For Modernity: A Review of Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò’s Against Decolonisation

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò’s Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously delivers a clearly-articulated and well-supported defense of its eponymous thesis. It should come as no surprise to longtime readers of Táíwò that here he offers a thoroughgoing, meticulously-argued text making diverse intellectual engagements with a variety of African thinkers.

For my purposes below, it will be easiest to start with a summative view: I recommend this text very highly to anyone with an interest in African political thought or decolonial theory. I maintain that it can be interpreted in terms of two senses of its thesis. The first sense is that Táíwò’s thesis calls for rejecting what he terms decolonisation₂. (Note: To more fluidly interface with Táíwò’s conceptual work, I will stylize “decolonisation” and its cognates in terms of the British English convention, while otherwise employing American English conventions.) I find the case for this first thesis to be a conclusive one; I find it also to be a highly engaging one full of rigorous scholarship that is rewarding in its own right. The second sense is Táíwò’s thesis that the notion of decolonisation in post-independence Africa ought to be abandoned altogether, since the defensible notion of decolonisation (decolonisation₁) has already been achieved.

With regard to this second, more far-reaching sense of Táíwò’s thesis, I am not altogether convinced, albeit in many respects highly sympathetic. I don’t find the text to suffice in arriving at the necessity of this stronger conclusion. Nonetheless, because Táíwò’s case for the probability of this should be taken seriously by political thinkers and decolonial theorists, my critique below should not be taken as sufficient to reject this thesis; it is, rather, an effort to expand the conversation. To that end, I will start by briefly explicating Táíwò’s case for his more modest thesis. Then, in the spirit of Táíwò’s call for “the decolonisers” to make their reasons for sustaining the decolonisation trope clearer and more coherent, I will offer a brief philosophical critique of Táíwò’s further-reaching thesis in light of an acceptance of his rejection of decolonisation₂.

Against Decolonisation₂

Táíwò builds his case against the decolonisation trope on the basis of a distinction between two meanings of decolonisation. Decolonisation₁ denotes “making a colony into a self-governing entity with its political and economic fortunes under its own direction (though not necessarily control)…” (3). Decolonisation₂, by contrast, denotes “forcing an ex-colony to forswear, on pain of being forever under the yoke of colonization, any and every cultural, political, intellectual, social and linguistic artefact, idea, process, institution and practice that retains even the slightest whiff of the colonial past” (3).

Táíwò defends decolonisation₁ but rejects decolonisation₂. Because decolonisation₁ is no longer a live issue for Africa—outside Western Sahara—the metonymic conflation of decolonisation₁ and decolonisation₂ allows decolonisation₂ to trade on decolonisation₁’s good name. Hence, in light of his case against decolonisation₂, Táíwò concludes the decolonisation trope ought to be abandoned altogether since it shields very real problems with decolonisation₂ from scrutiny under the shield of decolonisation₁’s desirability.

The broad aspects of Táíwò’s case against decolonisation₂ will be familiar to scholars of post-colonial phenomena, but the specifics of his articulations of these issues and his engagements with African intellectual history are both novel and exemplary. The crux of the matter is that “Decolonising scholars cannot escape a Manichaen division in which (just as during colonial times), the colonised and the colonisers must occupy entirely distinct spaces [where] ‘ne’er the twain shall meet’. Any colonialism-tinged phenomena must be purged from the postcolonial world” (7–8). In reality, coloniser and colonised interact dynamically; the relation between the two produces institutions, ideas, and artifacts that do not precede the colonial encounter. The same goes for interactions between such societies that precede colonialism itself. In all these relations, those who have been colonised are agents who assess and engage with the cultural, economic, and political forms of colonisers and their broader milieux. Decolonisation₂, since it requires expunging whatsoever reflects inheritance from colonisers, negates the agency of colonised in navigating these inheritances complexly. Thus, Táíwò surmises, “the ultimate problem with decolonisation discourse is its oft-unapprehended failure to take seriously the complexity of African agency and the many ways it has grappled with both colonialism and its legacy…” (184).

African intellectual, cultural, and political history are replete with cultural engagements with Europeans, a considerable amount of which, as Táíwò repeatedly notes, preceded colonialism. Before, during, and after colonialism, Africans were agents of intellectual, cultural, and political transformations. Such transformations are, of course, both for better and for worse. But the call for decolonisation₂ presupposes that these transformations are by definition for worse, and that African agency in this regard has been either non-existent or regrettable. The upshot is that decolonisation₂ fetishizes an imagined, purely autochthonous African past and insists on building African futures in the image of that imagined past. The genuine pasts, presents, and futures produced by African agents are thus to be disposed of, misunderstood, and/or ignored.

