Conceptual Introduction

This Introduction to Volume Two of the three-volume set of Decolonial Reconstellations elaborates on the conceptual coordinates of deep time and deep place laid out in the Introduction to Volume One, while further sharpening the intertwined decolonial practices of historical critique and creative re-vision. As the co-editors note, because the authors here take the dynamisms of deep-time worlds as starting points, they re-approach the dismantling of colonialist narratives and concepts with fresh leverage. Their challenges to eurocentric temporalities also expose how “denials of coevalness” among peoples (Fabian) persist within standard concepts of premodern and modern, or “advanced” and “backward.” As the authors shed light on histories submerged or voided by colonialist narratives, to use Édouard Glissant’s term, they also open pathways for recuperating or re-imagining the past, present, and future. As the Introduction summarizes, the chapters’ grounding in periods before European hegemony accomplishes several things: it strengthens the provincializing of Europe; it pinpoints the colonialist, capitalist, and intersectional conjunctures that plague anti-colonial struggle; and, in turn, it provides an enriched basis for delinking from the colonial imaginaries and hegemonic assumptions that infect world politics today. The Introduction closes with an overview of the chapters.