. The correct option appears as so evident that it cannot fail to be chosen.
Who would dare not to choose what is unquestionably good and true? Isnt resistance
the only possible right choice for the colonized any other being nothing but a variety
of weakness, self-hatred, collaborationism, or straightforward betrayal? What is there
to decide? And as to the second question, isnt in fact the rejection/resistance choice
dictated by the values, categories, and dichotomous structure of a conceptual system
implanted in the mind through one or more of the kinds of mind colonization, rather
than being the result of a supposed decision by a supposed free mind?
4. Concluding remarks: Living with a colonized mind?
If decolonization of the mind in its radical conception, which combats courageously
colonization of the mind in order to put an end to it, is plagued, as we have seen, with
indefensible assumptions and with paradoxes including the fact that, when put into
practice, it ends up by freeing its clients minds from one version of colonization only
at the heavy price of installing in those minds another colonizing scheme should we
give up and accept mind colonization as unbeatable? Or is there something to do
against it, something that, even though not yielding an absolutely pure, uncolonized
mind, would allow us to live with a modicum of colonization without having to be
dominated by it and without having to give up entirely ones autonomy? My answer is
that such a possibility exists. In this concluding section I will briefly argue for it and
hint at how to achieve the suggested modus vivendi. Unfortunately, the explanation
and elaboration of the means to such an achievement would require an exposition at
least as long as the analysis of the problem with which we have mostly dealt up to this
point.
4.1 The reader surely noticed that the discussion of decolonization in this paper has
focused almost exclusively on the radical version. To be sure, suggestions leading to
less radical alternatives, which admit some sort of acknowledgment of valuable
elements in the colonizers system, were presented (see 2.3); but they didnt receive
the detailed consideration some of them certainly deserve. I will partly fulfill this
obligation here by calling attention to the fact that a preference for purity prevails in
current decolonization debate, without any serious attempt, as far as I know, to justify
it. As a result, radical decolonization approaches, which tacitly assume that a pure
conceptual framework, theory, or cultural system is, for some reason, preferable to a
mixed or eclectic one, benefit from the dialectical advantage of not having to argue in
support of this alleged superiority. Hence they can go on and insist also without
having to bear the charge of the proof about the importance of cleansing (see 3.3),
i.e., of purifying the colonized mind from extraneous elements. Those who defend,
however, the legitimacy of mixed systems, not only are in danger of being not
politically correct, but also bear the responsibility to detail and justify the kind of
eclecticism they believe can contribute to decolonization. Were there at present a
more balanced distribution of opinion on the value and nature of purity and
eclecticism, as it was the case for example in the European Enlightenment to wit
Diderots long article clectisme in the Encyclopdie the situation would be quite
different, at least in that the preference for purity could no longer be accepted, without
argument, as a reason for the complete elimination of European, Arab or White
American elements from the African mind.33
4.2 The value of purity is but one example of an entrenched belief that is taken
for granted and consequently is very hard to abandon or de-fixate. In this respect it
resembles beliefs about the preservation of identity (however interpreted or
constructed), the value of authenticity (however defined), and ancient status (which is
considered valuable merely because its being sufficiently old is supposed to ensure
that a practice or belief is superior since it pre-existed the onslaught of the mind
colonizing invasions). As we have seen, these beliefs too are tacitly assumed but
hardly explicitly justified, and consequently it is hard to call them into question. The
problem with this kind of entrenched fixations is that they acquire an absolute
authority that is stronger than normally justified epistemic authority. This means
that de-fixating them cannot just consist in comparing them with their counterparts in
other conceptual systems, weighing their merits, and deciding accordingly all of
which are regular epistemic operations.34 What their de-fixation requires, in addition,
is a non-epistemic operation of de-absolutization, which involves also socio-political
will and power in order to be carried out successfully (see 1.2). Now, once they lose
33
Here is an interest example of a scientist and well known writer who declares his preference rather
for impurity: In order for the will to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities
of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissensions, diversity, the grain of salt
and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and thats why youre not a
Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not (Levi 1995: 37).
34
I am using here the model of the balance or scales, as proposed by Leibniz. See Dascal (2005).
their special absolute authority, these beliefs no longer have the extra power needed to
impose mind colonization; and this means that absolute decolonization, i.e., the total
rejection of the colonizers mental framework is no longer necessary. It is only then
that paths open for the development of conceptual mergers that yield mixed or eclectic
accounts.
4.3 The series of de- terms so far employed in this paper, de-colonization, defixation, de-absolutization,35 must be expanded to contain also some re- terms such
as re-place, re-colonize, and re-frame. Re-place is already familiar to us from the
discussion of radical decolonization approaches, which argue that the aim of
decolonization is to replace the colonizing mental scheme by the original, authentic,
pure, ante-colonial mental scheme of the native population. But this, as we have seen,
amounts in fact to re-colonize, albeit with a different authoritative scheme, a mind that
has been cleansed. The re-colonized minds are passive in this process, analogously to
the student subjected to the educational practice Paulo Freire has compared to
depositing in a bank account (see 1.1). Re-framing, in contradistinction, is an
essentially active process, where the participants themselves are those who construct a
new mental framework, rather than passively receiving any of the extant schemes.36
This process requires a dialectical give and take where elements from different,
conflicting systems that, despite or perhaps due to their absolute status are unable
to offer solutions to conflicts at hand, can partially merge and thus generate
innovative alternatives for resolving the conflicts in question. Re-framing is an
essential tool for overcoming the fear that naturally arises when attempts are made to
de-fixate entrenched beliefs are made, for it does not imply either complete rejection
or complete acceptance of any of the systems in conflict. It should be clear by now
what can be the contribution of re-framing and its components for a livable and
creative decolonization, where at no stage a mind is required to become a totally
empty tabula rasa or a totally filled cupboard.
4.4 Perhaps with all that has been said so far, we are now in a position to understand
what Mary Douglas perhaps intended to say with the puzzling and not politically
correct remark I took the liberty of using as a motto for this paper. The context of her
35
De-dichotomization is also an important term in this series, which is not present in the text, but is
certainly an implicit part of its argument. See Dascal (2006).
36
For definition and illustration of this notion, see Dascal and Dascal (2004).
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