Instead of being merely a historical occurrence, colonization is a structural feature of civilizations that have been touched by colonialism, which affects the prospects for the colonial subjects. This process is still ongoing in various forms among the so-called postcolonial societies today. Therefore, decolonization is a response to both the negative stereotypes and falsehoods about Indigenous peoples and cultures as well as the structural injustices of colonially impacted society that disproportionately afflict Indigenous peoples. Even though decolonization is a hot issue in academia right now, Indigenous peoples have been fighting against colonialism for millennia and claiming their own spaces, sovereignty, and right to self-determination ever since they first came into contact with colonizers.
Although decolonization is a worldwide endeavor, it advocates for action and transformation within particular regions and among particular populations. As a result, paying attention to context is essential to decolonization, particularly the histories and material legacies of the nation-states that were created via colonialism. Decolonization in Africa is a gradual process that includes, among other things, African scholars employing discursive counter-narratives to decolonize African stories.
The three books that are being reviewed here address various aspects of African scholars’ recovering of their stories away from the typical colonial and Eurocentric lens. Thus, for the African scholars whose works are being reviewed, the settings for the enactment of this reclamation practice are Yoruba history, contemporary Nigerian society, and the decolonization of humanity.
In The Yoruba: A New History, archeological historian Akin Ogundiran tells the story of the Yorùbá people over two millennia, integrating literary, linguistic, oral history, and archeological evidence with an organizing theoretical orientation of community of practice. The Yorùbá community of practice had evolved from ca. 300 BC–AD 1420, underwent atrophy and regeneration between ca. 1400–1650, and then got entangled with the Euro-North American Atlantic world’s modernity from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards. Ogundiran’s exploration of the ontology, epistemology, and axiology of the Yorùbá as historical subjects is made possible by this cultural-historical approach. With these, he was able to account for the cultural forms, practices, events, and ideas, as well as the mentalities, imaginations, and meanings that over a two-thousand-year period comprised the Yorùbá experience.
In the five-part book, Ogundiran sought to address the shortcomings of the legacy of colonial historiography of the Yorùbá as well as the unfulfilled dream of a decolonized African historiography (3–4). This is because functionalism and structuralism served as the foundation for the intellectual projects of the British, French, and German colonial administrations that divided and absorbed the Yorùbá region into Nigeria, the Benin Republic, and Togoland, respectively. Regarding the colonized customs and their precolonial heritage, both functionalism and structuralism provide an ahistorical viewpoint. Through their legal systems, educational programs, and governmental structures, the European colonial administrations were able to instill in the so-called natives (colonized) a rigid sense of the past. Colonial anthropologists and administrative officers framed local cultures as immutable, hid or erased the role of colonized people and their ancestors as historical agents, and defined the colonized as an object rather than a subject of social life. Sometimes unintentionally, Ogundiran works against the goal of decolonizing African historiography, even as he attempts to right the wrongs of colonial historiography. For instance, he refers to what anthropologists would now refer to in more nuanced fashion as bride wealth on multiple occasions while using the derogatory, racist, and colonial term “bride price” (329–31).
