Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Description
In this session, I will argue that the discourse of resilience is dehumanizing in how it imposes mythical terms on the colonized people worldwide. It deals with them as if they have supernatural ‘coping mechanisms,’ romanticizes them as exemplary in ‘enduring’ everything, obscures their humanity, reduces the depravity of colonial violence, and ignores layers of structural violence they continue to face. It also normalizes the colonizer’s violence, reduces its severity, and frees you from your responsibility and the feeling of guilt for not doing enough because of an expectation that the colonized are resilient enough and will come out stronger. If colonial violence is hardly protested, the colonizer will continue with these violations, expecting no outcry or calls for accountability.