Postcolonial Approaches in Anti-Discrimination Work: What Incentives Can They Provide?
In my political education work with adults in diversity and structure-critical consulting (process-oriented organizational development) on topics such as anti-discrimination, anti-racism, and diversity, I engaged with power critique and intersectionality, both politically and academically. They are the two central thematic focuses of my work.
However, my engagement with power critique from a postcolonial perspective arose not only as sheer theoretical interest, but also my own personal experiences. Time and again, as a female-perceived, Eela Tamil person with melanated skin, I was repeatedly denied competency on anti-discrimination issues and my own perspectives were reduced to personal bias or lacking in scientific validity. The need to legitimize my expertise through the acquiring additional theoretical concepts and academic work is symptomatic of what I learned through my engagement with postcolonial approaches: The authority to interpret which knowledge counts as expertise is decided by proximity to the white norm (cf. Hall 1992).
Based on my many years of experience in educational practice and theoretical engagement, particularly with early postcolonial approaches, I would like to use this text to explore the question of how postcolonial approaches, especially postcolonial power critique, can contribute to anti-discrimination work in Germany.
Postcolonial Power Critique: An Introduction
Postcolonial approaches are a form of power critique that analyze and question the ongoing effects of colonial power structures. From the very beginning, its development was characterized through the close relationship between activist movements, political demands and academic research. Theoretically, it was built on anti-colonial, anti-imperial and decolonial schools of thought from the 20th century, including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Albert Memmi. It also included key concepts such as Edward Said’s (1978) colonial discourse analysis, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s (1988) theory of epistemic violence as a hegemonic knowledge structure and Stuart Hall’s (1992) cultural studies analysis of racist systems of representation.
These approaches exposed and problematized Eurocentric systems of knowledge and representation that were previously considered universal and neutral. They revealed how the construction of the ‘other’ served as a means of colonial oppression and thus systematically marginalized non-European communities.
The deconstruction of white knowledge production, as a supposed symbol of Western superiority, opened up new spaces for scholarly participation. Peripheral voices moved to the center of academic discourse and enabled multiply marginalized people to name, question and break through colonial patterns of invisibilization.
A postcolonial critique of power is therefore far more than just a theoretical debate — it is a practice of resistance that actively opposes colonial hegemonies, their continuities and Western dominance.
Contributions to Anti-Discrimination Work: Postcolonial Power Critique as a Tool
In my work, I frequently encounter questions with the following thematic focuses:
- Criticizing discrimination: raising awareness of and reducing forms of discrimination such as racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, classism, queerphobia and ableism.
- Diversity and Structural Critique: Creating more opportunities for participation and inclusion for racialized people and those of multiple marginalizations.
- Intersectionality: dismantling and making experiences of discrimination that result from the interlocking of different forms of oppression visible, which are often overlooked.
Such needs illustrate the desire for a socio-political structural reform towards a more inclusive, participatory society in which marginalized perspectives are structurally supported and protected.
A Postcolonial power critique provides essential analytical tools to better understand and criticize existing social power relations. Said’s colonial discourse analysis helps recognize the construction of racist knowledge systems and make their institutional anchoring visible. Spivak’s concept of epistemic violence and invisibilizing the subaltern highlights how Eurocentric knowledge systems systematically exclude marginalized groups and erase their perspectives. Hall’s analysis of racist systems of representation, in turn, makes it possible to situate them within current societal discourses and to critically question them.
These theoretical approaches make it possible to uncover gaps in anti-discrimination work and to develop new strategies that not only name existing power structures, but also actively question and transform them.
Postcolonial Power Critique as a Supplement to Anti-Discrimination Work
Using two examples, I would like to illustrate how postcolonial, power-critical approaches can address existing gaps in anti-discrimination work and contribute to a more comprehensive, intersectional examination of power relations.
1. Power Critique Between Theory and Marketability
Power critique and intersectionality are currently among the most frequently used terms in discourses within anti-discrimination work, alongside diversity. However, key questions
about the entanglement of power and knowledge, the formation of discourses and racist systems of representation often remain overlooked. A serious engagement with power critique, however, requires understanding discrimination not merely as an individual disadvantage, but as a deeply rooted, structural and colonial continuity, as well as active interrogation. Instead of real change, we often witness performative representation campaigns that, through the depoliticized marketing of terms like diversity, power critique, and intersectionality, render the anti-colonial and feminist struggles of Black people and People of Color invisible.
