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Decolonial Thoughts

@decolonialthoughts

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Burn the blueprint. Write your own future.
The home for radical minds challenging the systems we’ve inherited and imagining the ones we need.

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Since announcing our open call, we’ve received several questions about the submission process. Below are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions to help you prepare and submit your work. Please see the link in our bio titled “Creative Callout.” At Decolonial Thoughts, we want the submission process to be as accessible as possible. If you need any accommodations, please reach out to us via email or DM before the submission deadline.Decolonial work is expansive. It requires imagination, ritual, care and dedication to envision new ways of being and bring them to life. We want to see work that challenges dominant narratives, nurtures possibility and invites us to think differently about ourselves, our histories and our futures.If you’d like to support the work we do at Decolonial Thoughts, subscribe to our publication and sign up for our newsletter. Your support helps us continue publishing thoughtful, community-centered work and compensating the artists and writers who contribute to it. by @decolonialthoughts

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Decolonial Thoughts is calling you to create with us! The form to submit is in our bio under CREATIVE CALLOUT. by @decolonialthoughts

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10 days ago

Spivak’s question, “Can the subaltern speak?”, is not only about whether marginalised people have voices. It is about whether power is willing, or able, to hear them.When we look at Sudan, Congo, and insecurity in Nigeria, the question becomes uncomfortable. Who gets spoken about? Who gets spoken for? Whose suffering is treated as urgent, and whose is allowed to fade into background noise?Part of the problem is not simply ignorance, but complicity. The West often struggles to engage honestly with African crises because doing so would mean confronting the colonial histories, resource extraction, arms flows, foreign policy choices, and global economic systems that have helped produce and sustain them.However, Spivak’s argument also pushes us beyond a simple West versus the rest framework. Subalternity is not limited to race, nor does shared nationality, ethnicity, or geography guarantee that marginalised people will be heard. People can be oppressed within structures that are led, managed, or defended by those who look like them.Nigeria is one example of this. Insecurity in the North, rural violence, displacement, and the kidnapping of schoolchildren force us to ask how class, religion, ethnicity, geography, corruption, and state neglect shape whose suffering becomes urgent and whose is ignored.To take the subaltern seriously is not just to feel sympathy. It is to ask what structures make some people easier to ignore, and what responsibilities we avoid when we refuse to listen. by @decolonialthoughts

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11 days ago

In our new theme, we explore ethics and morality from a Decolonial lens. Two words we often use interchangeably, but they are not the same. One is inherited. One is imposed. Both have shaped the trajectory of human life, human suffering, and survival.For centuries, philosophers have debated where our moral compass comes from. Empires have justified atrocities in its name. Slavery itself was framed by some as ordained — a “decision from God” — rather than as a violent, human choice.In this new theme, we’re exploring ethics and morality as distinct forces, through a decolonial lens.We’re asking:- What ethical and moral standards do we follow today and who decided they were the standard?- What were the values, principles, and ways of knowing held by those who came before us?- Why were those systems erased, silenced, or rewritten?This isn’t just an academic question. It’s personal. It’s political. It’s ancestral. And Decolonial Thoughts challenges you to sit with the question of where does your moral compass actually come from and how does it lead your life? by @decolonialthoughts

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18 days ago

Some more footage from our recent event in Lagos,Nigeria in partnership with @atijeexperience. We are so thankful to our guests and speaker @evennaji for having such dynamic and productive conversation around land, housing and access. We are looking forward to planning more dynamic and accessible events. We want everyone to be able to take part in our activities. To stay tuned on what we have coming and to get discounted rates for our upcoming events sign up to our newsletter and subscribe to Decolonial Thoughts! by @decolonialthoughts

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21 days ago

Healing is deep and restorative work. It doesn’t happen in a straight line, and it rarely happens on command. It asks patience of us, the kind of patience that colonial systems were never built to offer.@thejordanrome reminds us that “Decolonialism is not something frivolous or merely colonialism’s theoretical opposite.” It is a lived, embodied practice of unlearning — of tracing the roots of what was taken, and choosing, again and again, to remember. Decolonizing is life-saving. It is a radical act of spiritual transformation and a healing of our humanity. Colonialism didn’t just take land and language and lineage. It disrupted our relationship to our bodies, instincts, and ways of knowing.So the work of decolonizing isn’t only structural. It is deeply historical and political. It is also intimate, and personal. It starts from within.Read the new piece. Link in bio! by @decolonialthoughts

