In using the word colonial in this context, it encompass one nation’s dominance and rule and authority over another through the use of brutal violence and exploitation, and essentially tactics of dehumanization to create subordination and subjugation. I found it particularly helpful when  “colonialism” and “coloniality” were defined separately in Mendoza’s paper. In referring to “coloniality” Mendoza states that it refers to “long standing patterns of power that emerge in the context of colonialism, which redefine culture, labor, intersubjective relations, aspirations of the self, common sense, and knowledge production in ways that accredit the superiority of the colonizer.” By this explanation, I define colonial as not only the subjugation of one nation over another but the lasting power dynamic that stays permeated within the colonized nation, it may be matters of race, gender, sexuality, region, theory and concepts, as well as the power structures that have remained and continue to shape colonized nations.

Anticolonial theories and concepts and projects works to question the structures imposed and implemented by colonization and strives to challenge its practices. Two schools of thought emerge out this- postcolonial and decolonial theory and feminisms.  From my understanding, postcolonial theory aims to understand colonization through the eyes of the colonized, it seeks to examine the effects of colonialism and coloniality to challenge what is known from what it is only Western history and perspectives. Postcolonial thinkers want to address the racism and Euro centrism within colonized nations and analyze their effects in socioeconomic and political policy as well as society and culture as a whole. It is a study of colonial history usually in reference to India and other parts of South Asia . I could not exactly pinpoint as to why that is, but I believe that while India’s overall cultural and societal culture was not exactly colonized in the same sense as Latin American and Caribbean areas, but rather it was more of a economical and political imposition which is why the reading heavily focused on political freedom, capitalism and class structure.

Decolonial theory and feminism however, is one that primarily revolves around the analyses in the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas.  I believe it is different from postcolonial in the sense that it provides or presents ways in which to overcome or dismantle the practices of coloniality that has spread and formed Latin America after the conquest. According to Mendoza, it also argues that “colonialism is what made capitalism happen,” contrast to the thought that capitalism existed in Europe prior to colonization. Furthermore, although colonialism itself is not apparent in the ways it once was, coloniality of power is still maintained. Decolonial theory and feminism acknowledges the European implementation of racialization, gender construction, and sexual exploitation that has rendered people of color as non human and barbaric. Decolonial feminism wishes to recuperate the history of colonized peoples and dismantle the current coloniality of power that still holds to this day through intersectionality.