healing the wounds and moving beyond |
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what is transcoloniality and transcolonial studies?"Transcolonial" is a term that appeared for the first time in the late 1990s and has been (re)invented ever since. Originally, it was an attempt at sharpening the postcolonial tool, which became somehow blunt with repeated use. In 1999, Harish Trivedi commented, in the introduction to the special issue of the Interventions, that the postcolonial is still a “white term”:
The postcolonial still bears the white historical burden of colonialism; the non-postcolonial is engaged instead with the newer and often quite autonomous problems and predicaments of independence, which through local refraction are rather more variegated in colour (1). The term "transcolonial" was thus an attempt at giving a stronger "colouration" to the terminology employed, stressing the protagonism of the colonised and the importance of the local and regional structures predating the colonisation. It could thus refer to the colonial transfers or links of solidarity between the elites of the colonised countries, especially in South Asia. The adjective may also refer to contacts or exchange between different colonies forming the same empire or belonging to different colonial empires. Nonetheless, I reemploy this term, attributing to it a modified meaning. Transcoloniality is for me the stage of Verwindung, an utmost liberation from the postcolonial frame of mind. This new meaning given to the term serves to form a basis for a larger project of transcolonial studies as a paradigm, completing the postcolonial one. The whole process encompasses thus three stages. 1. The colonial marked essentially by multiple forms of symbolic oppression, leading to 2. -- the postcolonial, marked partially by remembrance and renegotiation of that symbolic oppression, and partially by repeating its forms with or without significant variations. This is why a 3rd stage appears as indispensable, which is the criticism of the postcolonial status quo, understood typically not as the process of the renegotiation with the ex-metropolis, but as a local (cultural, political, social) establishment that appeared to fill up the gaps remaining after the withdrawal of the colonial power. At a certain stage of this reflection, I was asking myself if this 3rd stage deserves a proper denomination instead of the adjective still derived from the "colonial", to which only a new prefix is added. After a consideration based on my fragmentary case studies, I reach the conclusion that indeed this 3rd stage still presents some marks of the "colonial", as it puts into practice another renegotiation using the instruments built up during the postcolonial stage. In other words, transcolonial is still built on the groundwork of the postcolonial: it uses similar modalities of expression (such as a novel written in colonial/postcolonial language), institutions (such as a museum - see my Malaysian case), etc. Nonetheless, I can see some traits that characterise the transcolonial as a separate stage of Verwindung - with all the semantic undertones of this philosophical term. In the tradition going from Heidegger to Vattimo, Verwindung brings such connotations as transgressing the limitations of the previous state, overwhelming, and ultimate healing. In this sense, at least in some optimistic approaches, the transcolonial may bring the final healing of the colonial wounds, redoubled by those inflicted by the new political, social and economic powers that occupied the place of the colonial agents. Typically, it is connected to a new generation that ignores the colonial oppression, but on the other hand, remains painfully conscious of the deficiencies and shortcomings of the postcolonial generation. It is against these postcolonial fathers (often direct heirs of the colonial patriarchates) that the transcolonial generation revolts. In a chapter dedicated to the intertextual relation between a short story of Honwana and that of Ondjaki, I tried to illustrate this idea: The ethical stake of the transcolonial studies is no longer that of establishing justice, as it allegedly was the case of the postcolonial theory, but that of projecting and fostering an achievable Utopia of establishing horizontal relationships instead of the subaltern condition inscribed in pyramidal structures of dependence. The only transcolonial vindication is that of creating legacies, and the literary criticism should elaborate adequate patterns of reading to put this new message in the limelight. As the new texts cannot be pertinently read through the old lenses without losing their transformative potential, the methodological challenge of transcolonial theory consists in creating conceptual tools adopted to capture this cultural change. The crucial element of the new paradigm is the substitution of the former hierarchical structure of relationships, typical for the colonial society defined by the relations of hierarchical dependence generating the subaltern condition, with what may be resumed as a horizontal diagram of relationships. The well-known Spivakian category of the subaltern ceased to be productive. The question is no longer to create space for the silenced discourse of subalternity, but to explore – and partially to invent or foster the invention of – a new discourse of horizontality. (2) Transcolonial studies deal thus with a heritage of memory and specific forms of post-memory, similar to those present in Holocaust studies. Yet I must still insist that concomitantly with a heritage of victimhood, there is also a heritage of violence: perhaps similar to inherited patterns of domestic violence studied by psychologists. Fatema Mernissi has suggestively exposed these double ends of the colonial and postcolonial victimhood in her perspicacious vision of Maghrebian masculinities. Her project of reconstructing intimacy is on the other hand an excellent example of the transcolonial as the ultimate healing of the oppressed