2021/05/27 by Adom Getachew, Каруна Мантена · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Political Economy and Marxism #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Indian History and Philosophy #Eurocentrism #Politics #Decolonization #Political philosophy #Sociology #Chatterjee #Epistemology #Postcolonialism (international relations) #Reading (process) #Aesthetics #Social science #Political science #Philosophy #Anthropology #Law #Linguistics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1215/26410478-9355193
openalex publication_date 2021/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract This essay surveys some recent attempts to decolonize political theory and engage with non-Western political thinkers and traditions, especially anticolonialism. The authors' concern is that these engagements remain too centered on Western political thought as the object of critique and analysis. Through a reading of Gandhi and Fanon, the authors argue that anticolonialism, while engaged in a critique of the West, also had a positive or reconstructive theoretical agenda, one that has been taken up in creative ways in postcolonial political thought. Taking cues from the work of Sudipta Kaviraj, Partha Chatterjee, and Mahmood Mamdani, the essay proposes an alternative mode of decolonizing political theory that takes as its central aim the generation of theory from the study of postcolonial politics. It argues for a historically attuned and comparative approach to postcolonial politics that aims to innovate new concepts and reanimate inherited ones. From this perspective, decolonizing political theory is less a recurring critique of Eurocentrism than an effort to shift the terrain of theorizing and thereby reinvigorate the practice of political theory as such.