Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò. Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously. London: C. Hurst & Company, 2022. 368 pp. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. ISBN: 9781787386921.

How, in the absence of colonial subjugation, can a people still remain dependent and unfree? In seeking to answer this question—or similarly themed questions—scholars in Africa and beyond have developed a vast literature of counter-hegemonic discourse, demonstrating their belief that the coercive power of colonialism stretches far beyond its official end date in erstwhile colonies. But while the persistence of hegemonic structures is scarcely debatable in the post-colonial period, there remains the question of whether counter-hegemonic discourse—in and of itself— moves the erstwhile colonies toward actualization of their freedom in any meaningful way. For a significantmajority of scholars writing in and aboutAfrica today, the case for counter-hegemonic discourse is aptly expressed through the concept of decolonization, which literallymeans tonegate colonization. Its emergence as a trope of scholarly discourse in the post-independence era coincided with the popularity of “post” theories in the humanities—such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, or postdevelopmentalism—and draws implicitly on their influence. What this means for knowledge production in and about Africa is, however, a matter of ongoing dispute. One of the dissenting voices to this scholarly trend is the prominent philosopherOlúfe ̣ ́miTáíwò, whose bookAgainst Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously takes aim at contemporary African decolonization discourse for denigrating African agency. Táíwò is the author of How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (2010), Africa Must Be Modern (2011), and several other critical essays that challenge basic presuppositions of contemporary African scholarship. Táíwò maintains, consistent with his position in “Rethinking the Decolonization Trope in Philosophy,” that contemporary African decolonization discourse has lost its way. However, he further clarifies his position by introducing an important distinction between decolonization1 (as the struggle for national independence) and decolonization2 (as the contemporary