When the Decolonial Goes Precolonial

Abstract

This article begins by identifying common frameworks of decolonial and postcolonial approaches while considering the current scholarship's limitations of engagement with those approaches. We believe there is a need to interrupt (neo)colonizing approaches to decoloniality, that is, the limitations of the master's tools. Rather, we offer a mediation that critiques the centering of the colonial. In doing so, we weave into this analysis a series of narratives that beckon us back prior to the decolonial/postcolonial turn and beyond postcolonial and decolonial feminist thought—allowing for a precolonial knowing and telling to emerge. Through these tellings, we define and acknowledge spaces of meaning and traditions.