A Studied Criticism of Selected Major Works on Decoloniality

A laborious search of the literature on decoloniality yielded 241 books dealing with various issues regarding the socio-philosophy. Of these books, five focused exclusively on the socio-philosophy. They are the following: (1) Mignolo, The Politics of Decolonial Investigations on Decoloniality (2021); (2) Mignolo and Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (2018); (3) Scauso, Intersectional Decoloniality (2022); (4) McEwan, Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Development (2018); and (5) Nhemachena et al., Social and Legal Theory in the Age of Decoloniality: (Re-)Envisioning Pan-African Jurisprudence in the 21st Century (2018). In the second introductory chapter of this book, I broach the aforementioned books using the “studied criticism” approach, which involves judging each work’s strengths and weaknesses. There are three major types of this approach. They are (1) “destructive criticism,” which involves tearing down; (2) “constructive criticism,” which refers to building together; and (3) “instructive criticism,” which adds on to what a writer presents. Accordingly, each book is analyzed in four subsections. The first subsection entails a brief synopsis of the main ideas of the book. The second subsection assesses the theoretical framework used in the book. The third subsection encompasses an evaluation of the research methodology employed in the book. And, the fourth subsection appraises the analytical technique(s) utilized. In the end, an overall determination of its strengths and weaknesses is made.