Decolonial AI as Disenclosure
Open accessAbstract
The development and deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) engender “AI colonialism”, a term that conceptually overlaps with “data colonialism”, as a form of injustice. AI colonialism is in need of decolonization for three reasons. Politically, because it enforces digital capitalism’s hegemony. Ecologically, as it negatively impacts the environment and intensifies the extraction of natural resources and consumption of energy. Epistemically, since the social systems within which AI is embedded reinforce Western universalism by imposing Western colonial values on the global South when these manifest in the digital realm is a form of digital capitalism. These reasons require a new conceptualization of AI decolonization. First this paper draws from the historical debates on the concepts of colonialism and decolonization. Secondly it retrieves Achille Mbembe’s notion of decolonization as disenclosure to argue that the decolonization of AI will have to be the abolishment of political, ecological and epistemic borders erected and reinforced in the phases of its design, production, development of AI in the West and drawing from the knowledge from the global South. In conclusion, it is discussed how conceiving of decolonial AI as form of disenclosure opens up new ways to think about and intervene in colonial instantiations of AI development and deployment, in order to empower “the wretched of AI”, re-ecologise the unsustainable ecologies AI depends on and to counter the colonial power structures unreflective AI deployment risks to reinforce.
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Decolonial work begins with 'disenclosure', the process of unmaking the epistemic and material structures that allow Indigenous knowledge to be extracted in the name of openness.
“As Mollema (2024b) suggests, decolonial work begins with “disenclosure,” which is the process of unmaking the epistemic and material structures that allow Indigenous knowledge to be extracted in the name of openness.”
From Preventing AI extractivism: the case for braiding indigenous data justice with ABS for stronger AI data governance (2026) · cites this paper as Mollema (2024b)
Section 5, “Decolonization as Disenclosure” (page unavailable), defines disenclosure as bringing down colonial barriers in land, body, and mind. Section 7.3, “Epistemic Disenclosure of AI” (page unavailable), extends this to barriers to non-dominated epistemological access. The paper does not describe disenclosure specifically as preventing the extraction of Indigenous knowledge in the name of openness; that part of the claim is unsupported. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Mollema, W. J. T.
- Affiliations
- Utrecht University (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Mollema, Warmhold Jan Thomas
- Venue
- Open Journal of Social Sciences
- Publisher
- Scientific Research Publishing, Inc.
- Published
- 2024
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 02
- Pages
- 574-603
- ISSN
- 2327-5952 (ISSN-L)
- 2327-5960
- OpenAlex
- W4392249698
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 3
- FWCI
- 10.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Open Journal of Social Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Education › African cultural and philosophical studies
- Keywords
- decolonial AI, data colonialism, Achille Mbembe, decolonization, digital capitalism, Western universalism, Global South, energy consumption, resource extraction, AI ethics
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