Decolonizing the Tropics: Part One

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.1.2023.3998

Keywords:

decolonizing, tropics, decoloniality, positionality, de-canonize

Abstract

This special issue is a collection of papers that addresses and enacts the theme of decolonizing the tropics. Each article provides a sense of how we can untangle ourselves from entrenched colonial epistemologies and ontologies through detailed articulations of research practice. Drawing together humanities and social sciences, the papers collectively address questions of whose voices are heard or silenced, what positions we write from, how we are allowed to articulate our ideas, and through which mediums we present our research. In doing so, the contributions foreground the critical importance of these and other questions in any move towards decolonizing the tropics.

Author Biographies

Anita Lundberg, James Cook University, Australia & Singapore

Anita Lundberg is an adjunct associate professor and cultural anthropologist. Her interdisciplinary ethnographies – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia – explore the intertwinings of nature and culture. Her thinking is informed by material poetics, animist epistemology, and archetypal mythology. Anita has won awards and held fellowships: LIA TransOceanik (CNRS, JCU, Collége de France); The Cairns Institute; Evans Fellow, Cambridge University, UK; Guest Researcher, Maison Asie-Pacifique, Université de Provence, France; Visiting Fellow, Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, National University Malaysia; and Anthropologist-in-Residence, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. She has published extensively in academic journals, editing numerous Special Issues. Anita has curated exhibitions in NY, LA, Paris and Sydney, and her own research has been exhibited at the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia and Alliance de Française. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Cambridge University, UK, has a PhD in Anthropology, an MA in Science & Technology Studies and a liberal arts BA. After a long academic stint in Singapore, she now lives in Bali.

Sophie Chao, University of Sydney, Australia

Sophie Chao is Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow and Lecturer in the Discipline of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. Her research investigates the intersections of Indigeneity, ecology, capitalism, health, and justice in the Pacific. Chao is author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua and co-editor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice. She previously worked for the human rights organization Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia, supporting the rights of forest-dwelling Indigenous peoples to their customary lands, resources, and livelihoods. Chao is of Sino-French heritage and lives on unceded Gadigal lands in Australia. For more information, please visit www.morethanhumanworlds.com.

R. Benedito Ferrão, William & Mary, USA

Benedito Ferrão is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at William & Mary. Additionally, he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Mellon, Endeavour, and Rotary programs, the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. Curator of the 2017-18 exhibition Goa, Portugal, Mozambique: The Many Lives of Vamona Navelcar, he edited a book of the same title (Fundação Oriente 2017) to accompany this retrospective of the artist’s work. His scholarly writing appears in various international journals, including eTropic, Research in African Literatures, Verge, and Society and Culture in South Asia.

Ashton Sinamai, La Trobe University, Australia

Ashton Sinamai is an archaeologist with experience from Zimbabwe, Namibia, United Kingdom, and Australia. Born 5 miles from Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, he developed an interest in archaeology quite early from stories and folklore told by his grandmother. His interest in pursuing Cultural Heritage Studies rose out of the need to reconcile 'history from the people' with empirical data from the discipline of archaeology. He has a PhD in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies from Deakin University and currently works in Australia as a heritage consultant in the private sector. Previously he has worked as an archaeologist at Great Zimbabwe, Chief Curator at the National Museum of Namibia, and as lecturer at the Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. After his PhD, he worked for at the University of York (UK) as a Marie Curie Experienced Incoming Fellow. Currently he is working as Advisor, Heritage Approvals for Rio Tinto in Perth, Australia. Ashton is also a Research Associate with La Trobe University, Melbourne and is an Expert Representative on UNESCO’s Roster for Cultural Emergencies. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage and a co-editor for the Journal of African Cultural Heritage Studies. His research focuses on the cultural landscapes and their perceptions through indigenous knowledge and philosophies. His most recent book, Memory and Cultural Landscape at the Khami World Heritage Site, Zimbabwe: An Uninherited Past was published by Routledge in 2019.

Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah, University of Warwick, UK

Stephen Ogheneruro Okpadah is a Chancellor International PhD Scholar, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom. He won the 2021 Janusz Korczak/UNESCO Prize for Global South in emerging scholar category. He has published numerous articles in international journals and chapters in books. Okpadah is co-editor of Language of Sustainable Development: Discourses on the Anthropocene in Literature and Cinema (2021), which is a special issue of the journal: Language, Discourse and Society. Books that he co-edited are, Committed Theatre in Nigeriaː Perspectives on Teaching and Practice (Lexington Books, 2020); Locating Transnational Spaces: Culture, Theatre and Cinema (IATC and the University College of the North, Canada, 2020); and The Road to Social Inclusion (UNESCO/Janusz Korczak Chair’s Book Series, 2021). Okpadah is a non-resident research associate, Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre, University of Regina, Canada. Okpadah is also a Non-Resident Research Fellow, University of Religions and Denominations, Iran.

Hannah Regis, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine

Hannah Regis is a Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. She is a Caribbeanist and Black Atlantic literary scholar, though she has also completed research that centres on Indigenous Studies. Her research interests include Caribbean spectrality, haunting, counter-archival engagements, reparative writing, theories of embodiment and cultural memory. Her investigations trace widespread and recurring patterns in seemingly unrelated material with the cumulative aim of historicising, transforming and expanding upon theories of epistemic injustice while shaping potentialities for recuperation and interventions. She has published widely on aspects of Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature in Caribbean Quarterly, Journal of West Indian Literature, The American Studies Journal, eTropic and other periodicals. A single-authored monograph on the Poetics of Caribbean Spectrality is forthcoming.

Gregory Luke Chwala, Union Institute and University, USA

Gregory Luke Chwala is Graduate Professor of Humanities and Culture at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, where he specializes in nineteenth-century British literature and culture as well as decolonial and transatlantic queer studies from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. He has published work on queer, trans, race, postcolonial, decolonial, and gothic studies in journals such as the Victorian Review and eTropic. His current projects include a book that explores decolonial queer ecologies in gothic and speculative fiction, and a book on transembodiment in steampunk fiction. He is co-editor of the University of Wales Press new series, Queer and Trans Intersections.

References

Benitez, C. J. R., & Lundberg, A. (2022). Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929

Brathwaite, K. (1983). Caribbean Culture: Two Paradigms. In J. Martini (Ed.), Missile and Capsule (pp. 9-54). UP of Bremen.

Brodber, E. (1988). Myal. New Beacon.

Chao, S., & Enari, D. (2021). Decolonising Climate Change: A Call for Beyond-Human Imaginaries and Knowledge Generation. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 20 (2), 32–54. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3796 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3796

Chao, S. (2022a). In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478022855

Chao, S. (2022b). (Un)Worlding the Plantationocene: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 165–191. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838

Chao, S. (2023). “Decanonizing the Field.” Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society Magazine. Lent edition. https://www.cusas.socanth.cam.ac.uk/sophie-chao/

Clément, C. (1994). Syncope: The Philosophy of Rapture. (Trans. S. O’Driscoll & D.M. Mahoney). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Escobar, A. 2019. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Durham, Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478012108

Express News Service. (2021, December 22). Goa CM Pramod Sawant: Temples Destroyed by Portuguese Need to be Rebuilt to Preserve Hindu Culture. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/goa/goa-temples-destroyed-portugese-hindu-culture-pramod-sawant-7684509/

Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. (R. Philcox, Trans). Grove Press.

Ferrão, R. B. (2021). Running Naked and Unmasked in Goa: Pleasure in the Pandemic. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(1), 134–156. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3789 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3789

Gaard, G. (1997). Toward a queer ecocriticism. Hypathia, 12(1), 137-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00174.x

Glissant, É. & Dash J. (1989). Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. UP of Virginia.

Glissant, E. (1997). Poetics of Relation. (Trans B. Wing). University of Michigan. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10257 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10257

Harris, W. (1995). History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and the Guyana, Calaloux, 7, 18.

Hassan, Tirana. (2023). World Report 2023: India. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/india

Irigaray, L. (1993). Wonder. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference. (Trans. C. Porter & G. C. Gill). Cornell University Press.

