Decolonisation as a form of cultural practice takes 2 forms: the therapeutic and the bureaucratic. In the therapeutic mode, it’s about “decolonising oneself.” This can mean just about anything and is essentially a form of personal branding. https://twitter.com/revtwinkcomrade/status/1319815346669326336

In the bureaucratic mode, it’s a means for institutions to refresh and enhance their moral authority. “Decolonising the curriculum” works this way. It rebrands institutional interests (increasing student recruitment; competing with other universities) as moral values.

Conducted via oversight committees, “sensitivity readers” and EDI consultants on short-term contracts, etc, the bureaucratic mode translates the moral language of decolonial rhetoric into bureaucratic processes.

And of course, those who “decolonise themselves” in plausible and “employable” ways via the therapeutic mode are highly eligible to fill those consultancy and oversight roles within the institutional bureaucracy.

As “cost effectiveness” and “value for money” were once used as justifications for neoliberal restructuring, now the moralising rhetoric of decolonisation is taking its place. But the back end processes—cost cutting, ever more marketisation—are the same.

The end result—as with any form of neoliberalism—is to accelerate the process of atomisation. But there are material, class, and institutional interests being served here.