European Racial Triangulation

decolonization, and it proves inadequate or insufficient in relation to our global moment. On the other hand, scholars have called for an expansion of postcolonial theory’s reach, beyond its original (and much-debated) anchoring in the postcoloniality of South Asia, into Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, China, the Caucasus, and Europe. This chapter constitutes a reflection on this second impulse. What happens to postcolonial theory when it accepts its status as “traveling theory, ” to borrow Edward Said’s phrase? Particularly, what happens to postcolonial theory when the “postcolonial” is conjoined with that which it was initially supposed to decenter, “Europe”? How does postcolonial theory look like once it travels not to the postcolonies in East Europe, where it should have traveled a long time ago, but to the former colonial West European metropolis? If the word “postcolonial” designates various forms of resistance and agentive transformation in the aftermath of colonialism and neocolonialism and if “Europe” is almost synonymous with colonialism, is “postcolonial Europe” an oxymoronic formulation, with potentially regressive overtones? On its journeys to Europe, as Said might wonder, does postcolonial theory risk ossification and domestication or is it likely to be reinvigorated?...