As Ogundiran reports in his recovery of the narrative about Yorùbá history, the Yorùbá community of practice at Ilé-Ifẹ̀ during the classical period of Yorùbá history would be characterized by House complexes or Ilé and their later elaboration into ïlú—a city-state, kingdom, town, or urban space on which the social, political, and economic lives were anchored. ïlú, in Yorùbá usage, refers to an integrated network of several Ilé under the direction of a central authority; however, in Yorùbá usage, the word has numerous meanings, and it can also refer to the population. According to numerous oral traditions of Ọ̀ bà, among others, the concept and practice of ïlú predates Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Additionally, the bulk of the Ùgbò communities in the Ifẹ̀ region were driven out by the classical era Yorùbá settlement that was loyal to Odùduwà. The deified leader Ọbàtálá—who would later rank among the most respected deities in the Yorùbá Òrìṣà pantheon—was identified with the Ùgbò and those of them that stayed behind after the conflict with the ancestral Yorùbá elements continue to play an important politico-religious role in the affairs of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ until today. The head of ïlú in Classical Ifẹ̀ was a divinity, and both his personality and office were divine, in contrast to the pre-Classical era when the Ọ̀ bà of an Ilé was thought to be a manifestation of the ancestors and a representative of the Òrìṣà (the deities). To put it another way, the king’s human body represented more than just the form that the Òrìṣà and the ancestors took on throughout the Late Formative period of the Yorùbá community of practice. Rather, the Ọ̀ bà of a ïlú was a Òrìṣà, an independent god or divine entity. He was not required to wait for his deification following his passing, unlike the pre-Classical Ọ̀ bà of an Ilé, like Ọbàtálá. A notable change in Yorùbá political ideology was the concept of a living god in human form sitting atop the political structure of the ïlú. Although this concept of divine kingship may have begun to emerge in earlier polities, like Ọ̀ bà and Ùlésùn, it seems that Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was the place where it developed the most and its institutional forms were properly conceptualized, then put into practice (62–81). Contrary to Ogundiran’s narrative, however, a number of other texts and sources—such as the respected Yorùbá traditional ruler, the current Ooni of Ifẹ̀, and writers citing the revered Yorùbá tradition of Ifá—have rendered the name of the Aboriginal community of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ as Ìgbò rather than Ùgbò. Likewise, the Yorùbá phrase “Kùtùkùtù Ọ̀ bà.Ùgbò [Ìgbò]” (66) has been interpreted—by alternative sources—not literally—to mean that the acephalous Ìgbò community that functioned as a confederacy employed its early morning assembly for arriving at resolutions in lieu of an Ọ̀ bà.
Ilé-Ifẹ̀ would eventually collapse, and the Ọyọ kingdom would rise in its place. The Moroccan invasion crisis that befell the Songhai empire—from which Ọyọ gained some land, allies, and vassals—would also help Ọyọ’s rise. Following the industrial-scale dehumanization and inferiorization of Black bodies in the European transatlantic slave trade—which was aided by the collaboration of some African kingdoms and principalities—African cultural and political sovereignty on the Guinea coast of West Africa would in time give way to colonial conquest and eventual colonization. With growing European demands for enslaved Africans especially during the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century and the complicity of the Ọyọ empire in the European transatlantic slave trade, the Yorùbá would account for 80–90 percent of those abducted and conveyed to slave ships in the Bight of Benin at the period (370). The concomitants of this Ọyọ involvement in the European transatlantic slave trade and other local issues such as the discontentment of the underclass and a war culture would ultimately culminate in the collapse of the Ọyọ empire. Following this collapse, the region saw the emergence of the interwoven triple powers of Christianity, European education, and European colonial rule. The Yorùbá started to engage with European colonial and Industrial Revolution modernity in earnest, and new customs, worldviews, and standards for judging social worth and order began to seep into the consciousness and aspirations of various demographic groups. Along with Christianity, the spread of Islamic influence grew faster and more widespread.
For the rest of the nineteenth century, the Yorùbá Òrìṣà ontology and epistemology remained dominant, serving as both the majority’s compass and the memory thread connecting the majority of people to their history. By the nineteenth century’s end, nevertheless, the Òrìṣà ritual field no longer monopolized or even dominated the organic platform for creating new myths and philosophical analyses of current affairs and the future. A new generation of the Yorùbá, modest but robust, voiced reservations about the Òrìṣà inheritance of practice and rejected its intellectual past as European education became the passport and vehicle of indoctrination into colonial modernity.