Insofar as the call for decolonisation₂ amounts to an embrace of what we might call autochthonism—in which only that which is wholly produced by a society’s native or indigenous traditions can be accepted as legitimate—we may characterize decolonisation₂ as being premised on what Michael Monahan has termed a “politics of purity.” As Monahan broadly argues, and as Táíwò’s work in this text and beyond amply illustrates, such appeals rest both on a fallacious appeal to a mythic purity as well as an indefensible assumption that such purity is intrinsically desirable. Autochthonism, then, couldn’t possibly take African agency seriously since it fails to recognize the ways Africans have been agents in creolizing imports and are agents in electing to affirm ideas and institutions which reflect mixture.

For Táíwò, foremost among the follies of autochthonist calls for decolonisation₂ is their relation to modernity. Many readers will be familiar with Táíwò’s case for modernity in his How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa and Africa Must Be Modern: A Manifesto. The former text was the 2015 winner of the Frantz Fanon Book Prize and in my humble assessment, likely the most important work on the topic of modernity in this century; while Against Decolonisation stands on its own, those wishing to critically assess its claims will benefit immensely from taking these two texts in concert. In brief, Táíwò’s view could be recast as a critique of an African politics of purity that makes no room for modernity, despite modernity’s desirability for humanity at large and Africa in particular. Táíwò writes that “Because modernity is conflated with Westernism and with ‘whiteness’—and all three with colonialism—decolonisation has become a catch-all idea to tackle anything with any, even minor, association with the ‘West’” (xvi).

Modernity, though, as Táíwò persuasively demonstrates throughout his corpus, is not an intrinsically “Western,” white, or colonial affair. As argued in How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa, modernity was a topic of Euro-African cultural exchange, both given contextually African articulations and adaptations by Africans and spread by them prior to European colonialism in Africa. To take “modernity” as intrinsically European or colonial, then, is to misconstrue both its philosophical contents and its historical unfolding. Further, to assert that modernity is specifically a product of colonialism is to double down on these errors, since colonialism proper is an effort to exclude the colonised from modernity’s guarantees: “…colonialism was characterized by the denial to the colonised of the modern philosophical tenet of political legitimacy, which insists that no-one should have to obey the rule of any government to which she has not consented” (33). Modernity is opposed to colonialism, which suggests prima facie that colonialism’s termination through decolonisation₁ calls for the development of modernity in former colonies; an embrace of modernity, rather than decolonisation₂, is on this account the logical consequent of successful decolonisation₁.

To this end, Táíwò offers a compelling account of classic African philosophers of decolonisation as proponents of modernity and critics of decolonisation₂. Táíwò presents a strong case for this in the context of Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

From there, Táíwò takes on two of the leading lights in the post-independence African decolonisation discourse, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Kwasi Wiredu, where language takes center stage. While Táíwò is sympathetic to the issues that drove Ngũgĩ to proffer the project of “decolonising the mind” and Wiredu that of “conceptual decolonization,” he offers a rigorous working through of the complications that each entails, which for students of African philosophy is a particular highlight of Against Decolonisation. In short, Táíwò clearly demonstrates that, as articulated, the virtues of these approaches stem from venturing well beyond the scope of decolonisation₂, while their biggest vices are to be found in their fetishizing of de-Westernization where the a priori value of such is fallaciously assumed and its a posteriori impacts involve clouding the discourse on African modernity.

Taking African agency seriously would involve, Táíwò contends, assuming that Africans should judge for themselves whether traditional ideas and institutions are preferable to ideas and institutions of foreign or mixed provenance. In the philosophical discourse on decolonisation, Táíwò notes that “other than thinkers like Wiredu and the late Kwame Gyekye, it is rare among academic philosophers to find proponents of decolonising who lay out defects in their indigenous heritage and how such are to be resolved” (175). Even if it were granted that philosophical decolonisation ought to be primarily concerned with unearthing fruitful concepts autochthonous to communities later colonized, philosophizing through these concepts call for their assessment in light of competing concepts, and the a priori assumption of autochthonism either preempts or distorts such assessment.

“The tragedy of decolonisation₂,” Táíwò concludes, “is that it cannot condone the idea of any Africans embracing modernity as their own and seeking ways of redeeming its promise for their societies. Perhaps the most pernicious wall erected by decolonisation is the truncating of the history of Africa’s rich and long engagement with modernity” (192). Since Africa must be modern, and decolonisation₂ rejects or obfuscates modernity, Africa must reject decolonisation₂.