culture. Curiously, the transcolonial renegotiation, addressed rather to local oppressors than to the metropolitan ones, often brings a surprising recuperation and development of the cultural and intellectual heritage of the former oppressor. Such striking traits are to be discovered in the pronounced Gallicism of Meddeb and other Maghrebian intellectuals. Numerous aspects of the transcolonial phenomena remain thus peculiar. Redesigning global maps is one of these characteristic traits. One of the main achievements of the transcolonial stage is the final erasure of the colonial palimpsests. A transcolonial culture redesigns its vision of the world in an utmost oblivion of the coordinates dictated by the ex-metropolis. Not only is the scheme of alliances and animosities changed, but also new external zones of activity are discovered. The transcolonial culture becomes able to participate in globalisation as an autonomous entity. My view on the transcolonial process focuses thus on the emergence of an independent imago mundi in the formerly colonised culture. I consider that the defining trait of the colonial empire is its pretension to mediate the relationships between the subdued culture and the global context. As a consequence of this specific kind of symbolic violence, postcolonial cultures initially maintained the global maps and patterns of relationships created for them by the ex-empires. Officially promoted programs, such as Francophony and Lusophony, were designed to conserve the phantasmal outlines of the empires that had ceased to exist as political realities. But during the last decade or so, such programs as the Lusophony have not only been criticised, but also - at least partially - replaced. A boldly expressed program of dismantling the Luophony has been formulated by a group of Brazilian scholars in search of their African roots. Their return to "Afro-rhizome" is supposed to establish an alternative in relation to the Lusophone system: so-called "Atlantic convergence" ("convergência atlântica"). As I already mentioned, the transcolonial is marked by the emergence of a new set of problems and questions. The defining element is precisely the rupture of the link established by the most typical postcolonial activity: "writing back" to the ex-metropolis. Also, other forms of symbolic dependence, such as subscribing to the metropolitan canons or even adopting schools of literary criticism, should be taken into account. And in fact, such a process of creating autonomous canons and even schools of reading can be observed. Finally, a striking trait, apparently connected with many transcolonial phenomena, is a propensity to symbolic expansion. Nearly as if the transolonial recuperated some initial trait of the colonial. In the study concerning the transcolonial museum, I've reached a striking conclusion that, in a certain way, it recuperates the typical traits of the colonial exposition and puts into practice similar strategies of manipulation to build images of symbolic supremacy on a planetary macroscale. During the last decade, Fatema Mernissi, the feminist writer I've just mentioned, has been interested not only in Moroccan intimacies. Her increased prestige and symbolic power have taken her as far as Bahrain and made her responsible not only for her local or regional context but for the healing of a global Arabic culture. Chronologically, I would say that transcolonial studies deal essentially with a very recent period, even if I tried to enlarge the scope by studying Brazil, a country that faced its decolonisation very early and, as a consequence, started to rebuild its peculiar mapamundi much earlier than the remaining parts of the ex-Portuguese empire. The precise chronological frames must evidently vary for different regions, but roughly I would say the transcolonial period starts about the second half of the 90ties or coincides with the turn of the millennium. For a decade or so, the "death" of the postcolonial paradigm has been repeatedly announced. It is no longer possible to explain the cultural reality in many regions of the world as a continuous process of renegotiation between ex-metropolis and ex-colonies. What determines the transcolonial state of mind is the return to diverse problems that previously had been covered, firstly by the fact of colonial symbolic violence and secondly by the necessity of its postcolonial renegotiation. With the advent of the transcolonial, many issues swept under the carpet reemerge, many dimensions of pluralism reduced to the postcolonial fictions of nationhood claim their right to exist, as I try to show in my collected case studies. References: (1) Harish Trivedi, "The postcolonial or the transcolonial? Location and language”, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 1 (1999), no 2, p. 269. (2) Ewa Lukaszyk, “Ondjaki's classmates read Honwana: towards a transcolonial theory”, World Literature and the Postcolonial: Narratives of (Neo)Colonization in a Globalized World, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis (ed.), Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler, 2020, p. 178. how do I contribute to this field?The term "transcolonial" has been present in my writings for almost a decade. In 2015-2016, at the beginning of the second period of the "Law and Justice" party rule in Poland, when I was still a professor employed at the University of Warsaw, the intellectual elite of the country started progressively to gain the awareness that the country was missing its historical opportunity, i.e. our place in the European Union, the economic progress we achieved, the integration in Western civilization that had been the dream of the former generations. The shocking awareness that many people refused to admit was that, mentally, we never moved away from the colonial shadow of Russia. Recent developments in Polish politics and social dynamics make me more and more persuaded about the need for transcolonial rethinking, even away from the regions traditionally conceptualised as "postcolonial".
