“After Frankfurt”: Sedimentations, Colonialism, and Critical Theory

Over the last two decades, “decolonization” has emerged as a pervasive trope in the humanities and social sciences. These invocations of “decolonization” raise important questions: What do these attempts at “decolonization” imply about concepts, about ideas and categories, institutions and practices? Does this theoretical framing of questions about colonialism and its impress in theoretical forms truly capture the actual role of historical sedimentation in conceptual construction? This essay addresses these questions and offers an alternative account of concepts shot through with colonial sediments and ruination by retrieving the dialectical legacy of Critical Theory “after Frankfurt.”