Becker Heike
Department of Anthropology, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa.
Dialect Anthropol. 2023;47(1):71-84. doi: 10.1007/s10624-022-09678-1. Epub 2022 Dec 2.
This article portrays a recent movement towards intersectional activism in urban Namibia. Since 2020, young Namibian activists have come together in campaigns to decolonize public space through removing colonial monuments and renaming streets. These have been linked to enduring structural violence and issues of gender and sexuality, especially queer and women's reproductive rights politics, which have been expressly framed as perpetuated by coloniality. I argue that the Namibian protests amount to new political forms of intersectional decoloniality that challenge the notion of decolonial activism as identity politics. The Namibian case demonstrates that decolonial movements may not only emphatically be steeped in essentialist politics but also that activists may an identity-based politics which postcolonial ruling elites have promoted. I show that, for the Namibian movements' ideology and practice, a fully intersectional approach has become central. They consciously juxtapose colonial memory with a living vision for the future to confront and situate colonial and apartheid history. Young Namibian activists challenge the intersectional inequalities and injustices, which, they argue, postcolonial Namibia inherited from its colonial-apartheid past: class inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and gender-based violence.
本文描绘了纳米比亚城市中近期出现的一种走向交叉性激进主义的趋势。自2020年以来，纳米比亚年轻的激进主义者们联合起来开展运动，通过拆除殖民纪念碑和重新命名街道来使公共空间非殖民化。这些运动与长期存在的结构性暴力以及性别和性取向问题相关联，尤其是同性恋者和女性的生殖权利政治，这些问题被明确界定为由殖民性延续下来的。我认为纳米比亚的抗议活动构成了交叉性非殖民化的新政治形式，挑战了将非殖民化激进主义视为身份政治的观念。纳米比亚的案例表明，非殖民化运动不仅可能强烈地沉浸在本质主义政治中，而且激进主义者可能会反对后殖民统治精英所倡导的基于身份的政治。我表明，对于纳米比亚运动的意识形态和实践而言，一种完全交叉性的方法已成为核心。他们有意识地将殖民记忆与对未来的鲜活愿景并列，以面对和定位殖民及种族隔离历史。纳米比亚年轻的激进主义者们挑战了交叉性的不平等和不公正现象，他们认为后殖民时期的纳米比亚从其殖民 - 种族隔离的过去继承了这些问题：阶级不平等、种族主义、性别歧视、恐同症以及基于性别的暴力。
