Post Colonialism - Stuart Murray Williams

The Black Light course introduces and explores the subject of post-colonialism. Post-colonialism has been on the agenda in academic circles for some decades, ever since the European empires started to disintegrate and their former colonies achieved independence. But it is now impacting society at a more popular level. Undoubtedly, the Black Lives Matter movement provoked this broadening of the conversation, as perhaps also has recognition that Covid-19 disproportionately impacted Black and other minority ethnic communities.

Several sports teams have renamed themselves and/or changed their mascots in order to remove cultural references that are now perceived as inappropriate. Some street names and other geographical markers have been changed. Post-colonial perspectives on sport, fashion, employment, education, social care, health and other spheres of life are becoming mainstream. 

There is already, and undoubtedly will continue to be, sustained resistance to this. Some unashamedly espouse white supremacy. Others resist any rewriting of history or adjustments to the educational curriculum. Some decry multi-culturalism, exhibit personal prejudice or collude with institutional racism. Others are sympathetic but are reluctant to grapple with the depth and pervasiveness of racism, white privilege and the legacy of colonialism. Resistance will come in the form of weariness in the face of the massive and complex changes needed at many levels if there is to be greater justice.

Post-colonial studies over the past fifty years have explored the history of empire and the effects of colonisation, examining the motives and cultural assumptions of the colonisers and the consequences, both intentional and unintentional, for those who were colonised. They document policies and practices that exploited, oppressed, victimised and dehumanised subject populations, and also highlight the suppression of local cultures, languages and value systems. They reveal the extent to which oppressed people internalised this oppression and became assimilated into the structures and mindset of their colonisers, coming to accept this as the natural order of things. 
 Drawing on this evidence, post-colonial strategies and policies are developed with a view to challenging the cultural assumptions, power structures, political and economic systems and global inequalities that are the legacies of a fading era and unjust and inappropriate in a post-colonial context. These analyses have fuelled and inspired indigenous movements and anti-racist initiatives across the world. Post-colonial studies deconstruct and emancipate. They involve fresh accounts of historical events and reassessment of the cultures and achievements of subjugated peoples. They delegitimise and disrupt power structures, give voice to those who have been silenced and disenfranchised, and empower those who have been marginalised to became agents of transformation.

Post-colonial studies insist that colonialism is not merely a past phase but a contemporary reality. Some use the term ‘neo-colonialism’, insisting that globalisation represents a form of colonialism, and that new forms of colonialism will arise unless we are vigilant and understand the nature of this phenomenon. Others prefer the term ‘coloniality’ to highlight a presumption that European cultures are the only truly modern cultures, based on capitalist economic systems, rationality, science, technology and neoliberalism. Whiteness is regarded as the norm and as the basis for ‘othering’ those who are different, and Eurocentric norms are enforced through the use of the state and the economic system. 
 Despite greater sensitivity to post-colonialism, in many western initiatives that challenge corruption and encourage peace, justice, democracy and the rule of law there is an implicit, and even explicit, conviction that western models are preferable. And in many academic disciplines and policy papers, much greater attention is paid to western treatises, case studies and ways of framing issues than to contributions from other parts of the world. 

One of the most significant contributions of post-colonialism on theology has been its challenge to western theologians and biblical scholars to renounce any claim to offering a normative or acontextual approach. All theologians and biblical interpreters operate within a historical and cultural context and we are inevitably influenced by this. I come to the Bible as a white, male, middle-aged, university-educated, middle-class, fairly affluent westerner. I bring to the biblical text my assumptions, experiences and questions, which lead me to interpret this in particular ways, to prioritise certain passages and to not see things that to others are obvious. Hopefully, I will also be open to seeing new things and having my assumptions challenged as the Holy Spirit speaks to me through the Scriptures, but I need the help of brothers and sisters who are in different contexts and have different life experiences.

Post-colonial theology has been emerging alongside other post-colonial studies. Although western theologians have participated in this, many of the most significant contributions to post-colonial theology have come from African, Latin American and Asian writers or from Black theologians in the West. An early British example is Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes, edited by Anthony Reddie and Michael Jagessar. Anthony Reddie has also offered a post-colonial perspective on the Brexit debate. Theologizing Brexit offers a trenchant critique of the white entitlement, xenophobia, racism and ‘othering’ that characterised much of this debate – and the very limited challenges offered by the churches to this narrative. Post-colonial approaches to biblical interpretation have also emerged. Sri Lankan scholar R. S. (Rasiah) Sugirtharajah has written an introduction to post-colonial approaches to biblical interpretation, and there are post-colonial commentaries now on every book of the Old and New Testaments.  
 Theologies and approaches to biblical interpretation from Majority World contexts may be more self-consciously contextual than traditional western forms of biblical interpretation and theology, or may be labelled as such by western theologians clinging to the myth of their own universality, but post-colonial theology requires all theologies to be acknowledged as contextual, including European theologies. This opens up opportunities for mutual learning across cultural contexts.​

Stuart Murray Williams