Why do postcolonial scholars challenge Eurocentrism in history and culture?

Postcolonial scholars challenge Eurocentrism because they seek to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of peoples who were subordinated under imperialism. This challenge is rooted in several key concerns:4

• Critique of Knowledge and Power: Scholars argue that Western categories of thought—often derived from the Enlightenment—were used to justify imperial domination and shape representations of non-European cultures. This process, described by some as epistemological, effectively discredited the cultural stock of colonized peoples.123
• Questioning Universalism: Postcolonialism challenges the historiography of Marxist and liberal traditions that posit single master narratives or universal scales of development, which often categorize non-European societies as primitive or backward.13
• Recovering Subaltern Agency: By focusing on subaltern history, scholars aim to rescue the collective agency of marginalized groups—such as peasants or indigenous peoples—from being dismissed as "prepolitical" or "backward" simply because their actions did not conform to European political concepts.13

Ultimately, this scholarship highlights the "ambiguous legacy" of the Enlightenment, recognizing that while its universal ideals are often used to combat contemporary inequality, they were historically intertwined with the institutional forces of Western imperialism.142