Which Decolonization? Theorizing Decolonization beyond Decoloniality and its Critics

ABSTRACT The debate on decolonial thought has reached an unhelpful stalemate. A core problem in assessing decolonial thought is that the term ‘decolonization’ has been stretched so widely that it now allows for many competing uses. For some critics of decolonial thought such as Nigerian philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, this overuse points to conceptual bankruptcy. For admirers, by contrast, it is this very conceptual reach and capacity to suture together vast histories under a single interpretive rubric that makes the ‘decolonial’ conceptually powerful. This article takes stock of what has been lost with this stalemate. It asks what might be gained by foregrounding the variation and disagreement about what decolonization means within anticolonial/decolonial political theories and politics. Building on a framework of political theories of decolonization, the author argues that the stalemate can be resolved by paying greater attention to the conceptual and political‐economic variations and differing political futures mapped out in different meanings of colonialism and decolonization. The article presents two models of decolonization to highlight the political stakes of the resonances and tensions between them, arguing that addressing the question of ‘which decolonization?’ can move the debate forward.