Decolonising the political: Presence, law and obligation

Abstract

In his recent book, Mahmood Mamdani calls for the decolonisation of politics to overcome the categorical and conceptual legacies of the colonial nation state that generate, time and again, cycles of retributive violence. Mamdani's suggestion of survivor communities, I argue, does not go far enough. The epistemological revolution necessary to reconceptualise legitimate belonging must go beyond the notion of surviving a shared history. If what is at issue is creating an inclusive political order, political community cannot be based on a shared past but must rather encompass all those who share a present. Moreover, if the distinction between permanent majorities and permanent minorities established by the nation state is continued in the structures created by that order, instruments of redress are required. The political question and the social question are one. To this end, rather than abandoning notions of legal responsibility, an epistemological revolution in the legal notions of responsibility is needed. To liberate the question of who belongs from the logic of prerogative that is the corollary of the nation state form and to radically alter the logic of membership, responsibility must be reconceptualised to take account of our implication in the situation of others. We can conceive of polities not as constituted by a shared past, but as premised on our collective inhabitation of entangled histories and presents.