For several decades now in Spain, debates and reflections on colonialism have been circulating, supported by academic and activist discourses, including the so-called antiracist, postcolonial, decolonial, anticolonial, etc. This Special Collection is an attempt to bring together and explore the context of these discussions without concealing the problems and the tensions that these entail. This issue, the first Special Collection in Spanish in the OLH, is also an attempt to bring to light the concealed colonial heritage of Spain: where hispanist readings of history, culture and identity continue to shape the present of the country; where concepts such as race have been largely excluded or underestimated in the analysis of oppression; where the colonial enterprises of the Spanish empire have been positivised; where the presence and the contributions of racialized bodies have been made invisible and/or appropriated; where there are still pending territories of decolonization and where institutional racism continues to limit the lives of thousands of racialised bodies. Bringing together contributions from scholars, artists and activists that explore critical discourses around racism, colonial history, the “nation-state”, feminisms and LGTBIQ struggles, we aim, with this special collection, to measure the fertility of the different appropriations of “coloniality” coming from territories in conflict with the nation-state paradigm and its inherited imperial legacy. Coloniality does not operates in the same way for the diversity of bodies that claim it, which implies both recognising old oppressions and denouncing renewed privileges that are not traditionally recognised by the sovereignist or feminist struggles in Spain. Different territories are shown in a double condition - as victims and executioners - of a modern-colonial inheritance made impassable over the centuries. This publication is the attempt to draw, precisely, the irregular map of these superimposed colonialities. This Special Collection is guest edited by Dr Larisa Pérez Flores (Universidad de la Laguna) and Paula Clemente Vega (PhD candidate at Birkbeck, University of London). Credits: Image from the documentary "Tenerife" by Yves Allegret (Tenerife, 1932).

Colonialities in Dispute: Discourses on Colonialism and Race in the Spanish State

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Special Collections