Decolonization is not a Metaphor

Decolonization is not a Metaphor is an essay authored by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in 2012ce that analyzes the appropriation of "decolonization" in academic and activist discourse. (Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, 2012) They claim that decolonization must refer to the material repatriation of Indigenous being, not a class of actions they describe as "settler moves to innocence".

Decolonization is not an "and". It is an elsewhere.

• Using decolonization to describe educational reform, social justice, or shifts in consciousness dilutes its meaning and recenters settler futurity
  • settler moves to innocence
• Incommmensurable Ethic:
  • decolonization is incommensurable with civil rights or inclusivity project
    • rupture, not reform or reconciliation
• Triadic settler-colonial roles:
  • settler, native, slave
    • all can reproduce colonial logics with misapplied "decolonization"

Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.