Reimagining the Decolonial: Śūnyatā as Metaphor

Due to their performative and ontological aspects, metaphors in research play a powerful role in decolonial inquiry: metaphors from indigenous cosmologies and philosophies can counter the dominance of colonial-Western epistemological ideals. However, efforts to theorise from indigenous knowledge systems often rely on simplistic and apolitical applications. In Indian management research, such efforts often overlook the temporal and political distance between past epistemes and present struggles. This chapter posits Śūnyatā, the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, as a critical metaphor for decolonial research. Emphasising dependent origination, Śūnyatā challenges the absolute validity of both colonial and indigenous knowledges, framing research outcomes as inherently provisional and contingent. Working in dialogue with the concept of border thinking, Śūnyatā’s negative dialectics retain an awareness of epistemic politics while moving beyond dualisms, sustaining continuous theorising to understand the contradictions of postcolonial organisation. By rejecting essentialised notions of coloniality, decolonisation, and indigeneity, Śūnyatā invites a self-reflexive research posture and destabilises fixed positionalities, dissolving the coloniser–colonised binary within the research(er). In doing so, Śūnyatā advances decoloniality by fostering knowledge that is emergent, pluriversal, and critically reflexive.