Assessing the Decolonisation Trope

Insofar as Táíwò’s case is against the ongoing use of the notion of decolonisation in general, as opposed to merely a polemic against decolonisation₂, central to it is taking seriously African agency in having achieved decolonisation₁. Failure to do this, alongside the independent ills of decolonisation₂, distorts not only the success of anti-colonial struggles but the failures of African polities and leaders to travel more felicitous post-independence paths. Táíwò writes:

[T]o turn colonialism into the most important or even the only element in explaining social phenomena in Africa cannot be plausible, adequate or correct. This is, for me, probably the most vexing aspect of the decolonisation trope. Because colonialism is adopted as the single or dominant axis on which to plot the continent’s history and events post-colonisation—and no serious attention is paid to the fractures, cleavages and different historicities as colonialism evolved—the many divergences that characterize it are glossed over in most analyses.

(148)

Insisting on decolonisation as a post-independence telos and/or method crowds out the possibility of imagining African nations and politics otherwise. If all one may entertain are the most efficient means of decolonising, then one is left with a purely negative project, rather than the much more daunting task of articulating positive alternatives. Given that it is the nature of positivity and negativity to be co-determining in producing human acts and ideas (one cannot posit x without some sense of negating what is not x, and vice versa), the upshot is simply the underdevelopment of positive possibilities and a hypertrophy of overwrought negativities.

However, while it is certainly the case that many avatars of the decolonisation trope regard decolonisation as an absolute value, assessing the value of the trope itself requires assessing, as well, its meaning where its value is not presumed to be absolute. In sum, there is the question of whether, for instance, a sense of decolonisation can be imagined which is compatible with Táíwò’s call for modernity. Given Táíwò’s cogent advocacy of modernity, can we not envision a commitment to decolonisation that opts for modernity where decolonisation and modernity come into conflict?

Here, of course, Táíwò has already provided an initial answer: modernity and decolonisation₁ are compatible, indeed, to the point where the latter is a prerequisite to achieving the former. Since Táíwò is a proponent of decolonisation₁, his case against “decolonisation” is in effect an argument against decolonisation_~1, where the subscript “~1” indicates “not 1.” That is to say, Táíwò is against the invocation of any notion decolonisation other than decolonisation₁. Yet we may ask, what of the possibility of a decolonisation₃, or decolonisation_n, which could redeem the decolonisation trope in light of Táíwò’s critique? Certainly, the definitions of decolonisation₁ (“making a colony into a self-governing entity…”) and decolonisation₂ (“forcing an ex-colony to forswear [whatever] retains even the slightest whiff of the colonial past”) do not constitute a strict dichotomy. There is much which meets neither definition. The question is why alternative conceptions should also be understood as conceptions of decolonisation; what makes them decolonising?

Before positing suggestions on other senses “decolonisation” might take, let us consider one case already examined by Táíwò, that of Wiredu’s call for conceptual decolonisation. As Táíwò repeatedly demonstrates, Wireduian decolonisation is a critical endeavor, one which rejects autochthonism since the inherited “Western” concept and its prospective indigenous synonyms have to be evaluated in relation to each other. Wiredu does not sign off on the a priori assumption that concepts in the languages of the colonisers are necessarily inferior to indigenous alternatives, nor that indigenous alternatives cannot themselves be inferior. Indeed, Wireduian decolonisation implies that the inquirer might find the use of “Western” concepts a fortiori desirable once this process of conceptual decolonisation has been undertaken. Táíwò quotes Zeyad el Nabolsy’s claim that

Wiredu defines decolonisation in procedural terms, i.e., for Wiredu decolonisation has been undertaken successfully when the conceptual frameworks which have been inherited from the colonial past have been critically examined. …Many of those who draw on Wiredu misunderstand this point by taking him to be claiming that decolonisation is defined in substantive terms… [where] what matters most… is the end result, i.e., the abandonment of the conceptual frameworks which have been inherited from the colonial past.

(95)

If this is so, isn’t it simply the case that Wiredu is a proponent of “decolonisation” but not decolonisation₂? Wiredu’s decolonisation is, perhaps, decolonisation_W. Insofar as Táíwò offers a provocative and rigorous critique of Wiredu, this part of the text supports his case against decolonisation_~1, but it undermines the text’s seeming assumption that decolonisation_~1 is interchangeable with decolonisation₂.

An alternative briefly addressed by Táíwò is “decoloniality.” Táíwò is dubious of the value of this concept but refrains from elaborating on it, since its proponents do regard it as conceptually distinct from decolonisation. I share Táíwò’s dubiety about the concept; what is decoloniality if its achievement is not “decolonising”? It has long struck me as a grammatical misfit that works in slogans but in and of itself adds nothing meaningful that its antecedent concept, coloniality, does not already bring to the table.

