Conceptual Introduction

This Introduction to Volume Three of the three-volume set of Decolonial Reconstellations builds on the frameworks outlined in the Introductions to Volumes One and Two. The editors particularly reflect on this Volume’s attention to the identity politics that today divide communities and disrupt the potential flourishing of just societies. As the co-editors highlight, the chapters expose the ongoing (neo)colonialist manipulation and polarization of identities, and yet these chapters also reveal how the non-essential nature of identity allows for its decolonial re-imaginings and creative adaptations. Like the chapters in the other volumes, the authors’ long-historical analyses enrich current theorizations of the these dynamics by studying the accruing layers of conjunctural or contested identity formations within regions and over centuries, which are manipulated by empires yet also creatively re-constellated by communities. The Introduction proposes that the complexities of these identity legacies need unpacking within the decolonizing project—not least because contemporary eurocentric discourses of international politics often reduce them to “tribal animosities.” Such reifications enable presentist, eurocentric, and androcentric norms to persist as the measure of identities, while obscuring the diverse identity values embedded within political economies. Informed by this volume’s chapters, this Introduction invites fresh public reflection on identities as multivalent forces in worldly life and world politics, and it closes with an overview of chapters.