Decolonizing Narratives Archives | Contending Modernities

On Crossroads: Learnings from Modernity, Feminisms, and Transrational Peace

Paula Facci
June 29, 2018

Scholars and practitioners of feminist, gender, and critical race theory have long questioned the self-righteousness, rigid categorizations, and violence of dominant modern discourse.

The Modernity of Witchcraft Asylum Claims

Series: Decolonizing Narratives

Benjamin Lawrance
May 31, 2018June 1, 2018

It’s hard to understand why vodou remains so alien a concept to refugee adjudicators, particularly as the religious observance is so well documented by ethnographers and anthropologists.

Modernity, Women, and War: Struggles for Peace and Democracy in the Middle East

Series: Decolonizing Narratives

Nisa Goksel
May 25, 2018October 4, 2018

While the discourse of spreading democracy to the Middle East goes hand in hand with “saving” women victims of Islamic fundamentalism, current wars create a destabilizing terrain for existing modern gender discourses.

‘Not Me, Not That’: Thinking Race and Catholic Modernity

Series: Decolonizing Narratives

Brenna Moore
December 1, 2017August 7, 2019

Subaltern voices are not just about “diversity,” but about approximating a more honest, rich and enlarged sense of truth and the world.

Forget Pinkwashing, its Brownwashing Time: Self-Orientalizing on the US Campus

Series: Decolonizing Narratives

Gil Hochberg
November 24, 2017January 25, 2024

First I saw a large portrait of a Native American wearing a traditional headdress, with the word “Judah” written across it. Here, brown-washing and self-orientalism perform political work, masking settler colonialism with the language and images of nativism.

Eternal Enmities: A Jewish Decolonial Re-Evaluation of Western Altruism

Series: Decolonizing Narratives

Santiago Slabodsky
October 31, 2017February 1, 2024

The Jewish-Muslim case is one of many that invite us to unveil what has been hidden, contest what has been naturalized, and move beyond modern/colonial liberal narratives.