wearyourvoicemag | My turn to state an equation: colonization = “thing-ification.” – Aimé Césaire
The use of social media
as a powerful tool for free education on various topics continually
rises, with definitions, experiential narratives, and resources being
shared through Twitter threads, short videos, Facebook statuses, and
even memes. And while this is a mostly positive phenomena, there seems
to be a trend of words, and thus words’ associated theories, being used
misguidedly.
Often, this is a simple case of
fighting character limits and the loss of nuance that occurs through
online mediums, and other times it seems a phenomena of genuine
miseducation and confusion. Words like intersectionality, decolonize, imperialism, socialism, and other loaded terms that come with decades of jargon are at times applied to everything, and their actual meaning is lost.
Observing this pattern is what lead
me to the idea of an article series titled “Words Mean Things,” wherein
each month I choose a different word and discuss the theories, uses,
theorists, examples, applications, and praxis surrounding it. The goal
is to do this as concisely as possible and, understanding these will
never be wholly conclusive of all definitions, applications, and
examples of certain words, to deliver small primers that exist as
resources to lead readers to study deeper. I often say that words mean everything, and then anything, just before meaning nothing.
Colonialism
Colonialism is a system of land
occupation and theft, labor exploitation, and/or resource dependency
that is to blame for much of our modern concepts of racialization. It is
an act of dominance in which a forceful state overtakes a “weaker”
state; this means that colonization is the act of forcefully stripping
sovereignty of a country through acquisition of land, resources, raw
material, and governmental structures. Systems of colonialism are based
in notions of racial inferiority, as they as they perpetuate
white/European domination over non-white colonial subjects.
The most obvious (and broad) example
of colonialism is the expansion of Europe into Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, and the subsequent creation of colonies. Through violence and
manipulation, a relationship of control and influence
was exerted economically, socially, politically, religiously, and
culturally. In Jamaica, for example, the British empire invaded and
colonized the island in the mid-17th Century, and subsequently
established British colonial school systems, laws and regulations
creating dependency on Britain, and pushed European gender, religious,
and wardrobe norms onto the society.
There are various forms of
colonialism and colonial projects, but all involve some form of
domination, control, and/or influence on an indigenous population
through violence and/or manipulation. It is also important to note that
these various forms of colonialism often intersect and overlap, too. In
his 1972 essay “Discourse On Colonialism,” one of the most important pieces of writing I have ever read, writer Aimé Césaire states:
“Between colonizer and colonized
there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police,
taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance,
self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. No
human contact, but relations of domination and submission which turn the
colonizing man into a class-room monitor, an army sergeant, a prison
guard, a slave driver, and the indigenous man into an instrument of
production.”