2. Equitable Participation: Which Voices Are Actually Heard?
A consistently power-critical practice ensures that access is not created exclusively for privileged BIPoC, such as those who benefit from colorism or have an academic degree. A central critique of postcolonial approaches, especially from a class-conscious perspective, is that they often fail to adequately consider experiences of oppression and discrimination outside of academic elites. This results in a lack of concrete strategies and solutions for people who are particularly affected by classism.
This dynamic is also evident in political education and anti-discrimination work: individuals who benefit from their proximity to the bourgeois white elite are often given platforms preferentially and privileged speaking positions to represent all racialized and multiply marginalized people and communities.
For me, this raises a fundamental question: How can we ensure in our work that multiply marginalized people, who are systematically excluded from discourse due to lacking participation opportunities, are actually included?
Didactic Approaches for Power-Critical Work
In order to bridge the methodological and didactic implementation of power-critical approaches in educational and counseling contexts—through (process-oriented) workshops, trainings, and continuing education programs—I would like to discuss four aspects of its design:
1. Design Power-Critical Teaching and Learning Spaces
The methodological implementation begins with a power-critical design of discrimination-conscious spaces, where an awareness of existing power relations and hierarchies is central. Who speaks and who is heard? Who takes up space and who remains in the background? How do these dynamics influence participation? Which perspectives are represented and how can it be ensured that marginalized voices are not only present, but also equally heard?
Removing access barriers through inclusive language and participatory methods, such as community dialogues or storytelling, contribute to the democratization of knowledge. In this way, as many people as possible can be empowered to take part in the discourse, making their lived realities visible. Central to this is valuing different forms of knowledge equally, ranging from academic texts, activists’ perspectives to experiential knowledge.
2. Reflexive Methodology
Critical self-reflection should be a central practice and an essential part of all power-critical work. This involves critically situating and questioning privilege and disadvantage, entanglements with power hierarchies and access to hegemonic knowledge within educational spaces.
Where do participants get their knowledge about structural discrimination? What gaps exist and why? Which perspectives are missing from the discourse?
To foster power-critical reflection processes, methods such as biographical work, as well as critical questions and exercises on one’s own perspective and positionality are particularly suited.
3. Intersectional Awareness & Practice
Intersectionality can be used as an analytical tool to make the effects of structural power relations on multiply marginalized people visible. Examples of discrimination cases, peer consultations and perspective shifting exercises lend themselves well in this context. Critical media analysis is particularly insightful and can be reflected upon through the following questions: How do racist representations function in media? What narratives are reproduced in discourses? Which stereotypes and tropes are employed and how do they contribute to maintaining white, patriarchal and bourgeois supremacy? How can Eurocentric narratives be deliberately deconstructed?
4. Power-Critical Solidarity as Practice
At the level of action, a central question arises: how can power-critical educational work contribute actively to the promotion of structures of solidarity that move beyond theoretical debates? What responsibility do the participants bear in their respective contexts?
A key approach is the development of allyship strategies. Through concrete exercises and reflection processes participants can integrate the knowledge they gained into their everyday lives and apply it beyond the training context for power-critical practice.
Conclusion: Postcolonial Power Critique as a Collective Process
Engaging with postcolonial power critique provides a valuable foundation for embedding anti-discrimination issues within a broader historical and socio-political context, one in which power relations such as racism, classism, and sexism become visible as fundamental structural principles of Western hierarchies. However, this work only becomes truly effective when it is understood as an ongoing process and collective responsibility—a process that thrives when more and more people share their own experiences of discrimination and social exclusion in order to make intersectional lived realities visible.
Following this, I would like to conclude the text with three questions for further reflection:
- What significance does power critique have in your practice of self-reflection?
- How do you apply power critique as an analytical tool in your political education work?
- Which methods and strategies have proven to be particularly effective?
Literature
Castro Varela, María do Mar, and Nikita Dhawan. Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung. 3rd ed., transcript, 2020.
Hall, Stuart. “The West and The Rest. Discourse and Power [1992].” Essential Essays Vol. 2 Identity and Diaspora, edited by David Morley, Duke University Press, 2019, pp. 141-184.
Hall, S. (2013). The Spectacle of the ‘Other’. In S. Hall, J. Evans & S. Nixon (Eds.), Representation, pp. 215-271.
Said, Edward. Culture & Imperialism [1993]. Vintage Books, 1994.
Said, Edward. Orientalism [1978]. Vintage Books, 2003.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson/Lawrence Grossberg, Macmillan Education, 1988, pp. 271-313.
Young, Robert J.C. Postcolonialism. A Very Short Introduction, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2020.