Uncoupling specters of coloniality in postcolonial Cameroon: literary explorations

Abstract

This essay discusses colonialities of power, knowledge, being, gender, language, nature, Anglophones, and victimhood as constitutive elements of a national/global Cameroonian coloniality in Nyamnjoh’s Married but Available. I contend that the sustainability of Cameroon’s future depends on struggles against colonialities as constitutive elements of a national/global coloniality that hangs over Cameroon’s political development like the Sword of Damocles. Borrowing critical perspectives from Quijano, Grosfoguel, Maldonado-Torres, and Blaut, I assert that the emergence of colonialities of Anglophones by Francophones and Anglophones of Northwest origin by those from the Southwest have balkanized Cameroon and weakened its attempts at countering global coloniality. I conclude that for Cameroonians to nurture a sustainable political future, they need to adopt/adapt unremittingly anti-Eurocentric and anti-Francophone-centric decolonial struggles/strategies. Thus, the cosmic vision of either Francophones or Anglophones should not be taken as national Cameroonian rationality because that would amount to imposing provincialism as universalism.