Decolonisation beyond Independence: Reflections from the Papua New Guinea Experience — An Afterword

Abstract

Discussions of colonialism and decolonialism often take as a starting point an assumption that these processes can be defined in particular ways and consequently morally evaluated. Whilst defining terms can act as a theoretical or political simplification that is indispensable for certain kinds of discussion, it is important to remember that to evoke ‘colonialism’ is to make a claim about and on social relations and obligations. The papers in this collection draw our attention to the ways in which ‘colonialism’ was never a simply defined bilateral relationship between an easily defined coloniser and an equally easily defined colonised. The experience of PNG around the time of political independence instead draws our attention to the multiplicity of ways in which particular relations were described as or denied as being ‘colonial’. This historical re-examination acts as a useful nuance to contemporary discussions of decolonisation that potentially paradoxically reinscribe old colonial binaries.