The Protracted Conflict: Decolonial Meditations

With the breakup of the Portuguese empire, the decolonial epoch is closing, a generation after it started. The record suggests how hard it often is to tell whether the moving finger is writing tragedy or farce.

Of late the farcical component has been ascendant. Idi Amin, for sample. As theater, Big Daddy’s antics are the purest farce in the classic slapstick tradition. His appearance is enough to identify him. The Marx Brothers way he jumps in and out of racing cars, airplanes, tanks. The wives he shows off to bystanders. The exuberance with which he joins the dancing, parading, beating, shooting. Those hilarious messages to the Queen, the President, the UN Secretary General, the Pope. As theater, even all those killings are just Punch in the puppet show knocking everyone down with his stick.

With the breakup of the Portuguese empire, the decolonial epoch is closing, a generation after it started. The record suggests how hard it often is to tell whether the moving finger is writing tragedy or farce.

Of late the farcical component has been ascendant. Idi Amin, for sample. As theater, Big Daddy’s antics are the purest farce in the classic slapstick tradition. His appearance is enough to identify him. The Marx Brothers way he jumps in and out of racing cars, airplanes, tanks. The wives he shows off to bystanders. The exuberance with which he joins the dancing, parading, beating, shooting. Those hilarious messages to the Queen, the President, the UN Secretary General, the Pope. As theater, even all those killings are just Punch in the puppet show knocking everyone down with his stick.