In parallel, I started to muse on the transcolonial becoming of Africa. It gave me an ample field to research missed opportunities, cases of stagnation, and failures to embrace the chances. Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony and a postcolonial state in permanent crisis, became my main transcolonial workshop, yet I strive to enlarge my scope to include, progressively, a wider range of situations and developments. This is how I have gathered various elements for a theoretical concept of transcoloniality as a stage of healing, reconnecting with deeper temporalities, contrasting with the shallow time of colonial/postcolonial cycles, separating African cultures from their millenial roots and launching them unarmed and unprepared on the ways of democracy and progress without any connection with their intimate imageries. The postcolonial decades brought countless disillusions to the world: civil wars instead of peace, misery instead of abundance, dictatorships instead of liberty. How could they leave their painful postcoloniality behind and become transcolonial? I mused on the importance of literature as a tool of performing this crucial turn between the (stagnant) postcoloniality and (vibrant, dynamic) transcoloniality. In such papers and chapters as that dedicated to the passage from Honwana's decolonial short story to the transcolonial text of Ondjaki, I tried to capture the emergence of horizontal networks of partnerships replacing the hierarchical structures of hegemony and subalternity in colonial realities, translated by postcolonial instincts of paternalism and clientelism that could be observed in many parts of Africa. Currently, I work on a more abstract approach, asking what the implications of transcoloniality are for global literary criticism. The move from postcolonial to transcolonial reading implies further, much more radical pluralisation of criteria of literary judgement, striving to encompass the disparity of aesthetic histories. |
ongoing research
Matchundadi and transcoloniality: a West African masculinity conundrum
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This research is inspired by the thematic and methodological perspectives developed in the orbit of the influential journal Men and Masculinities. I focus on Guinea-Bissau, yet treat the country as an exemplification of a larger problem, dealing with the negative role played by male gender constructs in postcolonial stagnation experienced in many parts of Africa. Postcolonial theories, in the classical assertion, often spoke of the emasculation of the natives and the manipulation of local gender concepts as a tool of dominance. On the other hand, very little attention, at least in the English-speaking mainstream research, has been paid to quite a different mechanism of postcolonial oppression: the construct of hypermasculinity issued from the chaos of decolonial struggles, usurping special rights and claiming impunity on the expense of other men. The acceptance of such a hyperbolised gender construct, perfectly exemplified in the Guinean concept of omi matchu, introduces new disequilibrium, leading to postcolonial stagnation and deficiency of democratic structures that Guinea-Bissau's recent history exemplifies so well. In this perspective, transcoloniality appears as a profound reinvention of gender identity and power relations (between men themselves, not just between men and women). Narrations play a transformative role in this process of transcolonial quest for cultural equilibrium and new social dynamics: they seek to neutralise the confrontational, decolonial legacies and replace them with a new concept of creative, productive, and transformative masculinity.
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Transcolonial rethinking of time. The quest for harmony beyond the fractious present of Guinea-Bissau
Transcoloniality and Positive Justice for Development in Africa, Agbakoba et al. (eds.), Routledge 2025.
