Sujata Patel

Is there an anti-colonial social theory? I believe there is. In this ms., I will map and describe, explain and dissect anti-colonial social theory’s beginnings and locations in multiple colonised/imperialised geographies. I define anti-colonial social theory as a viewpoint that explores the way power, authority and domination imbricate itself within knowledge while asserting a need to displace it for new alternative(s) that reflect the experiences of the colonised other. I also suggest anti-colonial social theory is intimately linked with anti-colonial thought, which should be understood as a set of proto-philosophical/sociological ideas. Additionally, I outline some of the theoretical challenges that anti-colonial social theory confronts as its diverse and manifold methodologies and perspectives are now recognised, organised and cohered into a body of thought. The proposed ms. will elaborate how anti-colonial social theory is a standpoint that constantly reformulates itself as geopolitics defines it as a protagonist. Its attributes are: an ontological claim that we live in a colonial/imperial world; a search for a methodology to comprehend the way colonised power frames dominant/hegemonic and an elaboration of methods to debunk these; a quest to constitute new methods to conceive of the colonised social and thereby to reframe ways to think. It offers us critical methodologies to displace existing concepts and theories of modernity and design fresh ones based on the colonial.