Against bringing Africa “back-in”

Abstract

This chapter considers the issue of recentering Africa is IR by rejecting calls for “bringing Africa back in.” It argues that Africa does not need to be brought back in, for the continent is already integral to colonial-capitalist modernity and its violent processes of domination and exploitation. What is needed, instead is, it suggests, a displacement of the global colonial matrices of power and the fashioning of alternative decolonial visions that “re-members” Africa as an important global region through a decolonial praxis, critical thought, and self-assertion.