Colonial relations predetermined migrant pathways but were willfully forgotten as a new beginning

Evidence

The old relations of colonization, slavery, and colonial rule, linking Britain with the Empire for over four hundred years, marked out the pathways which these migrants followed. But these historic relations of dependency and subordination were reconfigured—in the now-classic postcolonial way—when reconvened on domestic British soil. In the wake of decolonization, and masked by a collective amnesia about, and systematic disavowal of, empire (which descended like a Cloud of Unknowing in the 1960s), this encounter was interpreted as “a new beginning.” Most British people looked at these “children of empire” as if they could not imagine where “they” had come from, why, or what possible connection they could have with Britain. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 327

Categorization

• DEFINE: Hall’s ‘postcolonial’ reconfiguration: imperial relations replayed on domestic soil, with collective amnesia about empire as the enabling condition.
• XREF: Connects directly to the Islamophobia field’s treatment of how colonial history is disavowed while its structures persist.