Editorial Special Issue "Decolonising the university" (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
In international academic interactions we encounter inequalities of different kinds between the so-called Global North and the Global South. Many of these are the result of a general white male superiority that has existed for centuries as well as the physical and mental colonialisation of the Global South. This paper is a joint critical contemplation by four female researchers reflecting upon the status quo in academic practices. The paper describes surmountable and apparently insurmountable injustices using examples from everyday life in teaching and research. The authors furthermore describe some of their experiences in applying decolonial and feminist approaches and methodologies to achieve an academic togetherness with all partners on an equal footing and report on the challenges and drawbacks they have faced. The authors see this as a process in which they learn, revise and reflect upon their everyday academic lives.
Education As Change, 2018
The ways in which Africanisation and decolonisation in the South African academy have been framed and carried out have been called into question over the past several years, most notably in relation to modes of silencing and epistemic negation, which have been explicitly challenged through the student actions. In a similar vein, Canada's commitments to decolonising its university spaces and pedagogies have been the subject of extensive critique, informed by (still unmet) claims to land, space, knowledge, and identity. Despite extensive critique, policies and practices in both South African and Canadian academic spaces remain largely unchanged, yet continue to stand as evidence that decolonisation is underway. In our paper, we begin to carefully articulate an understanding of decolonisation in the academy as one which continues to carry out historical relations of colonialism and race. Following the work of Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012), we begin the process of " de-mythologising " decolonisation, by first exposing and tracing how decolonising claims both reinforce and recite the racial and colonial terms under which Indigeneity and Blackness are " integrated " in the academy. From our respective contexts, we trace how white, western ownership of space and knowledge in the academy is reaffirmed through processes of invitation, commodification, and erasure of Indigenous/Black bodies and identities. However, we also suggest that the invitation and presence of Indigenous and Black bodies and identities in both academic contexts are necessary to the reproduction and survival of decolonising claims, which allows us to begin to interrogate how, why, and under what terms bodies and identities come to be " included " in the academy. We conclude by proposing that the efficacy of decoloniality lies in paradigmatic and epistemic shifts which begin to unearth and then unsettle white supremacy in both contexts, in order to proceed with aims of reconciliation and reclamation.
Editorial Decolonising the university
The contributions in this special issue share theorisations, auto-ethnographic reflections, and pedagogical experiments of decolonisation, politics of knowledge, and activism informed by Feminist, Gender, and Queer studies but also by non-Eurocentred epistemic geo-genealogies grounded in embodied experiences of racialisation, discrimination, and resistance in the academia. Inserting what are inevitably profoundly political contributions, which question the foundations and limitations of hegemonic knowledge creation, into the mould of an academic peer-reviewed special issue is a complex and, at times, seemingly impossible exercise. As the guest editors and editorial board negotiated the process of this issue’s production, we ourselves were challenged to engage with tensions around what constitutes a ‘proper’ scientific contribution, by which and whose standards. As a reader of this special issue, and perhaps a student, teacher, researcher, activist, or a combination thereof, it is likely that you also find yourself addressed and challenged by some of the critiques and proposals articulated in the articles and essays that follow.
Alternation Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa, 2021
With the neo-liberal policies they have adopted, South African higher education institutions, like other institutions globally, place a relentless material and psychological burden on academics. Still ravaged by histories of colonialism and apartheid, and the cross-cutting systems of patriarchy, women continue to be underrepresented at various academic levels in universities. The competitive, individualistic, gendered corporate university model tends to undermine women's performance in research, teaching, community engagement and leadership. We draw on a current participatory and collaborative research project that explores neoliberalism, gender and curriculum in higher education. The project uses the notion of 'feminist decoloniality as care' as a self-affirming tool to examine the underrepresentation and positioning of women academics in higher education. Reflecting on the early phase of a research and development project that involves a group of women academics from three South African universities, we aim to illustrate how feminist participatory methodologies as decolonial praxis might enable a re-positioning of the self and foster a community of practice that challenges the neoliberal and colonial patterns of power in universities.