The transcolonial stage marks the closure of a triadic cycle: colonial – decolonial – postcolonial. Each of the elements of this cycle was marked by fractured and multiplied reflections of the basic pattern of violence and injustice introduced by the irruption of the colonizing power. Those patterns, similarly to any other cultural content, were learned, mimicked, and repeated, in full awareness or quite inadvertently, by the individuals involved in the colonial situation that did not leave anyone entirely innocent and unscathed.
What is more, the patterns of violence, exploitation and injustice found multiple refractions not only in their colonial configurations, but also along the postcolonial decades. The reproduction of flawed cultural patterns was particularly acute in the political turmoil that followed the independence. The trans-colonial healing requires thus a degree of radicality as well as creativity and self-critical insight necessary for the re-invention of basic cultural patterns. The stake is to overcome and transcend both colonialism and its postcolonial remnants, so that the African subject may cease to be determined by the colonial past and its consequences in order to acquire a dimension of fulfilled autonomy and spiritual self-sufficiency.
What is more, the patterns of violence, exploitation and injustice found multiple refractions not only in their colonial configurations, but also along the postcolonial decades. The reproduction of flawed cultural patterns was particularly acute in the political turmoil that followed the independence. The trans-colonial healing requires thus a degree of radicality as well as creativity and self-critical insight necessary for the re-invention of basic cultural patterns. The stake is to overcome and transcend both colonialism and its postcolonial remnants, so that the African subject may cease to be determined by the colonial past and its consequences in order to acquire a dimension of fulfilled autonomy and spiritual self-sufficiency.
Workshop organized by Prof. Joseph C. A. Agbakoba in the framework of his Humboldt Award. Prof. Dr Rudolf Schüßler, who hosted this event in the Department of Philosophy, University of Bayreuth, provided a framework of openness and hospitality to nest the African thought in the European context. Prof. Dr Bernard Matolino contributed with a keynote "Beyond Ubuntu. Rethinking Notions of Postcolonial-Justice". Prof. Dr Mechthild Nagel shared her insights between the theory and practice of the penitentiary/abolitionist approach in the keynote "In Sophia's Garden with Ludic Ubuntu Ethics". Dr Marita Rainsborough spoke of "Conflict Justice and Peace" in dialogue with the thought of Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. Dr Idachaba Philip Adah presented "Positive Justice and its Prospects for the Politics of Power Rotation in the Postcolonial Nigerian State. And then I spoke of the transcolonial rethinking of time in the literature of Guinea-Bissau. Other speakers, such as Anthony Chinaemerem Ajah and Uche Miriam Nwafor provided insights into transcolonial constructivism and the epistemic context of the Igbo.
On the second day of the workshop, Prof. Dr Mark Anstey shared his experience as mediator confronting Africa's toughest questions. With Prof. Dr Ferd-Harris Odimegwu and Dr Jeremiah Chidozie, we remained essentially in the Igbo context, discussing such notions as Ofo (traditional instances of truth and justice) and Ogu (the mystical/spiritual force of truth and justice). Dr Bernadetta Lanfranchi took us to the post-war context of Acholi (Uganda) rethinking the question of responsibility for mass violence. Dr Vincent Stephen Kabuk gave a trans-African approach to transformative justice speaking of various victim communities oppressed by major ethnic groups. With Atabor Augustine Akwu we got familiar with the notion of Ujeju - a traditional gathering of the Igala people, the "meeting of the eyes" that may provide cohesion to the ethnic group divided along the confessional fault lines.
Later on, we shifted to more technical aspects of justice. Prof. Dr Ike (Ferd-Harris) Odimegwu and Prof. Dr Ikenga Oraegbunam spoke of paradigm shifts in Nigerian penal system, moving beyond the double colonial legacy, that of the Sharia law introduced by the Islamic Fulani "first colonizers", and the British. Dr Collins Ajibo added the missing insight into the environmental justice, speaking of the impact of the extractive industries operating in Africa. Finally, as the closure of this enriching meeting of the minds, Prof. Dr Joseph C. A. Agbakoba presented his view of "Positive and Transformational Justice" sharing his "Notes on the Necessity and Conditions for Reconciliation and Concordance" and speaking of the Goodlife that cannot be achieved at the expense of any member of the society. Only in this way, the impi spirits (Zulu word for conflict, but also army divisions or regiments) may be cleansed and men may be pacified before they return to normal life.
my papers on transcoloniality
Quest for Afrotopia in late postcolonial Lusophone literature
A focus on Guinea-Bissau
Beyond Decolonial African Philosophy: Africanity, Afrotopia, and Transcolonial Perspectives,
Joseph Agbakoba and Marita Rainsborough (eds.), New York: Routledge, 2025.
