301271 Anticolonial Theories and Decolonial Options in the Americas (S) (SoSe 2025)

Anticolonial theories in the Americas comprise three strands: decolonial theory, abolitionist approaches, and settler colonial studies. Each of them deals with specific geographical and socio-historical contexts of colonial systems and their persistence after decolonization. While decoloniality in the sense of Aníbal Quijano focuses on racialized capitalism in Latin America, settler colonialism studies shed light on the colonial experiences of the former British Empire. Anti-slavery and civil rights movements in the Caribbean and the USA, in turn, produced another corpus of sociological and political theories. This interdisciplinary seminar will discuss the similarities and differences between the three areas of anticolonial theories through their perspectives on labor, land, racism, and gender.

This course will be taught in English. English translations will be provided for Spanish or German texts.

Requirements for participation, required level

Willingness to read and discuss texts in English.

Bibliography

Background readings:
Broeck, Sabine/Junker, Carsten (Eds.) (2014). Postcoloniality - Decoloniality - Black Critique. Joints and Fissures. Frankfurt, Campus Verlag.
Du Bois, William E. B. (1998). Black reconstruction in America. 1860 - 1880. New York, NY, The Free Press.
Quijano, Aníbal (2000). Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from South 1 (3), 533–580.
Wolfe, Patrick (1999). Settler Colonialism. The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event. London, Continuum International Publishing.
Wynter, Sylvia (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom. Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation-An Argument. The New Centennial Review 3 (3), 257–337.