Towards a Global, Fractal (Post)Colonial Theory

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Cultural Studies - Basics and Definitions, grade: A, course: Seminar III, language: English, abstract: Drawing on Denise Ferreira da Silva’s theory of compositional thinking and Kapil Kapoor’s Decolonizing the Indian Mind, I wish to briefly interrogate the relationship between consciousness and space, and more specifically, probe the connections between identity and geography in the context of colonialism. Further, building on the work of Jacques Derrida and Katherine McKittrick, I aim to address some of the failings of contemporary critical and (post)colonial theory in regards to how modern leftist, linear theories of the colonial subject persist as detrimental, hauntological renderings. Next, influenced by McKittrick’s Mathematics Black Life, I intend to deploy a decolonial interpretation that actively revokes and opposes imaginings of anti-indigenous violence rather than sustains it. I train my sights on the anti-colonial work of Kapoor to identify and dwell on instances and spaces of indigenous freedom and resistance. Ultimately, taking into account Kapoor’s criticisms of the Western economy and by putting Kapoor’s and Karl Marx’s work into conversation with each other, I will analyze how Marxist thought situates itself within a linear context and is unable to extricate itself from the colonial matrix.