The Decolonization of our Mind (Replay)

Thomas Steininger in dialogue with Adebayo C. Akomolafe

“If colonization places us in boxes, one might think that ‘decolonization’ is the act of coming out of the box. Moving from here to there. But that would be another silent instance of ‘whiteness’: the mythical condition that enlists us in the practice of seeing things as discrete, not relational; as simple, not complex and partial; as dead, not alive and agential,” writes Adebayo C. Akomolafe, Ph.D. “I think decolonization is not about moving from ‘Here’ to ‘There’, as it is a weirding of the distance between the two.”

Born in Nigeria, living in India with his partner and two beautiful children, Bayo is the co-author of the book We Will Tell Our Own Story! He is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on the global crisis, civic action, and social change. He is Coordinating Curator for The Emergence Network, which is “an earth-wide, soil-deep commonwealth of curators that is committed to the art of queering traditional activisms and contemporary patterns of responding to crisis, and opening up new spaces of power in partnership with the nonhuman planet.”

Thomas Steininger speaks with Adebayo C. Akomolafe in Radio evolve about the weird process of decolonizing the mind.