The consequences produced by the introduction of colonial modernity not just on the Yorùbá but the entire region that would be christened Nigeria by the colonizers is mostly what Toyin Falola examines in his six-part book, Understanding Modern Nigeria: Ethnicity, Democracy, and Development. Falola sporadically links Nigeria’s current situation, in part, to the country’s convoluted past including colonial entanglements. Nigeria is apparently a federation of several different ethnic groups or nations united first by the force of imperialism and subsequently by petroleum resources. Falola is curiously not quite able to decide whether Nigeria is to be called a nation, a collection of numerous ethnic groups—which he refers to on various pages as numbering over 200 (94, 178); over 250 (35, 94, 571); over 350 (9); 370 (94); and over 400 (9, 35, 92, 94, 180)—just a country; or a geographical expression in the sense of Obafemi Awolowo. However, by setting one ethnic group against another through the use of the divide-and-rule strategy and other colonialist and neocolonialist repertoire of do-it-yourself colonialism, the colonialists planted the seeds of future endless crises in Nigeria. Falola therefore contends that since the Nigerian project is seemingly about furthering ethnic, religious, and regional interests, Nigeria’s difficulties are signs of a lack of unity among the many groups in the nation as the lines of division remain multiple, including religious, ethnic, social, and individual aspirational interest. However, Falola’s narrative on ethnicities tends to conflate ethnicity with ethnocentrism and ethnic hostility. To be clear, ethnicity does not always have a bad connotation. In addition to its negative aspects, which include cultural prejudice, ethnic hostility, ethnocentrism, socioeconomic discrimination, and political discrimination, ethnicity also has positive aspects. These include its mobilizing power, which served as the foundation for early African anti-colonial resistance, its democratic aspect, which aims to end domination, oppression, and exploitation, its positive aspects such as appreciating one’s social roots in a community and cultural group without necessarily looking down on members of other groups, its ability to provide individuals in the modern urban society with a material and emotional support network, and its role in fostering community development in the Nigerian context, among other positive aspects of ethnicity. Therefore, a more nuanced discussion on ethnicity and ethnic politics in Africa and particularly in the Nigerian context is called for in the subsequent editions of Falola’s book.
Similar to this, Falola regrettably promotes the narrative of Ìgbò dominance that was sparked by colonialism while discussing ethnicity in Nigeria. Thus, he intentionally or unintentionally justifies the pogrom against the hapless Ìgbò throughout Nigeria by framing the coup of January 15, 1966, which also involved military commanders of Yorùbá and other nationalities, as an Ìgbò coup. Adewale Ademoyega, a Yorùbá officer who was among the ring leaders of the January 1966 coup d’état, was ironically also cited by Falola (272), despite this regurgitated colonialist violent rhetoric against ethnic Biafrans and the Ìgbò in particular. Nevertheless, Falola’s general narratives continued to frame the coup as one led by Ìgbò officers for Ìgbò domination, hence justifying the anti-Ìgbò pogrom in terms of retaliatory violence.
There were equally contradictory framings of the Nigeria-Biafra War by Falola in the book. For example, in one paragraph, Falola stated that Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared a conglomeration of ethnic groups across different southern states as Biafra in 1967 in self-defence against the “violence, injustice, and discrimination at the hands of the Nigerian government” (11) while framing Biafra as an exclusively Ìgbò nation/project at the same time when he states that “Biafra represented more than an Ìgbò desire for succession,” apparently meaning to say “secession” (11). Falola’s narrative somehow made General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi appear to be one of the coup plotters looking to claim power (11), despite the fact that he was invited by the rump of the Balewa government to stabilize the country after Ìgbò officers—including the then-Lieutenant Colonels Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Alexander Madiebo, and others—had successfully foiled the same January 1966 coup. This is nefarious, particularly in light of the coup organizers’ repeated admissions in their own writings that the goal of the coup was to appoint Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a politician of Yoruba descent, as the head of state of Nigeria had the coup succeeded.
Further, Nigerian federalism in the era of the colonially transmitted modernity came in for criticism by Falola as he identifies the Nigerian federalism as yet another source of Nigeria’s post-independence crises. Falola observes that Nigeria’s federation operates as a unitary system. He tries to contrast Nigeria’s federalism with what is practiced in the United States. Consequently, he draws the conclusion that while the United States employs a bottom-up form of federalism. Nigeria employs a top-down form of federalism, which according to him is a “bad type of federalism” (143). It is not clear why Falola insists on labeling what is practiced in Nigeria as “federalism.” However, it is a known fact that the military coups of 1966 restructured the Nigerian system from the quasi-federalism of the Nigerian First Republic to a unitary structure that subsequent regimes (both military and now civilian) have operated as a fait accompli. In its first republic, Nigeria embraced the Westminster model of federation in deference to its British colonizers; in its subsequent republics, it has followed the US presidential system. Nonetheless, considering Nigeria’s underlying unitary structure, this is one of the unspoken but significant issues that the country’s neocolonial rulers are unwilling to confront; occasionally, they even act as though Nigeria is a federation. In line with the fundamental unitarian reality, resources in modern Nigeria are still concentrated in the center, giving it an inordinate amount of control. As a result, this has added to the corruption, nepotism, and winner-takes-all relative majoritarian traits that characterize Nigerian electoral politics.
