This article explores the darker side of appeals to justice and social justice within liberal settings, particularly the US academy, where these terms are frequently mobilized to counter decolonial knowledge formations and aspirations. The authors draw from Frantz Fanon's critique of justice in colonial settings to demonstrate ways in which the coloniality of justice appears in the context of debates regarding the design and implementation of an Ethnic Studies requirement at the California State University and the California Community College (...) Systems. They view the decolonial pedagogy and epistemology of Ethnic Studies as an important dimension of the search for decolonial justice. (shrink)

The online mode of education has created a space for a decolonial pedagogy that allows student liberation from in-class education which perpetuates students’ passivity. Drawing on Freire’s concepts...

Our intention is to contribute to the development of Canadian Nursing and Medical Education (NursMed) and efforts to redress deepening, intersecting health and social inequities. This paper addresses the following two research questions: (1) What are the ways in which Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies can inform Canadian NursMed Education with a focus on critically examining settler‐colonialism, health equity, and social justice? (2) What are the potential struggles and adaptations required to integrate Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies within Canadian NursMed Education in (...) service of redressing intersecting health and social inequities? Briefly, Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies are philosophies of learning that encourage teachers and students to reflect on health through the lenses of settler‐colonialism, health equity, and social justice. Drawing on critical ethnographic research methods, we conducted in‐depth interviews with 25 faculty members and engaged in participant observation of classrooms in university‐based Canadian NursMed Education. The research findings are organized into three major themes, beginning with common institutional features influencing pedagogical approaches. The next set of findings addresses the complex strategies participants apply to integrate Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies. Lastly, the findings illustrate the emotional and spiritual toll some faculty members face when attempting to deliver Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies. We conclude that through the application of Decolonial, Intersectional Pedagogies teachers and students can support movements towards health equity, social justice, and unlearning/undoing settler‐colonialism. This study contributes new knowledge to stimulate dialog and action regarding the role of health professions education, specifically Nursing and Medicine as an upstream determinant of health in settler‐colonial nations such as Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. (shrink)

This paper argues for a decolonial praxis in critical peace education. Drawing on an integrative review method, the paper synthesises approaches, practices, and theories from peace and peace education literature with special attention paid to the concepts of critical peace education, cosmopolitanism, postcolonial thought, and decolonial action. The paper particularly explores the philosophical contributions of postcolonial and decolonial thought and how each could help toward decolonising approaches for critical peace education. The concept of ‘structural violence’ is critiqued (...) as obfuscating individual responsibility. Insights are drawn here from the closely related field of global citizenship education that argues for a focus less on empathy and more on causal responsibility. Before concluding, the paper discusses a ‘pedagogy for the privileged’ and ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ that both might better support a decolonial praxis for critical peace education in theory and practice. (shrink)

With the calls to decolonize the philosophy curriculum, and the university more generally, which have seen a series of intellectual interventions in South Africa, this article takes its cue from Nyoka’s recommendation when he suggests moving beyond merely thinking about decolonization. In reflecting on processes of decolonizing the curriculum, this article considers the successes and failures of a course taught during a global pandemic, wherein pedagogic strategies were constrained. Reflecting on a module taught in the first semester of 2021, this (...) article thinks through the fundamental question that underpins the course, primarily: how to develop a contextually responsive philosophical approach on the southernmost tip of the African continent. Using two primary texts, Kumalo’s Decolonization as Democratization and Jansen’s Decolonization in Universities, the module analysed this question by juxtaposing, respectively, a philosophical and educational text. In this pedagogic autocritique, I reflect on ‘what obligation do intellectuals owe their students’ in a decolonizing context. (shrink)

The present paper theorises white discomfort as not an individual psychologised emotion, but rather as a social and political affect that is part of the production and maintenance of white colonial structures and practices. Therefore, it is suggested that white discomfort cannot be critically addressed merely in pedagogic terms and conditions within schools and universities. By foregrounding white discomfort in broader terms, the aim of the paper is to provide a more holistic and dynamic account which opens up a realm (...) that situates the pedagogisation of white discomfort within the broader decolonising project of disrupting white colonial structures and practices. The paper calls for both a decolonising and a critical affective approach to pedagogies of discomfort that would focus on examining and addressing strategically how white discomfort comes to be experienced and dismantled within broader affective, material and discursive assemblages of race, racism and whiteness. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond — transcends — “pedagogy as justice,” recognizing that justice, particularly in these present times, may not be enough. Its wager is with pedagogies of and for life; pedagogies that plant and cultivate, that push and enable other modes of living, despite the capitalist-modern-colonial-racist system, beyond the system, and in the system's margins, borders, fissures, and cracks. These pedagogies, as Catherine Walsh argues here, are necessarily tied to and constitutive of decolonial(izing) praxis, a praxis that, (...) while not negating justice, takes us beyond it. The argument here is for the pedagogical-praxistical work being done now, and yet to be done; the actional thought, thoughtful action, and ongoing creation and construction of an otherwise for existence, for dignity, and for life in these times of multiple entwined pandemic-viruses, including capitalist greed, systemic racism, heteropatriarchy, and existential-territorial dispossession in which COVID is/was one more thread of the entwine. (shrink)

