Heliology: On the Metaphor of Decolonization

This essay attempts to think anticolonialism as theory. It does so by first embracing the role of metaphor in the contemporary discourse on decolonization. Then, turning to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, it models a way of re-reading the promise of anticolonial freedom attuned to the alternative conceptions of decolonization that persist in the wake of past struggles. Reading with Fanon and, subsequently, with Achille Mbembe in his revision of the former's political vision, the essay traces the temporalities that converge under the sign of decolonization in search of what hidden potentials remain at hand. © 2023 University of California Press. All rights reserved.