The Anticolonial Imagination (II)

The Anticolonial Imagination (II)

Anticolonial thought is one of the most challenging and vibrant intellectual projects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Anticolonial thought is crucial for identifying and critiquing the violence, injustices, and warped logics of imperial power and the colonial world. But its even more intellectually vibrant, imaginatively expansive, and potently utopian projects are not merely demands for a world entirely without colonialism, but bold attempts to imagine what that world might look like. 

What does a world truly after colonialism look like? What do political communities look like when they are no longer defined by hierarchy and exclusion? What forms of literature and art are possible under conditions of egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism? How will this world address injustice, environmental catastrophe, and colonialism’s cruel legacies? 

Back by popular demand, this course explores how major anticolonial thinkers have wrestled with these questions. We will treat anticolonial thought as possessing rigorous visions of the world it demands and seeks to bring about. While attending to the wide range of anticolonial imaginations, we will attempt to bring various anticolonial thinkers together to reveal a global debate about a world beyond empire. We will discuss how the anticolonial imagination – from the early twentieth century to the present – provides us with new critical ways to engage with our own world. 

The June 2026 iteration will trace how anticolonial thinkers have drawn from Karl Marx to demand worlds well beyond his imagination (both utopian and tragic). 

Week 1: Introductions
Week 2: Insurgency
Week 3: Aesthetics
Week 4: Indigeneity
Week 5: Gender
Week 6: Solidarity