HUD PI Jonathan Luke Austin has published a new peer-reviewed article with Review of International Studies entitled “Is all decolonialism metaphorical? On the aesthetics of decolonizing humanitarian futures.” The article examines the integration of decolonial theory into humanitarian design and how it generates a new form of expertise that contrasts with traditional, Eurocentric perspectives. It emphasizes the contextual and agency-driven nature of decolonial knowledge and critiques the aesthetic dimensions of established notions of objectivity. Austin argues that this aesthetic challenge can facilitate significant advancements in decolonial politics, offering a promising vision for the future of humanitarian efforts.

Abstract

Decolonialism generates a different kind of expertise. Against disembodied, technocratic, and purportedly neutral notions of objectivity as producing expertise, decolonial theory, practice, and politics instead situates expertise as a matter of contextual embeddedness, autonomous agency outside Eurocentric systems of thought, and a futurist imaginary that promises radical global change. Increasingly – moreover – this idea of decolonial expertise is being promoted at the heart of global governance institutions, and particularly humanitarian organizations. In this article, I explore how this has occurred, and its political tensions, in three main ways. First, I tease out how this decolonial challenge to expertise is an aesthetic one – grounded in critiques of how traditional and power-inflected notions of objectivity are themselves aesthetically produced. Second, and drawing on the analysis of the rise of decolonial discourse in humanitarianism, I unpack how decolonialism has mobilized a counter-aesthetic that challenges the appropriateness of that purportedly neutral aesthetic. Finally, I explore the implications of this aesthetic generation of (decolonial) expertise for decolonial politics more broadly, suggesting that – pace critics of ‘metaphorical’ forms of decolonialism – the aesthetic generation of expertise has the potential to radically advance decolonial objectives in concrete, material, and tangible ways.

Below, or accessible here, you can read the article.