Nobody takes decolonization as seriously as the Pakistani academia. A literature department only has to hire a few Saidians and a couple colonial apologists to encourage a ‘healthy’ convoluted debate that never leads anywhere (like most debates to be honest). In case you were looking to ‘decolonise’ yourself and appropriate your formerly-oppressed and now-mostly-privileged ‘subaltern’ identity, here’s a handy dandy printable.
Audit a postcolonial studies course
Stick around a postcolonial classroom for a while (preferably in one of the few aesthetically appealing university campuses built by the White man himself for a double shot of irony) where the abrogation vs appropriation is debate taking place in the language of the colonizer. And oh, nothing will make the process more effective than throwing about jargon that nobody has ever made an effort to translate into the local language. After all, we’re not the French.
Cough up Jstor
Write a long paper/article/blog dissecting the subaltern issue from more angles than an octagon, and print it in a publication that the subaltern has no access to. Present it in a conference or one of those literary festivals where racial profiling will deprive the subject of the said essay the right of entry.
Seek help from Ghalib and Daagh
Quote random relevant bits of Urdu poetry in your conversation to reignite the glory of those ‘inclusive’ pre-colonisation days.
Write a novel of course?
Call yourself a ‘bird of exile’ and move to Canada or New York or your colonized legacy, London. Then, write a novel in which you shed off the burden of representation and embrace your creolised identity in a globalized world. But still, ground your characters in your homeland so you can capitalize on the social currency of a ‘Pakistani English writer’ all the while talking mainly of high sex drive and drugs and an odd reference to mangoes.
And the most important one..
Curse the colonizer
But then beg for scholarships to its country because come on, who will have a good educational framework than the country that ripped off half the world (and also shot tigers).
