The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO

In The Center Cannot Hold Jenna N. Hanchey examines the decolonial potential emerging from processes of ruination and collapse. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Tanzania at an internationally funded NGO as it underwent dissolution, Hanchey traces the conflicts between local leadership and Western paternalism as well as the unstable subjectivity of Western volunteers-including the author-who are unable to withstand the contradictions of playing the dual roles of decolonializing ally and white savior. She argues that Western institutional and mental structures must be allowed to fall apart to make possible the emergence of decolonial justice. Hanchey shows how, through ruination, privileged subjects come to critical awareness through repeated encounters with their own complicity, providing an opportunity to delink from and oppose epistemologies of coloniality. After things fall apart, Hanchey posits, the creation of decolonial futures depends on the labor required to imagine impossible futures into being.

Author: Jenna N. Hanchey
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 08/02/2023
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9781478020462
ISBN10: 1478020466
BISAC Categories:
- History | Africa | East
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | African Studies
- Social Science | Philanthropy & Charity

About the Author
Jenna N. Hanchey is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Critical/Cultural Studies at Arizona State University.