Nonetheless, while Táíwò’s text certainly provides indirect support for the notion that the idea of coloniality would be subject to overuse in the African context which would inhibit taking African agency seriously, on their face these are reasons not to abuse the coloniality concept rather than reasons to eschew it. From there, any number of senses of decolonisation can in principle be proffered that center around the eradication or abolition of coloniality, as opposed to colonialism proper (as in decolonisation₁) or any tinge of inheritance from the colonial period (as in decolonisation₂). If coloniality is defined such that the use of creolized languages, liberal democratic institutions, “Western” philosophical concepts, and the like are understood to not necessarily be tokens of coloniality, or more broadly evidence that coloniality has not been eradicated, then a meaningful sense of decolonisation could be developed that puts forth emphasis on eradicating what has an enduring colonial function but not simply a colonial “tinge.”

There is much further to unpack here that constraints of space prohibit, so let me cut to the chase. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we articulate coloniality₂ as “those inheritances from colonial histories that inhibit the flourishing of modernity.” Let us define decolonisation_n as “efforts to facilitate the eradication of coloniality₂.” From this, it seems to follow that Táíwò’s contentions do not entail that the decolonisation trope must be abandoned, since in principle this trope could take the form of decolonisation_n, and by the letter of these definitions, it would seem that Táíwò is a proponent of decolonisation_n.

Does this resolve the matter of whether the decolonisation trope ought to be abandoned? Certainly not. For one, it is one thing to suggest a new sense of a term and quite another to implement and popularize it. Perhaps, further, Táíwò is correct that the baggage of the decolonisation₂ concept has muddied the waters to the point where it would be more effective to envision conceptual alternatives that adopt other tropes or develop new ones. Yet it must also be acknowledged that the broader problems with the decolonisation trope are common to many tropes. Suppose, for instance, that one was to suggest “abolition” as an alternative formulation to decolonisation, as many scholars have done (though not necessarily viewing these terms as mutually exclusive). Already, the literature on “abolition” is rife with vagueness and equivocation, just as is the literature on decolonisation.

By extension, of course, we must note that Táíwò’s argumentative strategy rests on a commitment to the trope of modernity. In this regard, his commitment is not unique, since proponents of decolonisation₂ and decoloniality are just as steadfast in employing this trope as is Táíwò. Táíwò, indeed, has the virtue of having elaborated an extraordinarily clear and developed philosophical account of modernity as a philosophical concept as well as the history of that concept’s relation both to Africa and to colonialism. But it is fair to raise the issue that Táíwò’s account of modernity diverges in meaning considerably from the sense of that term employed by many proponents of decolonisation₂ and decoloniality. The latter tend to draw heavily on 20^th-century European notions of modernity which incorporate quite a bit more than the three basic tenets of modernity as Táíwò conceives it. It is fair to raise the issue that Táíwò may have modernity₁ in mind while in dialogue with those who have modernity₂ in mind. I am generally sympathetic, though with reservations that don’t bear elaboration here, to Táíwò’s case for why we should understand “modernity” to denote what Táíwò understands it to mean. But if the benefits of the modernity trope rest at least in part on wresting its meaning away from those who have overstretched or abused the concept, that suggests at least in principle that defending modernity can be compatible with defending some concept of decolonisation that Táíwò’s excellent polemic has not yet refuted.

My criticism, then, does not resolve the matter of whether the decolonisation trope ought to be abandoned; to show that a more valuable conception of a concept could be meaningfully employed does nothing to show whether efforts to instantiate such a concept would engender more benefit than harm. Táíwò has presented a clear case for why we might consider the decolonisation trope, at least in the African context, to cause more harm than benefit.

The upshot, then, is that taking this critique of the text seriously doesn’t shift the onus back to Táíwò. As I see it, it simply repeats Táíwò’s calls for “the decolonisers” to offer a clearer account of their view and its relation to modernity, engaging Táíwò’s broader corpus. I have endeavored to touch on those issues here, though there is much more to be said. Táíwò’s text speaks to concerns I have raised elsewhere about the notion of the decolonial attitude superseding the theoretical attitude and the problem of decolonisation in the spirit of seriousness. A simple articulation of the matter, to borrow the concept offered by Lewis Gordon, is that decolonial theory can be conceived of as a discipline that, like any other, is prone to tendencies toward disciplinary decadence. For my part, I don’t find Táíwò’s case compelling enough to give up on the project about thinking about the meaning of decolonisation post-independence. But for those engaged in that project, reckoning seriously with Táíwò’s text may be necessary to avoid a fate wherein the tropes of decolonisation and decoloniality function, ultimately, to reinforce conditions of coloniality.

Thomas Meagher

Thomas Meagher is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Sam Houston State University. He specializes in Africana philosophy, philosophy of race, phenomenology, political theory, existentialism, and philosophy of science. Meagher earned his PhD at the University of Connecticut in 2018 and has previously been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Quinnipiac University, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and a W. E. B. Du Bois Visiting Scholar Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.