As of March 2025, the United States Department of State estimates that there are roughly 10.5 million non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the US. As the number and influence of NGOs rises globally, many scholars have considered the impact of private, nongovernmental entities such as nonprofits and charities in nearly every facet of life. But what happens when an NGO collapses? Or—what happens when it implodes? Jenna Hanchey’s The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO offers unique insight into the rhetoric of both neocolonialism and decolonization as she considers her own experiences in and out of an NGO in Tanzania. Revisiting her experiences with the NGO (pseudonymized as “the Little Community”), Hanchey examines what it means for aid work to “collapse” on itself, and she takes a close look at what comes out of the ruins and why. 

Hanchey’s book is divided into Parts I and II; it is tempting to see these separate sections as neatly divided into “theory” and “practice.” Part I (which spans Chapters One, Two and Three) lays the theoretical groundwork for what Hanchey calls “haunted reflexivity:” an ongoing process that compels those in positions of power and privilege to listen, recognize and comprehend the “difficult truths” of colonialism. To engage these difficult truths requires the subject to face their ghosts instead of running away from them; for Hanchey, this pursuit of decolonization entails an “unending process of (neo) colonial haunting, one that will never be finalized or complete.” Haunted reflexivity requires “facing moments that we cannot handle, cannot understand, over and over, recognizing that each time we will be tempted to run toward innocence rather than listen to what the ghosts wish to tell us.”

Throughout Part I, Hanchey connects her personal experiences to the global relations informing a Western “fantasy” understanding of Africa that enables “voluntourism” as opposed to meaningful, positive cultural exchange. In Chapter One, “Doctors with (out) Burdens,” Hanchey studies her memories of two different groups of medical aid workers from the same US university to conceptualize the function(s) of Western nongovernmental “aid” work in the global South. In Chapter Two, “All of Us Phantasmic Saviors,” Hanchey builds on her past interactions as a volunteer with the people in the Little Community.

In Chapter Three, “Haunted Reflexivity,” Hanchey’s grief forms the emotional backdrop of the rest of the work as well as the stakes of her argument. In pursuing haunted reflexivity as a mode of writing and research, Hanchey processes the death of a fellow volunteer worker, Joseph Chow, and her position as a witness to the fatal event. Confronting the guilt, shame, and anger she felt after Joe’s death, Hanchey reaches an understanding of the powerful forces at work that informed her and Joe’s experience at Mbuji. Hanchey’s processing of the decisions made leading up to Joe’s death is often painful and/or uncomfortable for her, and there are no easy answers for why tragic deaths happen. But it is through her confrontation with Joe’s ghost that she is able to begin to see “who we thought we were, and what we thought Africa to be.” The language in this chapter is—there is no other way to put it—haunting. Hanchey stops short of prescribing a conclusive explanation of the events at Mbuji and their aftermath, and she stops short of arguing that she has moved “past” or even truly understood Joe’s death. Ultimately, she knows that she will always already “fail to see in time.” This failure, as well as still looking the ghost in the eye when you know you could fail, are also key parts of haunted reflexivity. 

Part II of The Center Cannot Hold explores the applications of liquid organizing as she watches the Little Community rupture and transform. As Hanchey writes, liquid organizing takes form in reaction “to the challenges that arise in contexts of economic marginalization, allowing people and organizations to shape-shift for survival.” Hanchey evaluates the nature of this form of collective action alongside the work of African scholars who study epistemic systems, noting the necessity of liquid organizing for meaningful aid work that meets the emergent, varied demands of an NGO. In Chapter Four, “Water in the Cracks,” Hanchey describes the broader tendency of Western donors “imposing solidarity physically through a preoccupation with building and figuratively through a desire for control.” Some donors, for example, prioritize large infrastructure or capital investments that can bear a legacy (say, a school or a building named after them) instead of investing in current local infrastructure or funding the programs that are already run by the people who live there. Chapter Five, “Fluid (Re)mapping” describes the upheaval at the Little Community and legal conflict in the village due to land disputes with the NGO’s highest-ranking leadership figure, Mr. Giles. Aptly titled “Things Fall Apart,”Chapter Six focuses on the collapse of the NGO from within—perhaps even at its very center. Within uncertainty, change, and collapse as Mr. Giles’s NGO undergoes a “coup” from within, Hanchey reaches an understanding of how “fall apart” can beget what can be understood as an alternative to the status quo—in this instance, a different organization and/or different forms of organizing. 

Hanchey’s scholarship teaches us that collapse can be generative, or even productive; that often for change to happen something needs to give. The Center Cannot Hold makes clear “that attempts from within to decolonize the NGO or US subjectivities can never be enough; the structures of the Western subject and international organization are so strongly moored in neocolonialism that it takes a shattering of the center to provide substantive decolonial transformation.” The lens of haunted reflexivity cedes the intellectual ‘high ground’ that academics so often try to seize: It is often about understanding something as much as it is about accepting that you can never really understand some things.