Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò and contested definitions of decolonisation

iTunes and Amazon keep recommending that I read Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously. I finally caved and listened to it. Here's the publisher's description: 

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers.

This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

I think that I would not have been so open to reading it if I hadn't already been annoyed with the way that some people are using the word decolonisation. For example, when I hear calls to decolonise the police, I can't help but to feel that the word is often being used wrong. The history of policing as a mechanism to violate Indigenous peoples' rights is well documented. See for example The Report of the Aboriginal Justice Commission of Manitoba. In my mind, true decolonisation demands abolition. I'm not against decolonisation. But I am troubled by the way some people characterize decolonisation. And so I did listen to the book. 

The premise of the book is that decolonisation has lost its way. I actually think that a different framing would be that there is currently a power struggle going on with respect to what the words means. People are using it for all sorts of things, and rather than being against decolonisation, I think that the focus could be on more carefully defining decolonisation and becoming more vocal about its misuse.

I think the book sets up a false dichotomy between decolonisation and Indigenous agency. Indigenous agency is the heart of decolonisation. The book was valid, however, in pointing out that if people in positions of authority have a fixed and predetermined set of criteria regarding what decolonisation "looks like", and then they unilaterally impose it upon Indigenous people, then  they are actually recolonising. 

Overall, I felt like the book was intentionally provocative. I would recommend reading this book if you have the capacity to be fuelled by controversy. I also recommend reading this book in order to be aware of what critics of decolonisation are saying. I do not recommend reading this book if you are working on decolonising projects and are already feeling unsupported, as this book would be discouraging to read if you were already in a position of feeling unsupported.