This paper explores the important role of critical science, and in particular of post-colonial and decolonial theories, in understanding and shaping the ongoing advances in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is viewed as amongst the technological advances that will reshape modern societies and their relations. While the design and deployment of systems that continually adapt holds the promise of far-reaching positive change, they simultaneously pose significant risks, especially to already vulnerable peoples. Values and power are central to this discussion. (...) class='Hi'>Decolonial theories use historical hindsight to explain patterns of power that shape our intellectual, political, economic, and social world. By embedding a decolonial critical approach within its technical practice, AI communities can develop foresight and tactics that can better align research and technology development with established ethical principles, centring vulnerable peoples who continue to bear the brunt of negative impacts of innovation and scientific progress. We highlight problematic applications that are instances of coloniality, and using a decolonial lens, submit three tactics that can form a decolonial field of artificial intelligence: creating a critical technical practice of AI, seeking reverse tutelage and reverse pedagogies, and the renewal of affective and political communities. The years ahead will usher in a wave of new scientific breakthroughs and technologies driven by AI research, making it incumbent upon AI communities to strengthen the social contract through ethical foresight and the multiplicity of intellectual perspectives available to us, ultimately supporting future technologies that enable greater well-being, with the goal of beneficence and justice for all. (shrink)

In this article, Ingrid Andersson discusses the decolonial philosophy of Sylvia Wynter, with a special focus on addressing her concepts of the hybrid human and origin stories. Andersson shows how Wynter's philosophizing about the being of being human is premised on an entanglement of nature and culture that is on par with the posthuman understanding of the ontological inseparability of matter and discourse. She goes on to interrogate some productive tensions between Wynter's decolonial philosophy and posthumanism by pointing (...) out how Wynter's hybrid human formulates an understanding of human nature that is different in itself and not solely in relation to other nonhuman entities. In the final part of the article, she proposes how we, with Wynter, can devise a pedagogical approach that seeks to counteract harmful taxonomizing practices. (shrink)

What does it mean to teach, live, and imagine one’s futures amidst a global pandemic? How to respond to the reality of unequal and overlapping crises, COVID-19 being one of them? Can alternative understandings of time help us create a more just post-pandemic university? Drawing on environmental humanities, disaster and critical time studies, in conversation with qualitative data, this article theorizes a ‘pedagogy of scale’: a practical and conceptual centering on multiple temporalities and diverse interpretative frames. The analysis argues (...) for the need to attend to overlapping, non-linear, and changeable scales of time, reference, and meaning that students draw on in order to make sense of crises: every crisis, even as unprecedented as COVID-19, is embedded in environmental processes, long-term vulnerabilities and injustices. These overlooked and overlapping scales interweave personal, planetary, and theological notions of time—from ecological deep time to the divine time—meaning, and self. In its focus on asynchronicity, overlap and multiplicity, the analysis extends current theorizations of temporality and crisis in higher education, challenges paradigms of mastery, advocates for epistemic plurality, and embraces decolonial notions of human subjectivity, providing a much-needed critical model for the post-pandemic university. (shrink)

This article relates four concepts present in the thought of Édouard Glissant (poetics, optionality, exteriority, and unlearning) to show that they are also present in different authors of decolonial theory. These concepts lead us out of the framework of modern hypercriticism and allow us to enter into a philosophy of relation that opens up new possibilities for intercultural encounters. Through the constant recourse to the contrast between Glissant and the decolonial school, the text goes through its classic themes, (...) such as the coloniality of power, knowledge and being, and decolonial pedagogy and feminism. (shrink)

