“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say that it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content. Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature […] Decolonization never takes place unnoticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history’s floodlights upon them. It brings a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new men, and with it a new language and a new humanity. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the ‘thing’ which has been colonized becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself.”
One of the most troubling outcomes of the commodification of diversity, as Leong outlines, is that it pressures individuals into performing their otherness in a way that meets with the approval of the dominant culture. As an example, in my research on British Asian theatre practitioners, my respondents would describe how they have to present their ‘diversity’ in a somewhat exaggerated, or at least assertive way in order to qualify for the money the Arts Council have ring-fenced specifically for ‘culturally diverse’ theatre companies. This is how diversity initiatives make race. It is despite, or indeed, because of diversity initiatives that representations of racialised minorities continue to be reduced to a handful of recognisable tropes, with little variation. As Gray puts it, ‘diversity is a technology of power, a means of managing the very difference it expresses’.
