Geoff Shullenberger, shedding some light on the ultimately therapeutic aims of liberal elites who use the lexicon of ‘decolonization’:
Here we find an indirect clue as to the true nature of the “decolonization” project that has become a prominent part of higher education: Like much of what now takes place in elite institutions, it is ultimately a therapeutic enterprise. Battles over land and sovereignty are displaced onto the psyche; the demand for territorial restoration has become a metaphor for internal struggles over identity and belonging for which universities serve as a staging ground. […]
There has been no more fraught subject than Israel in elite universities in recent decades. Most of them have influential constituencies on both sides of the conflict, and they have consequently acted in contradictory ways, often attracting the ire of both Israel’s supporters and its opponents. But their reluctance and awkwardness in responding to the current situation hints at a problem deeper than these divided loyalties. For years, elite colleges—and other influential institutions—have lent their prestige to once-radical concepts like decolonization, seeming to imagine that they could be kept separate from the gruesome histories out of which they emerged. Fanon, the intellectual godfather of “decolonial” thought, wasn’t so naïve. As the world becomes more dangerous again, the luxury of metaphorical radicalism may prove too costly to sustain.