Falola claims that one of the flaws in Nigeria’s federal system is that the sharing formula and the allocation of political and financial resources do not “reflect the principles of segmented autonomy” (151). Strangely, Falola had labored valiantly to fit the so-called First Republic of Nigeria into a consensus or consociationalism democracy model (144–59) despite the fact that Nigeria followed the majoritarian Westminster model, whose inappropriateness for Nigerian conditions contributed to the crises in the Western Region of the country prior to the January 1966 coup.
On the development discourse, Falola, while apparently subscribing to the controversial culture of corruption hypotheses, invariably discusses the perceived relationship between corruption and development. On corruption (269–84), he agrees with the narrative of Nigeria being the most corrupt or among the most corrupt countries of all time—a narrative that was partially popularized by a former British Prime Minister who referred to Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt” (550). This sort of narrative cannot be consistent and legitimate given that the country in question is complicit in Nigerian corruption, both as colonizers and as a haven for modern Nigerian politicians to launder stolen money, just as it was a haven during the colonial invasion for stolen money, treasures, and cultural products. Furthermore, these tales are victim-blaming narratives, which Steven Pierce defines as disciplinary tactics and rhetorical devices rather than as specific material acts. Representing the non-corrupt state as a European state or state of the Global North, and the corrupt act as a genuine entity that states may or may not be afflicted by, has normalized an ideological portrayal of corruption. Such narratives therefore need to be tempered by the fact that the corruption discourse peddled against a country like Nigeria is sometimes a reaction to attempts by such a country to champion an indigenous initiative to benefit the local economy and citizenry rather than the Euro-North American economy. Similarly, the story of Nigerian NGOs embezzling foreign aid (262–63) mirrors the colonizers’ narrative and cover story about the reasons behind the African condition, willfully ignoring the ongoing evolution of coloniality in their conditions of being, power, and knowledge, as numerous decolonial scholars have shown.
When he extends his discourse to the rest of Africa throughout the book, Falola often does that in terms of drawing broad conclusions and extrapolating analytical conclusions to the rest of Africa. This is not usually rewarding because contrary to the common narratives from both Euro-North American intellectuals and some African intellectuals that frequently propagate Eurocentric modernist narratives, which pathologize different facets of Africa by extrapolation, Africa is not a monolithic entity socially, politically, culturally, or in any other way. Even though Falola’s de facto operating ideological preference and theoretical orientation appears to be the advancement of European modernism/modernity, he should be commended also for adopting a decolonial lens sometimes to address issues with Nigeria, like the country’s problematic popular culture industry and educational curriculum. He insisted that reorienting this state sector to be productive is crucial for Nigeria’s educational program and can only be accomplished as a crucial component of decolonizing and rearranging the state’s socioeconomic paradigm (448). In the same way, he cautions Nigeria’s popular culture producers not to concentrate on promoting modernist politics and culture, as this will only have an insignificant impact on the environment and future of the Indigenous political social structure (587–88).
Decolonizing and rearranging not just the state’s socioeconomic paradigm but the human that constitutes the atomic unit of the state is the concern of the next book that this review turns to. Decolonizing the Human: Reflections from Africa on Difference and Oppression, edited by Melissa Steyn and William Mpofu, is positioned within the decolonial struggle for liberation as a form of social justice, which “is also a struggle for the recovery of denied and lost humanity” (3), especially in Africa and the rest of the Global South. This is due to the fact that the basis for African enslavement and colonization was their exclusion from the human category. The first people to be colonized and put into slavery had to renounce their equality as human beings and be seen as inferior, incomplete beings. Therefore, the quest for completion through the recovery, restoration, and acknowledgement of Black people’s equal belonging to the world becomes the mission of decolonization in Africa (2–3).
Steyn and Mpofu opened the twelve-chapter book with the first chapter which lays the stage for an involved investigation of the human condition in a dehumanizing world. The authors observed that the state in which the oppressed live is not one that comes from inherent causes. Biology does not always lead to gendered violence and inequity. The people living in peripheralized countries like those in Africa and rest of the Global South are not destitute and powerless; rather, the people living in these countries have experienced poverty and disempowerment due to forced relocation and dispossession. The paradox of Euro-North American modernity, then, is that the logic of colonialism has marched hand in hand with its big language of freedom, happiness, progress, and growth. The appropriation of natural resources, labor exploitation, legal control over those considered to be the undesirables, imposition of the interests and worldview inherent in a capitalist economy, and denial of the full humanity of the disenfranchised and impoverished are all examples of the coloniality of Euro-North American modernity (2).
