Please tell us about your workshop (series) and the inspiration(s) behind it?

We are all funded through the SNF Doc.CH program and individually planned for a workshop within our projects. Realising that we work on different aspects of decolonization as a historical process, we decided to turn our individual workshops into a more coherent series. Organising this series together means that we continuously engage with methodological and historiographical questions regarding decolonization and work as a team, resisting the individualisation that unfortunately is part of our PhD journey. The first workshop asked how we archive decolonization and where to look for it. The upcoming second workshop interrogates how decolonization has been linked to teaching and communal learning. Workshops three and four will look at decolonization and the promises of development and the aesthetic and cultural imaginations of decolonization. 

What angles are you adopting in your approach? 

While bringing together scholars from different disciplines as well as practitioners, we understand decolonization as a historical formation. Decolonization as a process went beyond the formal transfer of power. It raised fundamental questions about the future and order of the world and until today, the discourse of decolonization continues to resonate, inspire, and compel. At the same time, it remains crucial to note that never has “decolonization” been an automatically liberating term. With our series, we want to think through, interrogate, and re-imagine the histories, political stakes, and potentialities of decolonization. In this sense, the “now” in the title of our series performs three tasks. First, it refers to the “now” burgeoning scholarship that illuminates the multidimensional histories of decolonization. Secondly, it throws its weight behind the more polemic calls for “decolonizing” hierarchies and structures of (settler-)colonialism which still endure in the present. And third, we critically ask how we might move forward towards different futures from the horizons of the “now” in which we find ourselves.
 

What impact do you hope the workshop will have on both your work and the work of the participants? 

We certainly hope to profit in our work from intellectually stimulating conversations. The larger point however is to create a community and forge personal connections that hopefully last beyond the framework of this series. We hope to go beyond the confines of academia in working with practitioners (artists, archivists, activists) and learn from their experiences in interacting with non-academic audiences. Lastly, we would like to build a digital platform with resources to learn about and teach decolonization.
 

Learn More about "Decolonization" Now 

Banner Image: Roel Coutinho, "A teacher with his pupils in the liberated areas," Guinea-Bissau and Senegal Photographs (1973 - 1974), via Wikimedia.