The decolonial subject and the problem of non-Western authenticity

• Published in: Postcolonial studies Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 150 - 167
• Main Author: Vieira, Marco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 03.04.2019
• Subjects: Authenticity; decolonial thought; post-Western subjectivity; postcolonial psychology
• ISSN: 1368-8790; 1466-1888
• DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2019.1608795

It is argued in this paper that some decolonising strategies in the study of global politics are precluded by the problem of non-Western authenticity. I question the idea of an identifiable non-Western geo-cultural context that could significantly reconstitute what already is a post-Western subject. I claim that in most cases the asymmetrical encounter between the colonised and the coloniser has fundamentally and extensively redefined human subjectivity in a way that largely negates decolonial emancipatory projects. This is the result of the all-encompassing penetration of Western coloniality (in its political, economic and cultural representations) into the spaces of pre-colonial or uncolonised forms of subjectivity. I draw from Frantz Fanon's and Jacques Lacan's theories to argue that attempts to recover non-Western forms of self-identification are useful albeit illusory psychological mechanisms to stabilise hybrid postcolonial subjectivities rather than an actual restoration of non-colonial and purified forms of existing in the world. I suggest that an effective anticolonial politics of resistance will necessarily entail the understanding of post-Western subjectivity in terms of psychological 'hybridity' rather than decolonial 'authenticity'.