Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with a chapter from Shannon Sullivan, titled ‘The white habit of untrauma’, which provides a critical phenomenological account of this unconscious white habit. Phenomenology is a philosophical method that aims at uncovering the familiar, taken-for-granted assumptions, habits and norms that structure human experience. It discusses the role that habits play in sustaining and contesting systems of racial meaning. The book focuses on two protests – that of school-going protesters in South Africa and that of naked female protesters in Nigeria – situating them within their respective national traditions of resistance to decolonisation. It ultimately demonstrate that, through a myriad of resistance strategies and tactics, alternative, humanising and decolonising ways of being can be engendered.