Colonialism Reiterated: The Racialised Division of Labour in Higher Education and Beyond

This article takes up the invitation to imagine a decolonised performance studies by turning its attention to the legal-material conditions, institutions and practices on which study itself rests. Aligned with thinkers who emphasise the matter of decolonisation—for example through the repatriation of Indigenous land (Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang), or the racialised and gendered division of labour (Françoise Vergès)—we argue that any move to “decolonise” the methodologies or epistemologies of the discipline must first confront the reiterations of colonialism that undergird academic labour. Specifically, we turn to the racialised division of labour—undergirded by migration law and border control—as a key site on which colonial histories shape scholarly practice today.