According to Google Trends, the term ‘decolonial’ peaked in popularity in France around the summer of 2016 due to initiatives, questionable to say the least, that sparked fruitless controversies, following patterns now familiar to anyone who pays attention to the ‘culture wars’ on the other side of the Atlantic.
In fact, in response to the holding of a ‘decolonial camp,’ the right-wing press – from Le Figaro to Valeurs actuelles, via Le Point – seemed to discover this term and took the opportunity to denounce ‘anti-white racism’ and hypocritically take offence at the appropriation, by some of its organisers, of the ‘great replacement’ theory.
This configuration, which was reminiscent of that described by ethnologist Germaine Tillion in Les ennemis complémentaires (1960), had the effect of silencing the few voices within the anti-racist and anti-colonialist left who defended a different perspective in a society still reeling from terrorist attacks.
In fact, the shock caused by Islamist attacks was accompanied by a virulent campaign, relayed to the highest levels of government, against any form of critical thinking. Once again, independent voices committed to individual and collective emancipation were marginalised in favour of these ‘moral crusades’.
Nearly a decade later – including eight years of Macronist regression – conservatives are united in their denunciation of those they label, depending on the mood of the moment, ‘Islamo-leftists’, ‘woke’ or ‘decolonial’, which have become synonymous with ‘anti-France’ or ‘enemies within’ for the apostles of ‘civil war’ and ‘remigration’.
However, at the same time, the ideas and practices stemming from the decolonial movement have attracted growing interest, particularly among the academic left and a significant section of young people – especially the ‘descendants of postcolonial immigration’ – as has the notion of intersectionality, which has also flourished.
However, this critical success, which should be put into perspective – because the left is not doing well, to say the least – did not come about without some misunderstandings, insofar as the word ‘decolonial’ is often understood – or attacked – as equivalent to ‘anti-colonial’ and sometimes used to refer to the ‘colonial moment’.
This is why, as Michel Cahen suggests in his book Colonialité (2024), it seems necessary to clarify the meaning given to this concept. The Marxist historian defines it as ‘the set of social formations and social relations produced by the non-capitalist forms of exploitation of capitalist domination throughout its expansion’.
This definition must be related to the thinking of sociologist Aníbal Quijano, who, in his seminal article Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad (1992), discusses cultural imperialism: ‘Coloniality therefore remains the most general mode of domination in today’s world, now that colonialism as an explicit political order has been destroyed.’
These concepts can serve as a basis for reasoned discussion, even if the dissemination of this notion over the last thirty years – from Latin America and via North American campuses – has given rise to numerous interpretations and reappropriations, ranging from the most stimulating to the most flawed.
In the debate among informed circles, decolonial theories have served as a substitute for Marxism, which has been devalued in the marketplace of ideas and in academia. In this regard, the notion of ‘decoloniality’ has been used as a rallying cry against ‘Western hegemony’ but also, more prosaically, as a career accelerator.
More worryingly, some intellectuals who claim to follow the decolonial approach have committed themselves to rejecting any criticism of regimes in the ‘global South’ and even to supporting – tacitly or explicitly – nationalist dictatorships and other conservative movements, provided they claim to be breaking with certain aspects of the colonial legacy.
That said, these phenomena are far from being the preserve of decolonial intellectuals and activists alone, as we can also find them among proponents of authoritarian socialism or ‘campist’ anti-imperialism.
Similarly, in the ‘global North’, this tendency is expressed, particularly in the activist sphere, through practices and discourses that tend to reify the notion of ‘race’ under the pretext of the legitimate struggle against racism, or even to crystallise a diffuse resentment towards the ‘white left’ or to consolidate latent boundaries in the field of identity.
But these excesses or this hardening are themselves reactions — not always subtle ones — to the distortions of a dominant ideology that, in the French context, cloaks itself in the tattered finery of ‘republican values’, universalism, or secularism, to the point of turning them into genuine objects of aversion.
Indeed, the situation that unfolded, on the one hand, with the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023 and the genocidal turn of the war against Gaza and, on the other hand, with the tensions between Algeria and France and the arrest of the writer Boualem Sansal on 16 November 2024, has shown us the moral bankruptcy of the intellectual and political elites, who are paving the way for fascism.
The persistence of anti-Algerian racism – coupled with the rejection of Arabs and Muslims – is disturbing in many ways. One need only look at the writings of activists such as Abdelkader Hadj Ali, Abdelaziz Menouer and Mohamed Saïl, who a century ago denounced their status as ‘pariahs’ and the stigmatisation of ‘sidis’ by a compliant French press.
Having made these observations, I would nevertheless like to reiterate the necessary distinction between criticism (from the left) and denigration (from the right). For my part, and with regard to our subject matter, I align myself with those in Latin America who subscribe to a materialist critique of decolonial studies, from a resolutely anti-colonialist perspective.
Without claiming to be exhaustive, we can nevertheless cite the sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, the historian Claudia Zapata, but also Gaya Makaran and Pierre Gaussens, whose book Critique de la raison décoloniale (2024) has been translated into French.
Finally, without giving in to the prevailing nationalism, we could also rediscover the work and commitments of our predecessors who, like Robert Bonnaud, Claude Liauzu, Maxime Rodinson and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, still have much to teach us.
Nedjib Sidi Moussa holds a PhD in political science and is a teacher and author of 6 books, including ‘Histoire algérienne de la France’ & ‘Algérie, une autre histoire de l’indépendance’.
The French original of this article was first published on the Left Renewal Blog. This English translation, by Daniel Mang, was also first published on the LR Blog.
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