As part of the ongoing rehabilitation of his image as a person and performer, Justin Bieber has written and published a monumental new work describing and suggesting remedies for the residual effects of colonial domination.
“Bieber’s new album, Purpose, is his way of introducing the world to a more mature version of himself,” said music historian Sandy Iriye. “And I think his chapters on the historiography, or lack thereof, of the Mau Mau uprising are going to help him do just that.”
While postcolonial artists and thinkers from Achebe to Spivak have catalogued the effects of anti-colonial resistance since the late 1950s, none of them has ever collaborated with Diplo, and only Dipesh Chakrabarty ever had a track produced by Axident.
“It’s interesting to compare and contrast Bieber’s coming-of-age album with those of his contemporaries,” Iriye said. “Purpose presents a redemption narrative, but when Bangerz came out, Miley chose to cement her bad-girl image by publishing a pro-Venetian history of the Fourth Crusade.”
“Which was a pretty slutty thing to do.”
Although many critics have praised the methodological rigour employed by Bieber in Decolonizing Postcolonialism: Ongoing Neocolonial Responses to Subaltern Resistance, the estate of Edward Said has slammed Bieber for failing to recreate the magic of Never Say Never: The Remixes.
