Legacies of Bandung: Decolonisation and the Politics of Culture

While postcolonial theorists recognise that the colonial situation did produce some forms of hybridity, anti-colonial theorists have been driven by the urge to decolonise. The politics of decolonisation followed by newly independent nations of the mid-20th century often displayed an uncritical emphasis on modernisation; development, that pursued with technology and tools of scientific progress, was a “catch-up” exercise with the west. However, with the globalisation of ideas and practices, commensurate with the “democratisation” of politics around the 1970s, hitherto marginalised groups also sought a more global, “deterritorialised” identity. The period saw the rise of post-structuralist and postmodern theories, that were opposed to the territorial imagination of the nation state. Currently, as humans, objects and practices continue to move seamlessly beyond nation states, this other side of decolonisation – representing the thoughts of the colonised on a “dialogue across differences” – remains vital but as yet an unfinished project.