230317 Postcolonial Theory, Intersectionality and Decolonial Thinking (Cultural Theory) (S) (SoSe 2017)

This seminar focuses on theoretical perspectives that are central for the analysis of power relations, hegemonies, and inequalities. Postcolonial theory, decolonial thinking and an intersectional perspective serve as sensitizations or correctives for one-dimensional views and can be applied transdisciplinarily. Postcolonial theory is based on the notion that the historical impact of colonial rule and expansion in a decisive manner affects current scholarship, culture, philosophy, literature as well as the economy, politics, law and society in both the global North and the global South. Postcolonial Studies aim to explore the legacies and consequences of European colonialism in its various aspects – literal, artistic, spatial, historical, political and economic, while usually avoiding a specific focus on particular countries, regions or disciplines. “Classical” postcolonial theory has developed mainly in the U.S. academy and focused predominantly on the former British colonies, the English language and processes of colonization and decolonization of the 19th and 20th century in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (and partly the Caribbean). In addition to this well-established line of research, the seminar includes perspectives from Spanish language Latin American and Caribbean contexts according to which colonialism in the Americas originates in the 15th century with the Spanish/Portuguese conquest and see Eurocentric modernity is closely intertwined with colonial rule. Such so-called decolonial approaches (see Quijano, Coronil, Mignolo) shift the perspective towards colonial processes and legacies in other world regions like the Americas into account and also towards an inclusion of the political and economic entanglements cultural expressions and texts are embedded in. An intersectional perspective takes the interdependencies of different axes of inequality into focus and thus offers a useful corrective and sensitization. In the seminar, we will discuss central representatives of the concepts with respect to their genealogies, their merits, and their shortcomings.