● THE UNIVERSAL UNDRESSING ●
I OPEN MY EYES. Blink… blink again. I look around, my senses taken awash with the drone of a hairdryer and countless parents on their phones instead of watching their children swim laps at the local pool.
I too am guilty of real-life neglect, putting my eyes to the laptop screen at the expense of witnessing my kids' progress at backstroke. And then – in a surreal instant echoing what friends of a distant yesteryear used to say to me – I think amidst the dozens of colored Christmas cards hanging over my bald head, "THAT'S THE THING!",
THAT'S THE THING: the ability to choose your distractions. For the longest time, I thought distraction's core was the essential element driving the psyche, only to learn that some people do not possess the luxury of tailored distractions. Nope, some people are too busy dying: if not from starvation, lack of water, or preventable diseases, they're dying to be noticed in a world that has no use for them other than disposable economic utility.
This type of reality is called Coloniality. The opposite is called Decoloniality.
Apart from the fact this book forms part of a university course requirement, its true origins lie with the birth of modern economic history, which, for all practical purposes, started with the proliferation of a mercantile capitalist economy via Western European seaboard nations five hundred-plus years ago. World history has subsequently blitzkrieged through vicious machinations. At the present end of that black rainbow crafted from money, theory, death, and hope sits today's objective reality, the nature of which shouts 'distraction!' while slapping you in the face with ubiquitous inequality.
Built on five hundred years of Heart Of Darkness-esque history, this book aims to reflect the lives of people who, like me, are starting to understand how vicious and confused humanity can be. It's not that our species' appetite for destruction was ever in doubt – the economic term planned obsolescence is as polite a euphemism to describe this as possible – but cynicism can be usurped if will exists, and this book… well, this book is a veritable shrine to WILL.
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Hailing from around the world, this book's contributors have taken time out of their busy schedules and lives to reflect on those busy schedules and lives. Having either volunteered, agreed to, or been playfully coerced into offering grassroots voices on what Coloniality and Decoloniality mean to them and the communities they share, these brave people have been offered an open mandate to reflect on how Coloniality/Decoloniality influences their daily lives. It goes without saying that I'm inexpressibly thankful to each of them for their love, courage, and desire to articulate versions of a more inclusive, better world for everyone.
This book's layout is designed to work from the local to the international. Following the book's introduction (What is Decoloniality?), the first article (penned by 2017 Ernest Cole Award for Photography winner Daylin Paul) discusses the effects of Coloniality in a South African context. Each succeeding article branches out to include the African colonial condition as experienced by people living in the Southern and Northern hemispheres. This was done intentionally to illustrate that Coloniality (and hence, Decoloniality) is a global issue requiring global solutions (stemming from collaborative thinking and implementation) that can be implemented from a grassroots level through to the highest tiers of society.
As the book's editor, I have spent substantial time with each contributor, either in person or online. It goes without saying the same holds for what material they submitted. Concerning the book's content, I felt it essential that each contributor's thoughts made it to the page according to their individual contexts, all of which were informed by their respective life experiences along with information I provided to bring this life-affirming project to print.
As much as the book production process was shared democratically between the article contributors and me, Decolonial thought requires that ALL participants (which in this case means YOU) take an active role in sustaining whatever momentum results. This is enabled in a surface-level sense by me offering Questions for Reflection at the end of each article, the purpose being to stoke latent or active thoughts into actionable context. I urge you to take sufficient time when considering the scope of each piece and to do so equally when weighing up your thoughts against the questions and how they relate to your context.
And with that, please join us for a journey into the Heart of Lightness. May our shared trip – starting with this book and growing into whatever must result – be one of sharing, learning, growing, and the birth of much actionable hope.
- Nicholas Pansegrouw, January 2022