Date: Mar 22nd 2020
Speaker: Jonathan Chimakonam (LSE)
Chair:Michael Diamond-Hunter
Mainstream decolonial thinkers, especially those from the global south, tend to conceive coloniality as a repudiation of autoethnography. This lopsided conception is undergirded by the classical two-valued logic, which dichotomises and polarises reality. Following the same logical structure, most formulate decoloniality as a repudiation of metanarrative. But the deployment of such a divisive either-or logic presents both programmes as displacement narratives. I contend that applying the same logic that underlies coloniality in constructing a decolonial programme can only yield new coloniality. But can we not rethink decoloniality in a way that will unfold a veritable programme free from the entrapments of the logic of coloniality? I will explore the potential to alter the theorisation of decoloniality as ‘repudiation of metanarrative’ that responds to the ‘repudiation of autoethnography.’ My aim will be to reformulate decoloniality as the ‘authentication of autoethnography towards the complementarity of seemingly opposed variables.’ I will clarify the logic of coloniality, make a case for a new logic of decoloniality and present the Ezumezu system as a model. In so doing, I will orchestrate a shift from binary contradiction that results from the logic of coloniality to binary complementarity, which characterises a truth-glut and trivalent system, as a better, progressive logic for decolonial thinking.