Steyn and Mpofu follow Chinua Achebe to contemplate the beginnings of the dehumanization of Africans by metaphorically asking “where and when exactly did the rain begin to beat us?” (3) with a view to understanding where and when it may have stopped, would stop, or how to avoid being beaten again. As the authors determined, the Age of False Promises began with the European Enlightenment, which is mythologized as the fall of God and the emergence of reason that would set people free and bring development to the globe. The same Enlightenment period that ignited growth and progress in the Global North also cast a shadow of misery, catastrophes, and human suffering over the South. The year 1492, which marks the conquest of the Americas, is considered to be the beginning of “the invention” and the “eclipse” of the “inferior” other by the conquering and “superior” big Other on the planet. It is also the year that colonial modernity is thought to have started to spread throughout the Global South and the idea of the nation state was born. As a result of their perceived lack of souls and religious beliefs, the conquered peoples of the Americas were seen as suitable targets for enslavement, exile from their homelands, the world, and life itself. Religion and God were turned into political tools, a means of integrating some people into the human family and excluding others. People were split up into groups known as the godly and the godless, which led to their separation and the condemnation of others who were perceived to be the weaker amongst them. The gendered categorization of people based on race started early and expanded throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa in tandem with modernity and colonialism. From colonialism in Africa to apartheid in South Africa, “race” was employed in political regimes that dehumanized people of color all over the world. This began with the European transatlantic slave trade and chattel enslavement in the Americas (4–5).
As Steyn and Mpofu observe, racism has become the current Euro-North American world system’s strong but mostly hidden governing system and guiding rationale. During colonial conquest, racist borders, fences, and maps were built; they still exist physically and metaphysically, dictating political practices and imaginaries. Increases in prejudice against immigrants, refugees, women, and members of the LGBTIQ+ community are linked to colonial divisions between assumed human and not-so-human identity. The social contract of the bond, which is implied in the all-encompassing phrase “we the people”—the same contract that is thought to have brought humans out of their natural state and made them subjects of contemporary government—is indeed not the contract that rules the globe. Rather, it is the bond or contract between the people who are assumed to matter and count, the people who have consequences (5).
However, Steyn and Mpofu posit that even with the numerous depictions and discourses of decolonization, the fight for human rights, and liberty, the crooked, unstable, and unpredictable path of persecution of the human can remain hidden. Human dominance, brutality, and oppression may be cloaked in the rhetoric of human rights, decolonization, and liberation, much as slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and imperialism did in their promises of civilization, modernization, progress, and democratization. Attacks and denials of human rights may be hidden by the same vocabulary and grammars of the human rights movement. As Steyn and Mpofu explained, humanity is betrayed by those who have claimed to be God and champions of humanity to the point where even a Nazi ideologue, Carl Schmitt, could caution that “whoever speaks for the human wants to cheat,” by hiding their evil impulses, such as the desire for dictatorship and control, under a lofty narrative and ideal. Years after Schmitt’s 1932 outburst, it can still be observed that the human and human rights are violated and people are denied inside the very institutions and organizations that claim to stand up for human rights. Despite the spirited 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rights and freedoms have not been fairly guaranteed, and the human being has not become universal. The historical contradiction lies in the fact that this declaration was made while these same defenders of human rights were still trampling on the rights of those who had been colonized and of those who would live under apartheid in Africa (6).
Steyn and Mpofu further observe that in the modern world, human subjectivities and warfare have grown so linked that the use of violence and threats of violence are key tools in the disciplining of people into oppressed and dominant groups. War and violence have given time and place its identity in the current global order. Economics is a privileged social science that claims to have the responsibility to measure, calculate, and assist in the creation of wealth and happiness. It has also been weaponized, based on the interpretation of the human as “Economic Man.” Through global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, world economics has not only failed to escape but has actively encouraged and instigated bloodshed and wars (7–10).
