Introduction

As Césaire notes, any engagement with theories of decolonisation requires an appreciation of the spatial–temporal contexts in which the colonisation/decolonisation co-constitutive relationship has evolved. In addition to this, Starhawk points us towards a desirable direction for decolonisation. Therefore, it must be understood, that without a longitudinal and planetary study of different context-based evolutions of decolonisation’s theories, action that purports to engage with it will be superficial, unable to grasp the contingencies, exigencies, purposes, and limitations of their analyses. Therefore, this chapter focuses on a detailed examination of the colonisation/decolonisation interrelation, especially theorisations that conceptualise the normativity of the colonial in constructing theoretical and practical opposition to it. This examination proceeds through the different contexts in which this colonisation/decolonisation relationship manifests itself: settler states, post-colonial states, as well as within colonising states, such as the UK. Special attention is paid to the spatial–temporal continuities and overlaps within these structures and their refusals … noting that the long survival of the logics and praxes of ongoing colonialism is due, in part, to its ability to co-opt the other, adapt itself, and evolve when necessary. Therefore, context-based refusals have always also had to adapt and evolve, especially to the contexts in which they find themselves and the tools to which they have access. Thus, Baldwin noting these continuities in structure and refusal, invites us to imagine and accept that the civil rights movement in the US was just another in a long line of slave rebellions (1979). In the same vein, prison and police abolitionists narrate the end of formalised racialised slavery, not as a break, but a point of continuing evolution of new forms of racialised capitalist exploitation (Leroy 2021: 8).