Possibly, there is a necessary connection between striving for an Afrotopia and the emergence of a literary system. The literature of Guinea-Bissau is the youngest among the Lusophone African literatures. Guinean novels that appeared in the late 1990s (Mistida by Abdulai Silá, Kikia Matcho by Filinto de Barros) speak of the difficulties in formulating a clear Afrotopic vision, contrasting with the enthusiastic years of the decolonial fight against the Portuguese. The difficulty consists in the protagonists' inability of performing the crucial step from the revolutionary identity (“combatente”) to a new, constructive male role.
At various stages of this quest for an Afrotopia, the trans-colonial renegotiation, i.e. the liberation from dysfunctional symbolic schemes, becomes the pivotal element. With the death of the “combatente”, Guinea-Bissau should sever its link to decolonial schemes of male activity that found a disastrous sequel with a series of coups destabilising the local politics. It should also sever its dependence on external aid and abandon the prospects of emigration. A consistent Afrotopia must imply a profound trans-colonial reorganisation of symbolic coordinates, in such a way that the Africans may abandon the ways of thinking and acting according to the obsolete paradigms inherited both from the colonialism and the dysfunctional reality of the post-colonial decades. This is why it is so difficult to formulate it. The challenge of transformation nonetheless remains valid and is perhaps consubstantial with the challenge of writing under the conditions of material indigence, in the void of mobilising project.
Most importantly, Guinea Bissau, even in its condition of helplessness and failure, may be shown as a laboratory of transformative literature that may serve as an exemplification of processes going on in different parts of the trans-colonial world, struggling to heal the wounds of past symbolic oppression, and to move forward - against all the odds.
At various stages of this quest for an Afrotopia, the trans-colonial renegotiation, i.e. the liberation from dysfunctional symbolic schemes, becomes the pivotal element. With the death of the “combatente”, Guinea-Bissau should sever its link to decolonial schemes of male activity that found a disastrous sequel with a series of coups destabilising the local politics. It should also sever its dependence on external aid and abandon the prospects of emigration. A consistent Afrotopia must imply a profound trans-colonial reorganisation of symbolic coordinates, in such a way that the Africans may abandon the ways of thinking and acting according to the obsolete paradigms inherited both from the colonialism and the dysfunctional reality of the post-colonial decades. This is why it is so difficult to formulate it. The challenge of transformation nonetheless remains valid and is perhaps consubstantial with the challenge of writing under the conditions of material indigence, in the void of mobilising project.
Most importantly, Guinea Bissau, even in its condition of helplessness and failure, may be shown as a laboratory of transformative literature that may serve as an exemplification of processes going on in different parts of the trans-colonial world, struggling to heal the wounds of past symbolic oppression, and to move forward - against all the odds.
Ondjaki's classmates read Honwana.
