Smashing the Imperial Frame: Race, Culture, (De)Coloniality

Abstract

Extending the philosopher Achille Mbembe’s notion of the ‘seeing power of race’ in Critique of Black Reason, this paper explores the imperial frame – a racialized and racializing vision of singularity/alterity – that was foundational to European modernity and the formation of the modern world. I intend to show how the racialized have always articulated an otherwise for cultivating a humane relationship with difference, an unconditional relationship with humanity, through (knowingly or unknowingly) putting the rhetoric of modernity/coloniality on trial. Interweaving a discussion of the 2014 Jordanian film Theeb (trans: Wolf) – our decolonial text – I propose a framework, a series of commitments for a culture decolonized: to time as (re)enchanted and emerging; space as pluriversal and planetary; and self as the guarantor for the Other’s share.