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23 days ago

On 20 June, we hosted an intimate dining experience in partnership with @atijeexperience, centred on land, housing and access.The conversation was facilitated by the incredible @evennaji of Add.apt, who guided guests through difficult and necessary questions around government responsibility, communal responsibility and individual responsibility.Together, we explored the cost of care. Who is expected to care? Is the cost of caring higher for some than others? Where do class and privilege sit within our ideas of responsibility, access and belonging?The dining experience, led by Atijé, was beautifully woven into the conversation, with each course connected to our wider reflections on land, space, memory and community.The evening ended on a hopeful note, with an ad lib exercise led by Eve. Guests were asked to imagine waking up one day to find that all walls and gates had been torn down. What would we prioritise then?As expected, many reflected on the need to build deeper relationships with our neighbours. In such a state of openness and exposure, care would no longer be abstract. It would become urgent, practical and shared. So would the demand for greater accountability.If you are interested in safe spaces where difficult conversations can be held with nuance, care and honesty, while still leaving you feeling hopeful and seen, sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when our next event is happening, and in what city. 👀We are so excited to continue building community through conversational dinners and workshops globally. by @decolonialthoughts

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24 days ago

We have talked about the harm. The monopolies. The weapons. The erasure. Now we can talk about what we do about it. Now we’re focused on solutions.Support local farms and co-ops. Grow and make your own foods. Reach for the remedies our ancestors have trusted for centuries. Boycott the monopolies that profit from your sickness and only care about your dollars. Redirect your hard earned resources away from billionaires who control what you eat, how much it costs you, and when you’ll get more. Food sovereignty is not abstract. It is a daily practice that starts with us.If you don’t have the capacity to do it all, start with one thing. Start small and stay committed. Food as Medicine isn’t just a theme. Every local farm supported, every dollar redirected, every meal reclaimed is a step toward a Decolonial world. by @decolonialthoughts

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New Year’s Day, 1994. While the world celebrated, Indigenous militants in Chiapas, Mexico took back their power.The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the EZLN, rose up. Masked and armed, they seized city halls, freed prisoners, destroyed land records, and distributed weapons to their liberation fighters. Their message to the world was ¡Ya Basta! Enough is enough.For 500 years, Indigenous peoples in Chiapas had been dispossessed of their land, rights, and dignity. They were pushed further into poverty while Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a deal they knew would devastate Indigenous farming communities.The uprising was a direct response to NAFTA.Their leader, Subcomandante Marcos, reportedly told a pair of tourists caught in the middle of it: “We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.”For nearly two weeks the Zapatistas battled the Mexican army before a ceasefire was called. Blood was shed, but decades later, the EZLN continues to govern autonomous Indigenous communities in Chiapas, building their own schools, healthcare, and food systems outside of the Mexican state.The Zapatistas are an example of what can be accomplished through true uprising. The question we should ask ourselves is: what are we willing to rise for? ¡Ya Basta!Documentary: The Zapatista Uprising, 30 Years Later by Modern Insurgent by @decolonialthoughts

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With Elon Musk reportedly crossing into trillionaire territory, the question of structural critique feels even harder to avoid.However, this is not only about billionaires.It is about the everyday systems we participate in, benefit from, resist, normalise, and reproduce, often without meaning to.Structural critique is not the same as saying every individual is uniquely evil for existing inside harmful systems.But it also is not an excuse to avoid responsibility.The point is to move beyond shame and defensiveness so we can ask better questions:What are we helping to maintain?Who is harmed by what we call normal?And what would accountability look like if it was not reduced to personal failure? by @decolonialthoughts

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Author and interviewer André Gomes examines how cannabis legalisation in many Global South countries is becoming an extractive, export-focused industry that benefits foreign investors while excluding local growers and maintaining harsh domestic criminalisation. He interviews Chris Duvall, a Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico, who studies cannabis, colonialism and African drug policy. Duvall describes the trend as neocolonial, arguing that outside companies shape policy for profit while traditional users and farmers remain marginalised. Click the link in our bio for more. by @decolonialthoughts

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We’ve heard of food deserts. But what do we know of food monopolies?Billionaire families control the majority of what America, the UK, Australia — and much of the world — eats. From grain to berries to meat and dairy, the consolidation of our food supply is a powerful strategy to increase profitability, reduce food safety and shut out competition. It is the result of decades of policy manipulation, exploitation of workers and land, and the deliberate dismantling of small and family farms.Now tech billionaires are buying up the farmland too. Why is that? Swipe through to understand the system — and why food sovereignty has never been more urgent. by @decolonialthoughts

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