3: Postcolonialism

This chapter describes postcolonialism, which emerged in response to colonialism and imperialism's legacies in the late 20th century (Larsen, 2000), and how it informed psychology that attends to the political and cultural aspects of colonization, postcolonial development, and decolonization. The vignette sheds light on a colonial perspective's lasting impact and continuing damage. Postcolonialism illuminates the subjectivity and context that mainstream psychology tends to default to while rarely stating assumptions based on Whiteness. Contributions of Frantz Fanon, who addresses the pathologizing of North Africans during and following his Western psychiatry training, follow Bonnie and Edwardo Duran's work in postcolonial psychology rooted in Indigenous knowledge. The chapter concludes with Albert Memmi's contributions to postcolonial discourse and the role of the colonizer.