The Unending War for Our Minds: Decolonizing the Praeter-Colonial Consciousness

Introduction: The Cultural Bomb That Never Stopped Exploding

When the President of Burkina Faso declared in 2025 that before Western missionaries arrived, his people “knew the language of the rivers and the laws of the sacred forest,” he was articulating a truth that resonates across the global south. This statement, delivered ironically from the halls of Putin’s Russia, encapsulates the complex reality of post-colonial consciousness—what Francisco Lobo terms the “praeter-colonial” mind. The praeter-colonial represents not just what comes after colonialism, but what persists through it, what transcends it, and what continues to haunt our intellectual and cultural landscapes long after the colonial flags have been lowered.

This examination delves into the sophisticated mechanisms through which colonialism established what Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o powerfully describes as the “cultural bomb”—a weapon designed not to destroy buildings but to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, languages, heritage, and ultimately, in themselves. The morning after the physical violence of conquest came what Thiong’o calls “the morning of the chalk and the blackboard,” where psychological violence replaced brute force as the primary instrument of control.

The Linguistic Conquest: First Casualty of Colonialism

Joaquín Trujillo Silva’s profound observation that conquest occurs when “an ‘other’ arrives and everyone feels compelled to speak to them in their language” reveals the foundational violence of colonialism. This linguistic subordination represents the first step in what becomes a comprehensive program of cultural erasure. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s radical decision to abandon English as his literary vehicle—despite its status as today’s lingua franca—represents one of the most courageous acts of intellectual decolonization. His farewell to English in “Decolonising the Mind” wasn’t merely a personal choice but a political statement against what he identified as imperialism’s most potent weapon: the systematic devaluation of native languages and knowledge systems.

This linguistic imperialism continues today in more subtle forms. As Lobo recounts from his experience discussing Anglo-Saxon thinkers with Chilean friends in Oxford, the cultural bomb has been effectively deployed in twenty-first century academia. Our minds, particularly in the global south, have been “re-colonized” by the dominance of Western academic traditions, often without our conscious awareness. The fields of legal theory and international law, as noted by Spanish legal philosophers, remain particularly resistant to incorporating scholarship from Latin American, African, and Asian thinkers.

Decolonizing the Curriculum: Beyond Symbolic Gestures

The Rhodes Must Fall movement that began in South Africa in 2015 and spread to Oxford represents a critical moment in the contemporary decolonization struggle. The movement’s demand to remove statues of Cecil Rhodes—a brutal colonizer who implemented apartheid regimes—symbolizes the broader fight to decolonize educational curricula. As the School of Oriental and African Studies in London defines it, decolonization involves “redress[ing] forms of disadvantage associated with racism and colonialism” by challenging “what counts as authoritative knowledge, whose knowledge is recognised, what universities teach and how they teach it.

However, decolonization must avoid what Rowena Arshad warns against: simply deleting Western knowledge. Instead, it should involve “situat[ing] the histories and knowledges that do not originate from the West in the context of imperialism, colonialism and power” and considering “why these have been marginalised and decentred.” This approach aligns with Martti Koskenniemi’s acknowledgment that international law’s historical narrative has been dominated by “white European men,” silencing women, non-Christians, and colonized peoples.

The Violence of Decolonization: Fanon’s Uncomfortable Truth

Frantz Fanon’s assertion that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon” remains profoundly relevant, even when considering Gandhi’s non-violent resistance. As Lobo observes, even peaceful transitions to independence often contain latent violence, whether in the form of nuclear capabilities in India and Pakistan or constitutional provisions for military mobilization in Costa Rica. This violence extends to intellectual realms through what María Elvira Roca terms “empirephobia”—a deep hatred of colonialism that sometimes manifests in reverse colonial fantasies, such as Laurent Binet’s novel where Incas conquer Europe or Raoul Peck’s scenes of Black slave traders whipping white children.

These narratives, while understandable as reactions to historical trauma, risk perpetuating the very cycles of violence they seek to overcome. As Gandhi warned, “an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” The praeter-colonial mind must navigate between justified anger and constructive forward movement.

The Perils of Radical Delinking: When Decolonization Backfires

Walter D. Mignolo’s concept of “decoloniality” as a process of “delinking in order to re-exist” raises important questions about the potential costs of intellectual isolation. The example of Russia’s anti-Western policies leading to a brain drain of scientists who can no longer publish in English-language journals demonstrates how radical delinking can harm global knowledge production. As Fanon predicted, decolonization often involves “the spectacular flight of capital” from former colonies—and this includes intellectual capital.

The challenge for the global south is to decolonize without isolating ourselves from global discourse. We must reclaim our knowledge traditions while remaining engaged with international academic communities. The solution isn’t to reject all Western knowledge but to create what Thiong’o calls “a quest for relevance”—a liberating perspective that allows us to see ourselves clearly in relationship to ourselves and others.

Beyond Post-Colonialism: The Praeter-Colonial as Enduring Reality

Ella Shohat’s critique of “post-colonial” terminology highlights how the term risks implying that “colonialism is now a matter of the past,” thereby undermining recognition of its “economic, political, and cultural deformative-traces in the present.” The praeter-colonial concept acknowledges that the past is never truly gone—that colonial legacies continue to shape our present realities in profound ways.

Timothy Snyder’s question—“what to do after empire?”—remains the central political problem of our century. The praeter-colonial mind recognizes that we cannot simply “move beyond” colonialism as if it were a finished chapter. Instead, we must continually engage with its lingering effects while building new frameworks for understanding and action.

Conclusion: Toward a Liberated Future

The work of decolonizing our minds is not about rejecting all Western influence or romanticizing pre-colonial pasts. It’s about developing what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o describes as “a quest for relevance” that allows for clear self-understanding and authentic relationships with others. This requires what Fanon hoped for: the involvement of everyone, both oppressed and oppressors, in “rehabilitat[ing] humanity for all.”

As intellectuals and citizens of the global south, we owe this work to those who came before us, to ourselves, and to future generations. The praeter-colonial mind represents not a rejection of the world but a more nuanced engagement with it—one that acknowledges the complexities of our historical inheritance while charting a course toward genuine intellectual and cultural liberation. The cultural bomb may have exploded, but its fallout continues to shape our consciousness, and our responsibility is to carefully sift through the debris, reclaiming what is valuable while building something new and authentically our own.