Ikelegbe, A., & Umukoro, N. (2016). Exclusion and Peacebuilding in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development. 11 (2), 25-36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2016.1189347

Jobson, Ryan C. 2020. “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019.” American Anthropologist 122 (2), 259–71. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13398

Jung, C. G. 1968 [1959]. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. (Trans. R. Hull). In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & M. McGuire (Eds) The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Pt.1 (2nd Edn.). Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Kalhan, A. (2023). Tipping Point: A Short Political History of India. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003395669

Kandolkar, V. P. (2021). Rain in the Basilica: Protecting Goa’s Bom Jesus from the Ravages of Climate Change. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(2), 95–113. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3814 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3814

Kanekar, A. (2018). The Politics of Renovation: The Disappearing Architecture of Goa’s Brahmanical Temples. In J. R. dos Santos (Ed.), Preserving Transcultural Heritage: Your Way or My Way? Questions on Authenticity, Identity and Patrimonial Proceedings in the Safeguarding of Architectural Heritage Created in the Meetings of Cultures (pp. 253-263). Caleidoscópio DOI: https://doi.org/10.30618/978-989-658-467-2_21

Koshy, S., Cacho, L.M., Byrd, J.A., & Jordan Jefferson, J. (Eds). (2022). Colonial Racial Capitalism. Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478023371

Lamming, G. (1992). Pleasures of Exile. University of Michigan Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10233

Lugones, M. (2007). Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186–209. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/HYP.2007.22.1.186

Lundberg, A. (2001). Being lost at sea: ontology, epistemology and a whale hunt. Ethnography 2(4),533-556. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14661380122231028

Lundberg, A. (2008). Material Poetics of a Malay house. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 19(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2008.tb00102.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2008.tb00102.x

Lundberg, A., Ancuta, K., & Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, A. (2019). Tropical Gothic: arts, humanities and social sciences. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 18(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3685 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.18.1.2019.3685

Lundberg, A., Regis, H., & Agbonifo, J. (2022). Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entanglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3877 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3877

Mahmood, Saba. (2015). Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77k82

Makhulu, A-M. B., & Christen A. Smith, C.A. (2022). “#CiteBlackWomen.” Cultural Anthropology 37(2), 177–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14506/ca37.2.01

Malik, K. (2017, Feb 19). Are SOAS students right to ‘decolonise’ their minds from western philosophers? The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/19/soas-philosopy-decolonise-our-minds-enlightenment-white-european-kenan-malik

Mignolo, W. (2007). Coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking. Cultural Studies 21 (23), 155-167 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162498

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Durham and London: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv125jqbw

Mortimer-Sandilands, C. & Erickson, B. (Eds.) (2010). Queer ecologies: Sex, nature, politics, desire. Indiana University Press.

Regis, H. (2020). Subjection and Resistance: Landscapes, Gardens, Myths and Vestigial Presences in Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 19(1), 151-166. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3682 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.19.1.2020.3682

Shweta, K. (2022, December 6). There’s Still no Data or Inputs on Temples Destroyed during the Portuguese Regime. O Heraldo. https://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/There%E2%80%99s-still-no-data-or-inputs-on-temples-destroyed-during-the-Portuguese-regime/197734

Sontag. S. (1966). The anthropologist as hero. In E.N. and T. Hayes (Eds) Claude Lévi-Strauss; The Anthropologist as Hero. (pp. 184-97). Cambridge University Press.

Stewart-Harawira, M. (2013). Challenging Knowledge Capitalism: Indigenous Research in the 21st Century. Socialist Studies 9(1), 39–51. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18740/S43S3V DOI: https://doi.org/10.18740/S43S3V

Stocking. G. W. Jr. (1983). “The ethnographer's magic: fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski.” In G. E. Stocking Jr. (Ed.) Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. History of Anthropology Vol. 1, (pp.70- 120). The University of Wisconsin Press.

Teaiwa, T.K., & Joannemariebarker, (1994). Native Information. Inscriptions 7, 16–41.

TNN. (2023, June 8). Time to Wipe out Goa’s Portuguese Signs: CM Pramod Sawant. The Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/time-to-wipe-out-goas-portuguese-signs-cm-pramod-sawant/articleshow/100832346.cms?from=mdr

Todd, Z. (2016). An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Academic Freedom and the Contemporary Academy 29 (1), 4–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124

Tuck, E., & Wayne, Y. (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, 1-40.

Downloads

Published

2023-07-03

How to Cite

Lundberg, A., Chao, S. ., Ferrão, R. B., Sinamai, A., Okpadah, S. O., Regis, H., & Chwala, G. L. (2023). Decolonizing the Tropics: Part One. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 22(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.22.1.2023.3998

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2023): Decolonizing the Tropics: Part One

Section

Introduction to Special Issue

License

Copyright (c) 2023 CC-BY

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.

2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.