Violence therefore becomes central in the knowledge about the human as Steyn and Mpofu note. As such, a major problem in the Westernized university system has been the colonization and domination of knowledge, as privileged academics exploit their power to uphold and expand the empire. It was, for instance, concluded by Charles Darwin, a favorite scientist of the empire, that certain people were less human and naturally unsuited. Theology was also employed to distance the colonized and enslaved from the privileged human family by portraying them as soulless beings. This system has colonized, appropriated, and co-opted knowledge, creating a skewed and erroneous understanding of the human condition and enabling marginalized people to continue to be oppressed and dominated in society (11–14).
Concerning the condition of the human in the modern colonial world order, Steyn and Mpofu follow Jean-Paul Sartre to argue that the powerful enjoy privileges and power in the modern society, while the oppressed and helpless feel inadequate and empty. The “emptiness” that results from dehumanizing oppression and exploitation, like slavery, is also Franz Fanon’s idea of how the oppressed experience a double consciousness that breeds self-doubt and self-hatred. The metaphysical compromise of communities and beings is shown by Aimé Césaire’s depiction of colonization as an all-encompassing system whose violence affected all relationships. Struggles for liberation from oppression and rehumanization of the dehumanized must confront resistance from the oppressed, as they may try to find their own places of privilege within the dominance structure. This resistance may result in an “imperial attitude,” which defines and characterizes particular deficiencies and lacks in order to dehumanize conquered and marginalized people. Fanon’s decolonial solution is not an easy one; rather, it is a dramatic break from the Eurocentric human paradigm that upheld human rights while taking part in the genocides of colonization, enslavement, and invasion (14–16).
Steyn and Mpofu conclusively maintain that the luxury of dehumanizing the weak undermines the legitimacy of power. Therefore, humanity must now turn away from the power and knowledge of European and Western colonialism and support alternative human paths toward liberated futures.
Other contributors to Decolonizing the Human weigh in with their works in sequence. In Chapter Two, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Patricia Pinky Ndlovu explore the construction of “Blackness” and “whiteness” in the modern Euro-North American-centric world system. They advocate for decolonial technologies of rehumanization and re-membering as forms of liberation, challenging the toxic constructions of coloniality. The third chapter by Gbenga S. Adejare, Jojolola Fasuyi, and Olayinka Akanle demonstrates how social and mental constructs like gender are weaponized against humans in general and against those who have been created and manufactured as inferiors in the world. Sibonokuhle Ndlovu’s Chapter Four adds to the increasing chorus of academic and critical voices working to undermine ableist hierarchies and restore the humanity that has been denied to those who suffer from physical and mental disabilities. Cary Burnett presents a critical recovery of life stages as components of the human experience in Chapter Five, restoring aging as a natural part of life’s journey. Robert Maseko’s sixth chapter explores how Black mineworkers in South Africa—who are still seen as “minors” despite their experience, maturity, and hard, exploitative labor—are infantilized by poverty and the persistence of racism even after decolonization. Tendayi Sithole uses a slave narrative’s experiences to discuss the gendered aspects of exploitation in Chapter Seven. Brian Sibanda’s Chapter Eight discusses the importance of language as a part of human being, using Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s literature. In Chapter Nine, the idea that Western science is superior, neutral, and objective is contested by Nokuthula Hlabangane. With Chapter Ten, C.D. Samaradiwakera-Wijesundara contributes to a reevaluation of the personhood of the juristic person with respect to “other” people. Morgan Ndlovu’s Chapter Eleven explores the decolonial perspective on the commercialization of cultural villages, highlighting the suppression of Indigenous peoples’ humanness and cultural being. This chapter contributes to understanding coloniality of knowledge and being.
A critical search for a decolonial humanism and a diverse global dialogue culminates the volume. In Chapter Twelve, Siphamandla Zondi critiques the manner in which human communication has been reduced to a monologue in which the powerful speak down to the weak. In a society where human difference has been criminalized, the chapter philosophically laments the classification of humans based on race, which has prevented balanced conversation between peoples with diverse access to power and privilege. In order to achieve political and cultural translation and foster human comprehension of human diversity, the chapter makes a vital case for the decolonization of existence and the restoration of communication. This is why this reviewer recommends Decolonizing the Human and the other books in this review. The books, apart from the intriguing strategies and perspectives they bring to decolonization are useful resources for academics and researchers working in diverse fields that intersect with the subjects of these books.
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