i recently finished asia as method and half-finished wretched of the earth. both are really good in assessing decolonization and, in the case of asia as method, deimperialization. but i think both lacked or forgot the importance of the writings of mao zedong in decolonial methods.
for wretched of the earth and mao you can read more about it here.
what i wanna talk abt is the ideas of nationalism brought up in asia as method and mao's idea of contradictions. chen kuan-hsing identifies different attempts for nationalism in newly formed nation states. currently, i cannot be bothered to look them up but as far as i remember they were traditionalism and nativism, and something else. i bring them as it is important to understand why they failures for nationalism and I think mao's "contradictions" will offer us better insight into their failures.
contradictions, to mao, are things that exist in a dialectic with one another that it becomes the identity of that thing. going with the notion of decolonization, an example would be the contradiction between the philippines and united states. the relationship between the philippines and america is part of the philippines identity even though they exist in opposition to the desire of independence hence a contradiction. (important to take note that contradictions, while integral to the identity of a thing, should be seen as temporary as all contradiction needs to be resolved and resolving these contradictions is what moves history and movements)
and for a given thing, there could exist many contradictions (which is important in decolonization). still using the philippines as an example, there is a contradiction between the philippines and imperialist nations (such as america and china), within the philippines, there is a contradiction between feudal landlords and the peasants, there is also a contradiction between genders. contradictions can define an identity as they compound and complicated relations.
chen briefly talks about how identity politics like feminism and race relations is often seen as isolated from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism even though they only exist in one system. here, i think is where chen could've used mao's contradictions in order to unpack that problem.
through assuming contradictions as part of one's identity, identity politics could be unpacked and connected to bigger notions of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. fanon touches on this when he says that colonized men desire white women in order to perform and become a white man. in short, colonialism changes desires and affects gender relations (many studies on this). A contradiction (contradiction between colonized and colonizer) creates another contradiction (contradiction between colonized male bodies and colonized female bodies) therefore creating an identity comprised of compounding contradictions.
Going back to the chen's examinations of several attempts for nationalism, traditionalism and nativism, we can also unpack through their contradictions and why they don't work as nationalist portrayals. ideas and ideals of going back to an origin and creating a distilled notion of a people, like focusing of native (maybe we can use the word indigenous??) identities or traditional (sometimes, tradition includes colonization, esp in the ph, as christian traditions) identities, remove/ignore the layers of contradictions that are present. ignoring contradictions fails to grasp the material history of colonized lands and peoples. and failure to understand and handle contradictions will only lead to internal disputes and uncertainties as mao puts it.
anyway, i think people should really quote mao more when talking about decolonization as one of the first and still leading thinkers of dealing with decolonization.
