Assimilation, difference and debating decolonial theory in Africa

In his talk, Suren Pillay explores how Latin American decolonial theory is used to interpret colonial legacies in contemporary Africa. For Latin American decolonial theory, colonialism is characterised by enforced assimilation enacted through epistemic violence. It self-consciously rejects thinking about colonialism as historically specific in favor of the more abstract concept of coloniality.

When Latin American decolonial theory travels to Africa, its emphasis on colonial assimilation obscures a significant experience of colonialism that enforced difference rather than assimilation.

Pillay discusses the key underpinnings of apartheid education as a form of colonial education, in order to show how colonialism was responsive to particular conditions and combined both epistemology and institutions. To think the problem of colonialism in the present requires a comparative account of the problem of colonialism that embraces both the history of assimilation and the history of difference in way that survives colonial assimilation.

Suren Pillay is the A C Jordan Chair and Director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. His research focusses on political violence, citizenship and justice claims; and the politics of knowledge production, and intellectual history. His most resent book is “Predicaments of Knowledge: Decolonisation and Deracialisation in Universities” Wits University Press (2024).

Moderator: Lise Rakner (UiB)