Introduction
Globally, 1492 represented a major turning point in the world’s economic, political and cultural history. It was in 1492 that the world witnessed the rise of the West and the demise of the rest. The rise of the West and the demise of the rest affirmed the worldwide expansion and dominance of Western nations as especially illustrated by the following major events:
The expulsion of the African Moors, Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula.
Christopher Columbus and Western Europe’s military invasion and colonisation of the Americas (originally known as Abya Yala).
The burning and destruction of libraries as illustrated in Granada, Spain.
The burning and killing of women identified as witches.
The death of Sunni Ali Ber, the first monarch of the Songhai Empire.
The genocide of the indigenous population in the Americas.
The kidnapping, displacement, enslavement, and murder of Africans.
At the present time, however, there is another major shift in economics, politics and culture taking place on a global scale to establish a new world civilisation. This worldwide shift is currently on display with the fall of the West and the rise of the rest as demonstrated by the military movements emerging out of Africa, especially within the Sahel nations as France withdraws its military troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Furthermore, this global shift in formulating a new world civilisation is on display with the economic advancement and alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as they recently invited six nations (Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) to join them in representing BRICS.
BRICS is a term created by the world’s foremost investment and securities bank, Goldman Sachs (Hancock & Cohen, 2023). In 2001, Jim O’Neil, an economist from Goldman Sachs, coined the term BRICS shortly after 11 September 2001, when the United States was unexpectedly challenged and ambushed by foreign actors (Hancock & Cohen, 2023). As such, BRICS could be viewed as an economic challenge to not only the United States, but to an international economic order dominated by former colonial nations of the West. Nonetheless, using the science of economics, Goldman Sachs predicted that the nations in BRICS will dominate global economies by 2050 (Hancock & Cohen, 2023).
At issue is the fact that Western capitalist institutions such as Goldman Sachs, which was founded four years after the US Civil War in 1869, have a history of naming things and predicting outcomes. The naming or renaming of people, places and things along with predicting outcomes is at the core of Hira’s thesis and arguments in Decolonizing the Mind. For Hira (2023), Goldman Sachs, similarly to other Western institutions, has a Eurocentric mode of thinking that is based on a dominant colonial narrative and an axiomatic approach which requires no empirical evidence, but only acceptance as the “God-given” universal truth. According to Hira (2023), this universalism along with the Eurocentric god concept is at the core of colonial thinking and dominant Western narratives. As a matter of fact, the word Catholic means universal as if it is supposed to be applicable to all people worldwide, despite variances in global spiritual beliefs and cultural narratives.
Although the dominant narratives in the world of academia are from the vantage points of primarily white males from the West (Greece, Italy, France, England, Germany and the United States), there is an alternative narrative that is seeking to establish a new world civilisation by challenging the dominant narratives of the West (Grosfoguel, 2013). This non-Eurocentric narrative, decolonising the mind, is deeply discussed in Hira’s book.
Decolonising the Mind
According to Hira (2023), Decolonizing the Mind is “a guide to decolonial theory and practice”. As such, Hira’s Decolonizing the Mind is a theoretical framework that explains how to understand and analyse the colonial process and our experience and reality within it. The colonial process involves the subjugation and exploitation of land, labour, and resources by sheer brute military force. As an example, for gold and God, the Spanish monarchy (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella) in 1492 financed Columbus’s military invasion of the Americas (Abya Yala) which ultimately led to the genocide of the Indigenous population and the enslavement of Africans. It also led to the colonisation of the world by the West, which ultimately led to the colonisation of information, knowledge, and the mind.
By 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided the colonial world between Spain and Portugal. Spain was granted the colonial possessions and territories of the West and Portugal was granted the colonial possessions and territories of the East along with Brazil. The Netherlands, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and much later the United States also engaged in the colonial and imperial process through the subjugation and exploitation of other people’s land, labour, and resources.
However, as Hira (2023) succinctly details, the colonial process goes beyond the subjugation and exploitation of other people’s land, labour, and resources; it is excessively about the subjugation and manipulation of information, knowledge, and other people’s minds. The colonisation of information, knowledge, and minds is demonstrated with Christendom, European Enlightenment, and Eurocentrism where the cultural lives and socialisation agents of indigenous, African, Arabic, and Asian people are centralised under Christian theology and Eurocentric thinking (Grosfoguel, 2013). That is why in 1791, Boukman Dutty of the Haitian Revolution urged enslaved Africans to abandon Christian theology and Eurocentric thinking if they wanted to establish a new independent decolonial world civilisation (Hira, 2023). Prior to Boukman Dutty, from 1511 to 1512, Cuba’s first national hero, the native Haitian (Taino) Hatuey led a decolonial revolutionary movement in Cuba against the Spaniards where he denounced and dismissed Christian theology and the colonial way of life (Hira, 2023).
Similar to Hatuey, Boukman Dutty and many other decolonial warriors, Hira (2023) in his book offers the necessary economic, political, social, cultural, technological and academic tools to establish a new world civilisation based on decolonising the mind. For Hira (2023), we live in a colonised world where the centres of knowledge production, especially at the university and in the media, should be decolonised by establishing a pluriversity, and an unbiased media/decolonial press. Moreover, Hira (2023) advocates for the establishment of new international economic and political institutions to replace the World Bank and the United Nations, such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) where people and nations are treated reasonably and without bias.
