Conceptual Introduction

This Introduction to Volume One lays out the aims, methods, and spirit of the three-volume project of Decolonial Reconstellations, followed by an overview of the chapters in this volume. The editors define the project’s key concepts, particularly the frameworks of deep time and deep place; and they describe the collaborative practices and long-historical, interdisciplinary, intersectional methods that shape the chapters’ contributions to decolonial thought. The Introduction emphasizes that, by de-linking from urocentric concepts and from temporalities of modern and premodern, while also eschewing colonially imposed divisions among peoples and regions, these chapters open new horizons for decolonial understanding and analysis. As the editors conclude, the combined contributions of differently positioned scholars from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and from southern, eastern, northern, and western hemispheres, allow the chapters to: broaden the double decolonial project of critique and re-envisioning; deepen feminist-intersectional analyses of world history; and build solidarities across positionalities, within and beyond the academy.