Freeing the Polyphony: Decolonising the Essentialised Identity Politics Towards Ethnic Minorities

Abstract

Coloniality in today’s world is a matrix of worldviews, shaping the mechanisms governing not only the coloniser’s but also the colonised mind, nevertheless, as well as ways of resisting it. In this article, we examine how coloniality, shaping the identity politics towards ethnic minorities, perpetuates relations of power and subordination through essentialism. As is widely acknowledged, essentialism can serve as an emancipatory and strategic tool for minority groups. However, as our research shows, it simultaneously often produces ‘ethnostress’ – a feeling of inadequacy to one’s own identity and pressure to meet one’s own group and coloniser’s homogenising expectations. We examine mechanisms of de-essentialisation and de-homogenisation, that allow for the decolonisation of identity politics, seeking to answer the question of how the polyphonic and pluralistic voices of ethnic minority members can gain greater visibility and be more valued. In this article, we introduce and juxtapose two different ethnographic cases: the indigenous Sámi minority in Finland and the Polish national minority in Lithuania.