Jonathan D. Jansen (ed): Decolonisation in universities: the politics of recognition
Higher Education, 2020
While the South African student protests demanding "free decolonised education" have since calmed, intellectual engagement with this rallying call continues. This edited volume interrogates decolonization as an epistemic project in relation to university curricula. Comprising 12 chapters divided across four sections, it responds to three main questions: what (a) is the imperative to decolonize (part I)? (b) are the problems with how decolonization gets articulated (part II); (c) constitutes a praxis of decolonization both in relation to curricula and the inheritances of the past? (parts III and IV). Regarding (a), Mamdani posits that when we interrogate their "institutional form" and "curricula content," universities in Africa take their inspiration from a Eurocentric modernity largely through histories of colonialism. Le Grange provides a more general argument about the curriculum as a site of power. What is included, excluded, and hidden is often implicated in assumptions around the biography and geography of authoritative knowledge. On the problems within decolonization discourse(s), a key contribution of this book is in fact to address the absence of curriculum theory. This absence, Hoadley and Galant contend, often translates into a gap between substantive curriculum change and "meta-epistemological debates." Lange contrasts the "academic" and "institutional" curriculum, criticizing a failure to appreciate the resilience of the latter, which is often an obstacle to the former. Jansen introduces the notion of "knowledge regimes" to caution against reducing complex problems to a single knowledge regime (colonial). This relies on an assumption of colonialism and apartheid as distinct knowledge regimes. Noting Mamdani's (1996: 8) insistence that apartheid is the "generic form of the colonial state in Africa," I am surprised this assumption was not debated further. Reading decolonization as a politics of recognition, Lange contrasts epistemic and ontological recognition, criticizing their conflation in student discourses on decolonization. This conflation manifests in a politically and epistemically isolating discourse of Africanization. This, however, is insufficiently demonstrated considering that (a) the epistemic and ontological Higher Education
The Salon is now in session: a reflection on UNISA's decolonial reading
JIWS, 2020
How can we – those who are involved in institutions of higher education as researchers, students, educators and administrators – contribute to the decolonial project? How can we dismantle colonial structures in ways that speak to and from our practices of teaching and learning? And how are we to engage with what has become known as ‘Decolonial Theory’ in our everyday practice inside the university? As follows from the work of thinkers and educators such as bell hooks, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the control of the means of producing and reproducing knowledge is key for sustaining coloniality but also the very reason which makes educational institutions fundamental sites of decolonial struggle. Speaking from the experience of the initiators and facilitators of the Decolonial Reading Salon at the University of South Africa (UNISA), the authors of this article critically engage these questions by teasing out the ways in which Decolonial Theory – or, as the authors insist, decolonial theories – can be used in the everyday practice that seek to enact teaching and learning as ‘the practices of freedom’ in the institutions of higher education. In the first section, the authors position themselves and the Decolonial Reading Salon, providing and insight into why they decided to set out the initiative. The second section reflects on how the Decolonial Reading Salon is organized, structured and enacted to contribute to the disruption of what Spivak calls ‘epistemic violence’. The third section focuses on strategies which the authors employ to resist – or at least postpone – their own ‘will to mastery’ that defines the mainstream educational practice in heteropatriarchal and capitalist coloniality. The fourth section reflects on decolonial reading as a struggle for epistemic liberation that is profoundly collective as well as ‘hard work’. The conclusions, drawing from Hélène Cixous, positions the Salon as a means of finding, through learning, ‘a way out’ from the heteropatriarchal and capitalist coloniality.
A Room of One's Own is Not Enough: Decolonising the University Space
2021
The historicity of processes of knowledge creation must be considered to answer key questions such as: which knowledge is created? By whom? For whom? Whose power does this sustain? This paper aims to investigate the impact of said historicity and outline the ways in which curricula, institutions and pedagogies can be decolonised to create inclusive, anti-racist, and feminist university spaces. It wishes to draw inspiration from feminist theory and pedagogy to inform this process. The enquiry will problematise the university as two units of research relating to its functions: firstly as a theoretical space, with a focus on the curriculum and pedagogy, and secondly as a physical space where students, educators, and staff are bodies that move within the historical space of the institution. Shared narratives of historical oppression and marginalisation emerge, together with their modern-day articulations. Following the blueprint provided by this analysis, practices of resistance and decolonisation will be proposed. These will range from critical, anti-racist, feminist pedagogical approaches, to more practical guidelines such as training of academics and students alike, the improvement of hiring practices and scholarship appointments. The target will be the engagement in the praxis of anti-racism to change the culture of the institution itself, to go beyond diversity and inclusion agendas and incorporate the questioning of assumptions that underpin representation, counter-storytelling, and the tackling of societal, financial, and cultural barriers.
Decolonising Higher Education Research: From a Uni-versity to a Pluri-versity of approaches
South African Journal of Higher Education, 2020
Decolonial rhetoric has enveloped the South African academic world advocating for cognitive justice. Debates have increased exponentially, highlighting the complexities of the theme and the diversity of positionalities towards a decolonial solution. Thus, the imperative responsibility to explore the debates and participate in the active networks towards a partial solution has become clear. Therefore, this article explores the decolonial literature. It introduces the complexities of the epistemological field and upholds a pluri-versity of approaches. In this university converted into a pluri-versity, practices should be diverse in form and content, including knowledge systems historically excluded, but equally preserve those that, although imposed, should still be present for an ecology of knowledges. To do so, I argue that despite the use of African or indigenous methodologies being used as a way to decolonise research, we need to increase the use of participatory methodologies, in their diverse forms. Thus, diversifying our practices as researchers and combining them with traditional research practices is the only way to promote a pluriverse which is nurtured by diverse knowledge systems on our way towards decolonisation.
Decolonisation and higher education: Theory, politics, and global praxis
Postcolonial Directions in Education, 2021
This essay addresses decolonization as a praxis involving “thinking and doing” (Mignolo, 2011) aimed at the critical education goals of representation, equity and social justice in the higher education context (Mbembe, 2016). It starts with an exposition of the notion (Amin, 1990; Ngugi, 1996), drawing principally on the work of Latin American theorist Walter Mignolo (2007, 2009, 2011) as well as African theorists (Amin, 1990; Mudimbe, 1988; Ngugi, 1996). It then explores the deployment of decolonization in contestations over environmental education (Tuck, McKenzie & McCoy, 2014) and central notions such as “science,” “objectivity” and “the environment”; the positioning of Indigeneity, both in terms of representation within traditional (i.e. hegemonic, Eurocentric passing as universal) higher education (Windchief & Joseph, 2015) and the articulation of Indigenous alternative higher education institutions , including Indigenous thought, extramural work and the diversification of epistemology. Finally, taking as guide the crucial assertion that “decolonization is not a metaphor,” (Tuck & Yang, 2012) and what we are distinguishing as “decolonization light” and “true decolonization,” the essay turns to the prospects of decolonization of the university in a specific context, namely South Africa, as an example. We conclude that rather than a self-contained, self-sufficient discourse and praxis, decoloniality ought to be (re)conceptualized as necessarily opening up additional issues which need to be addressed for its fulfilment as concrete and fully viable representation, equity and social justice oriented education.