The longing for a precolonial essence blocks present-moment transformation

Evidence

So often in the postcolonial world the desire for some oppositional precolonial essence comes to take the place of reality. It is a desire which locks the hope for the future together with the fantasy of the past while forgetting the present, and the present is the only site of transformative action. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3435

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely dense paradox: the desire for an ‘oppositional precolonial essence’ is itself a trap that fuses future hope to past fantasy and erases the present as the sole site of action — worth sitting with.