Is all decolonialism metaphorical? On the aesthetics of decolonizing humanitarian futures

Abstract

Decolonialism generates a different kind of expertise. Against disembodied, technocratic, and purportedly neutral notions of objectivity as producing expertise, decolonial theory, practice, and politics instead situates expertise as a matter of contextual embeddedness, autonomous agency outside Eurocentric systems of thought, and a futurist imaginary that promises radical global change. Increasingly – moreover – this idea of decolonial expertise is being promoted at the heart of global governance institutions, and particularly humanitarian organizations. In this article, I explore how this has occurred, and its political tensions, in three main ways. First, I tease out how this decolonial challenge to expertise is an aesthetic one – grounded in critiques of how traditional and power-inflected notions of objectivity are themselves aesthetically produced. Second, and drawing on the analysis of the rise of decolonial discourse in humanitarianism, I unpack how decolonialism has mobilized a counter-aesthetic that challenges the appropriateness of that purportedly neutral aesthetic. Finally, I explore the implications of this aesthetic generation of (decolonial) expertise for decolonial politics more broadly, suggesting that – pace critics of ‘metaphorical’ forms of decolonialism – the aesthetic generation of expertise has the potential to radically advance decolonial objectives in concrete, material, and tangible ways.