The term “postcolonial”, then, is a term of eschatology rather than one of political realism. It expresses the basic, instinctive, definitive human dream – the dream that truly defines each of us as human, and that, when we lose it, defines us as inhuman: that one day, we will all be free of the slave farms, no longer belong to a slave farm, no longer work on a slave farm, no longer be subject to a slave farmer or his family of slavers.
The dream that one day we will ALL be free defines who I am, who I choose to be. I choose to believe that this dream identifies me as a fully human being, by consciously rejecting processes of abuse in which my role is either as victim, as abuser, as appeaser or as enabler; rejecting slavery either as owner, as trader, or as slave; rejecting all of the possible identities offered on the farm.
This dream can be given the name of “postcolonialism”.
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