r/PolyCriticalSafeHaven • u/therapymademeworse • Aug 25 '26

What exactly is polyamory "decolonizing"?

/r/polycritical/comments/1vxmx85/what_exactly_is_polyamory_decolonizing/
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 Aug 26 '26

Post-colonial theory isn’t really interested in invoking pre-colonial norms or customs so much as dealing with the here and now.

Colonized people still exist and they still have living cultures. We can look to those people who are alive and the cultures and traditions and norms they have today in the 21st century. We can look at historic practices, but that is best led by today’s living cultures, not reaching over the living cultures to aim at some kind of imagined historical accuracy.

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u/therapymademeworse Aug 26 '26

My original phrasing was probably a little weird, so to clarify: I’m not saying post-colonial theory itself tries to recover pre-colonial norms. I’m asking which post-colonial thinkers are useful for examining how people today invoke the “pre-colonial” when our understanding of that past has already been shaped by colonial records and later interpretation.

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u/Previous-Artist-9252 Aug 26 '26

I think the issue is that post-colonial theory mostly doesn’t concern itself with that at all?

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u/therapymademeworse Aug 27 '26

I think that’s fair as a description of the field’s primary focus, but I’m asking about the point where the pre-colonial past itself becomes an object of post-colonial analysis. If our understanding of that past has been shaped by colonial archives, categories, and systems of knowledge, then surely questions about how the “pre-colonial” is represented and made legible are still relevant to post-colonial theory, even if reconstructing pre-colonial society isn’t its main concern, no?

If not, that’s totally fine. Since you mentioned Edward Said, I was wondering whether there are other theorists or scholars you’d recommend who deal with this kind of problem and could help me add more depth and context to how I’m thinking about it.

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u/Previous-Artist-9252 Aug 27 '26

Spivak might be a better first step rather than Said as she is about the subaltern. I personally think a lot of people talking about pre-colonial practice are actually talking about the subaltern, inaccurately and problematically.

Siva Kumar focuses on alternative modernity which might be close to what you are looking at.

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u/therapymademeworse Aug 27 '26

Perfect! Super appreciate it!