Decolonization’s Discontents: Dissent and Opposition in the Aftermath of Independence

September 22-23, 2023

This conference is closed to the public.

Decolonization did not lead smoothly or seamlessly into a world of independent nation-states, and many anticolonial leaders, activists, and communities were left disappointed by the societies and politics that emerged. This workshop explores decolonization as a moment of simultaneous expansion and contraction for political and social possibility. “Decolonization’s Discontents” centers those who dissented against emerging (inter)national socio-political norms, thereby interrogating decolonization’s limitations, the tensions between anticolonial and postcolonial visions of personhood and nationhood, and lingering opportunities for transnational activism in a milieu increasingly divided by nation-state borders and politics. 
 
This workshop seeks to explore oppositional politics and modes of dissent in the era of decolonization. Much has been written about competing and overlapping forms of mobilization that arose as colonial subjects and organizations (both elite and non-elite) fought for political independence across the colonized world, with focus on intra-colonial, regional, and global forms of activism and circuits of knowledge. But what happened after the “moment” of decolonization? Decolonization necessitated the triumph of certain nationalist visions and political frameworks over others, often led by the individuals and groups with whom former colonial powers were most willing to negotiate. In turn, these groups have often dominated narratives in and of colonies-turned-states, in part because they were positioned to actively shape emerging national histories of local independence struggles. In consequence, far less attention has been paid to the afterlives of those individuals and groups that were excluded from new state bureaucracies and positions of influence. Yet many of them continued their activities in a variety of forms – as political parties, civil society organizations, guerilla movements, the list goes on.  
 
This workshop will delve into the ways that oppositional groups, drawing on longer lineages of anticolonial thought and practice, continued to pursue both utopian and practical schemes for social and political change in and across newly independent states.

Cosponsored by Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.