For Hira (2023), the colonial world civilisation is centred on Christendom, European Enlightenment and Eurocentrism where liberalism along with Marxism has failed to decolonise the minds of colonised people. According to Hira (2023), colonialism has given birth to mental slavery, a concept first introduced in the 1930s by Pan-African leader Marcus Garvey. To break from mental slavery, Garvey who was born in Jamaica like Boukman Dutty adopted Dutty’s decolonial philosophy of abandoning the white man’s god to simply follow a god in his own image.
For Hira (2023), to break from mental slavery, colonised people must acknowledge the existence of the colonisation of their minds and analyse the mechanisms of a colonised mind. Furthermore, for Hira (2023), there should be a methodology to decolonise knowledge and the mind where the production of multiple ways of knowing, thinking, and understanding is a key factor. According to Hira (2023), this decolonial methodology must deal with a critique of Western civilisation, colonialism, slavery, Christendom, European Enlightenment, and Eurocentric thinking as demonstrated in liberalism and the theories of Karl Marx and many other Eurocentric thinkers. For Hira (2023), liberalism along with Marxism and other Eurocentric theories are based on axiomatic statements and predictions, not proof or empirical evidence. These axiomatic tendencies along with predicting events are seen in Christendom where a universal, ubiquitous Christian god and god-like Eurocentric thinkers cannot be questioned. They are unquestionable and beyond reproach, while their predictions are apodictic.
A classic colonial example of being all-knowing and predicting events is detailed by Hira (2023) when he recalls the narrative of Hatuey, the great-hearted Taino Cacique (chief) of Haiti. In witnessing the death and destruction that the Spaniards brought with them in colonial Haiti (in which the Spaniards renamed Hispaniola), Hatuey travelled to nearby Cuba to warn his people of the arrival of the Spaniards and to prepare them for war. As he fought against the military invasion of the Spaniards in Cuba, Hatuey was captured and burned to death at the stake by the Christian Spaniards in 1512. Prior to Hatuey’s immolation, an all-knowing Christian priest requested for Hatuey to accept Christianity and Christ as his lord and saviour so he can enter heaven after he burns to death. Hatuey asked the priest whether he will encounter white people in heaven to which the priest predicted yes, of course. Without hesitation, Hatuey replied to the priest, that he would rather gladly face the devil in hell than be with white people in heaven.
Conclusion
The fifteenth century represented a major turning point in the economic, political, and cultural history of the world. By 1492, the world witnessed the rise of the West and the demise of the rest. With the military invasion of the Americas (Abya Yala) by Columbus and Western European nations, we witnessed the rise of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and later the United States. Concurrently, with the rise of Western colonial civilisation, the world witnessed the destruction and demise of various prominent civilisations in Africa, the Americas and Asia due to colonialism and slavery. However, as Hira (2023) argues, this destruction was amplified by the colonisation of the mind by way of mental slavery. The colonisation of the mind is to make a person think that he or she is inferior, irrelevant, and non-being (nothing), while thinking that whites are superior, relevant, and the ultimate being, god. With that type of mental slavery taking place, colonised people often reject and hate their own culture, language, history, and very being (existence), while going out of their way to accept and love the culture, language, history and existence of their colonisers and enslavers. A classic example of this process is the fact that many colonised people today still hold on to their colonial names; colonial language; and colonial religion which were imposed on colonised people in a very vicious way. Therefore, to decolonise our minds, it would be advantageous to reject our colonial names, language and religion as proposed by Boukman Dutty of Haiti in 1791.
Despite Hira’s brilliant blueprint for decolonising the mind, he errs when he identifies Mesopotamia not Africa as the birthplace of civilisation. According to Senegalese anthropologist and historian Cheikh Anta Diop (1974) in The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality,
Nowhere else had natural conditions favored the development of a human society to the same extent as in Egypt. Nowhere else do we find a Chalcolithic industry comparable in its technical perfection. Moreover, apart from some stations of uncertain age in Palestine, no trace of man earlier than 4000 B.C. exists in Syria or Mesopotamia. By that date the Egyptians had their feet on the threshold of their history proper. It is, then, reasonable to attribute this precocious development of Egypt’s first inhabitants to their own genius and to the exceptional conditions in the Nile Valley. Nothing proves that it was due to the incursion of more civilized strangers. The very existence of such, or at least of their civilization, remains to be proved. (p. 100)
Nonetheless, to decolonise the mind, Hira (2023) provides a spectacular philosophical critique of Christendom, European Enlightenment and Eurocentric thinking by demonstrating that liberalism which is based on individualism and Marxism which is based on class struggle are insufficient in our liberation and empowerment. As such, Hira (2023) introduces the reader to a powerful decolonial blueprint that is paramount in decolonising not only our minds, but also our hearts. Therefore, Hira’s Decolonizing the Mind is a must-read book given its scholarly and timely attempt to create not only a guide to decolonial theory and practice, but also in its serious attempt to create a new decolonial world civilisation.