AGAINST DECOLONISATION, taking African agency seriously

270pp., paperback, London, 2022

African political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò's critique of todays' decolonisation movement. 

"A highly important and deeply argued book. Táíwò asks us not to succumb to the simplistic siren song of the word “decolonisation”. A vague word, an easy trope does not help to create the modern African with complicated agency amidst complex historical and twenty-first-century demands." Stephen Chan OBE, SOAS University of London, author of African Political Thought.

"With characteristic cogency, lucidity and audacity, Táíwò shows that “decolonisation” has become an idea promoting indiscriminate hostility to forms of thought and practice wrongly tarred with malign colonial auspices. The ironic result is a rhetoric that gives short shrift to African agency. It’s time to drop the erroneous conflations and recognise our right to inventive appropriation of the human commons." Ato Sekyi-Otu, Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto, and author of Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is Professor of African Political Thought and current Chair at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University. His book How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa won the Frantz Fanon Award in 2015.