Towards a transcolonial theory
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World Literature and the Postcolonial: Narratives of (Neo)Colonialization in a Globalized World, Elke Sturm-Trigonakis (ed.), J.B. Metzler, 2020, p. 171-180. ISBN 978-3-662-61785-4
In order to trace the stakes of transcolonial theory, the chapter explores the relationship between the colonial text of Luís Bernardo Honwana, Nós Matámos o Cão Tinhoso, and its reading in Ondjaki's short-story Nós Chorámos pelo Cão Tinhoso. The aim of transcolonial creative and interpretative practice is to search for innovative ways of deconstructing and replacing the hierarchical patterns, inherited from the colonial past and reproduced in the postcolonial reality, that frame the individuals as subordinate and superordinate. Instead, patterns of partnership and cooperation between equal, autonomous persons should be conceived and promoted. Such a new mentality is designed by Ondjaki in the narration depicting collective reading of Honwana's text by Angolan schoolchildren. The reinvented ritual of sacrificing the Mangy Dog (as a textual representation and not as a substitutive victim) is supposed to foster the formation of new communitarian bonds, healthier than those that characterized the “coming of age” of the colonial assimilados. |
Plural Guinea. In search of analytic categories for transcolonial West Africa
“Wielość Gwinei. W poszukiwaniu kategorii opisu dla transkolonialnej Afryki Zachodniej”, Intelektualiści afrykańscy wobec doświadczenia dyktatur, Wojciech Charchalis, Renata Diaz-Szmidt, Marcin Krawczuk, Małgorzata Szupejko (eds), Warszawa – Poznań, ASPRA-JR, 2018, p. 243-256. ISBN 978-83-7545-873-2
The central question asked in this article concerns the pertinence of a comparative transcolonial methodology for the study of two West-African countries: Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. The term “transcolonial” evokes two overlapping meanings. Firstly, it resumes the collaboration of local elites in the decolonizing processes across the arbitrary frontiers resulting from negotiations between European imperial powers paying little attention to African reality; secondly, it resumes the process of replacing the postcolonial mentality, based on the reproduction of subaltern patterns, by a new, horizontal diagram of relations based on partnership and collaboration between equal individuals. At the same time, the article results from a dialogue between two Polish researchers, Renata Diaz-Szmidt and the author. While Diaz-Szmidt's monograph on Equatorial Guinea accentuates the attempts at developing the concept of community along the paradigm of political nation, Łukaszyk reflects on the potential of tribal identities, often judged as perilous and silenced during the postcolonial period. Referring to various examples taken from recent literature created in Guinea Bissau (Abdulai Silá, Fafali Koudawo, Tony Tcheka, Filinto de Barros, Rui Jorge Semedo), the author sketches a vision of return to the forgotten, yet typically African values of local micro-community symbolized by the kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra).
Renata Díaz-Szmidt's unprecedented monograph on Equatorial Guinea (Gdzie jesteś, Gwineo? Próby kształtowania tożsamości narodowej w twórczości pisarzy z Gwinei Równikowej, Warszawa, Aspra-JR, 2017) provokes reflection on the categories appropriate for describing the African reality. On the other hand, my own research into another Guinea, a former Portuguese colony with its capital in Bissau, prompts me to build juxtapositions, dialogues and comparisons that may turn out to be polemical. Both countries are separated not only by the distance of several thousand kilometres and the past under the rule of various colonizers (Portugal and Spain), but also by the reality of modern transformations. However, every time we talk about difference, there are counter-arguments about similarity. Therefore, it seems tempting to consider the use of the concept of transcolonialism in both meanings of this term: on the one hand, it is about the re-intertwining of African destinies once divided between various empires, and on the other hand, it is about capturing the current state of the changes that have long ceased to be outlined in terms of the postcolonial “writing back” to the former metropolis, and started to signify rather the process of coming to terms with local violence and dictatorship. What is at stake is the liberation not so much from the past colonial dependence as from the post-colonial state of mind that can be considered the basis for a number of African dictatorships in the first decades of independence. In this context, the figure of an intellectual comes forth not so much in the role of a provider of solutions, but above all as the creator of a new state of mind, different from the postcolonial mentality. His or her main feature, in my understanding, is to provide a comprehension of the fractal proliferation of forms of violence constituting widespread reactions either to the colonial abuse lived formerly and transmitted as painful and diminishing memory or, paradoxically, to formerly employed forms of resistance against the colonizer. |
From subalternity to horizontal diagrams of relations. Towards the study of transcolonial processes
"Od podległości do horyzontalnego diagramu relacji. W stronę studium procesów transkolonialnych", Debaty Artes Liberales, vol. X: Perspektywy postkolonializmu w Polsce, Polska w postkolonialnej perspektywie, Jan Kieniewicz (ed.), Warszawa, Wydział "Artes Liberales", 2016, p. 87-103.
| od_podleglosci_do_horyzontalnego_diagramu.pdf |
