Afterword: Achilles and the tortoise: the tortoise’s view of late colonialism and decolonization

As the battle of Borodino draws to its wearied and bloody end, in volume three ofWar and peace, Leo Tolstoy reflects on a day that, while militarily inconclusive, ultimately led to the defeat of Napoleonic France, ‘a country on which, at Borodino, for the very first time, the hand of an opponent stronger in spirit had been laid’. Turning the page, Tolstoy then turns his attention away from his narrative, to the problem of historical time and causation, drawing a parallel with Zeno of Elea’s best-known paradox, ‘whereby a tortoise that has a head start on Achilles will never