Decolonization fundamentally consists of a questioning, a deconstruction of our thoughts, our reasoning, our imaginations to overcome the foundations of injustices and inequalities. Mathys and Van Beurden demonstrate that “the supposed benefits of colonialism, for example, were very unevenly distributed, and not at all structurally developed. They were often (sometimes unintentionally) by-products of colonial policies intended to protect the interests of the mother country and not the result of altruistic actions.

Image: The ‘leopard man’, the statue that inspired one of the characters in ‘Tintin in the Congo’, the album that earned its author, Hergé, accusations of being racist and colonialist in the ‘ReThinking Collections’ exhibition at the Africa Museum from Brussels.