The three of us (be)come together, yes on Zoom calls and in Google docs, and in a way that re-imagines the sitting together at a well-worn kitchen table to animate our current shared preoccupations. The table has seen many conversations before us, so it’s well-worn by feminist scholars who were also troubled, yearning, and adamant about leaving their marks. We have come to, become at, this type of table for centuries, sitting together preparing food, folding laundry, and washing up, all (...) while also reckoning that our stories matter and can make a difference. In a context that is both practical and intellectual – centring fat liberation in public health nutrition – how do we remain good scholarly support to one another in and through challenging times? Times of dissent. Times of tedium. This chapter reveals the stories we need most now as we grapple with our places in the neoliberal university and public health pedagogy, specifically as a critique of policies that we read as non-liberatory. We grapple with how our complicity within these spaces might be considered from a place of mutual support and a shared commitment to unlearning and unsettling colonial ways of knowing, especially as we contemplate the problematics of public health imperatives regarding “intuitive eating” and health behaviour change. And we ask what this means for scholarship that is accountable to liberation, that is, personal survival and collective healing and learning. (shrink)

The work of Hardt and Negri offers the field of education important theoretical resources for reconceptualizing subjectivity as a site of politics. Yet recent shifts on the Left toward more articulated mobilizations, along with the emergence of new decolonizing movements that interrogate the undifferentiated character of the common, partly affirm long-standing critiques of Hardt and Negri’s theses. Rather than rejecting their arguments, we should rethink their central assertions—from the starting point of decolonial theory—in a way that responds to these (...) concerns. We argue that the notion of constituent power grounding their theorization of politics be rethought in dialogue with the ethico-political concept of obediential power ; that the “monstrous” subjectivity they propose as the mode of exodus from given forms of biopolitical production take direction from Wynter’s new Human Project; and that the insurrectionary figure of the multitude be reconsidered alongside the variegated figure of insurgent cosmopolitanism. This rethinking restores to Hardt and Negri’s project a more contextualized and less universalistic theory of politics, and establishes a foundation for a critical pedagogy that, beginning from an accountability to student agency, engages a form of insurgent leadership that responds to the centrality in capitalist education of the historical processes of colonial partition. (shrink)

AbstractIn this article, I examine the pedagogical practices of La Red de Semillas Libres de Colombia, a grassroots national organization that works towards the construction of seed sovereignty. Using participant observation and interviews, I show the epistemic, territorial, and gender dimensions of these practices. I draw from extant scholarship on seed struggles, decolonial feminism, and feminist political ecology to analyze two specific practices: experimentation and demonstration and, visual technology creation, including drawings. I demonstrate how these practices organize territories through (...) collective epistemic gendered labor around seeds. These territories are spaces for community-based power creation that have the potential to advance agrarian and environmental agendas from below. However, they also reflect and embody the enduring character of patriarchy and the challenges it presents to achieve systemic transformations in the Colombian countryside. (shrink)

UK Higher Education is characterised by structural and institutional forms of whiteness. As scholars and activists are increasingly speaking out to testify, whiteness has wide-ranging implications that affect curricula, pedagogy, knowledge production, university policies, campus climate, and the experiences of students and faculty of colour. Unsurprisingly then, calls to decolonize the university abound. In this article, we draw upon the Critical Race Theory method of counter-storytelling. By introducing composite characters, we speak back to assumptions that universities are race-neutral, meritocratic (...) institutions. We illustrate some of the key themes that shape the experiences of faculty of colour in UK Higher Education: institutional racism, racial microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, and steadfast fugitive resistance. We argue that, despite the paradox of working under (what purports to be) a ‘decolonial’ agenda, widespread calls to decolonize our universities have further embedded rather than dismantled whiteness, thus continuing to characterise the careers, wellbeing, and daily lives of faculty of colour. (shrink)

This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of Gender Studies. We document how our decolonial feminist activism is actualised in our pedagogy, which is guided by feminist interpretations of ‘wonder’ (Irigaray, 1999; Ahmed, 2004; hooks, 2010) read alongside decolonial theory, including that of Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter D. Mignolo and María Lugones. Using notions of wonder as pedagogy, we attempt to create spaces in our classrooms (...) where critical self-reflection and critical intellectual and embodied engagement can emerge. Our attempts to create these spaces include multiple aspects or threads that, when woven together, might enable other ways of knowing-being-doing that works towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality in the Australian context. (shrink)

In this article two series are analyzed: Black Earth Rising and Queen Sono, shows that are about African realities from an African perspective. The findings in this article show that both series address social and political issues such as neocolonialism, neoextractivism, internal colonialism, racism, inequality, justice, self-determination, corruption, violence, peace, memory, necropolitics, mental health, and decoloniality. I also argue that the shows could be used as pedagogical tools to raise critical consciousness in a wide public regarding the social and political (...) issues addressed. The research in this article has been conducted with a qualitative methodology, using both shows as case studies and using content analysis and bibliographical research. The analysis of the series is based in the discussion of critical theory and decoloniality approaches and authors, especially from Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, the analysis of popular media is a relevant effort to decolonize knowledge, using alternative and non-academic sources to produce and socialize knowledge. (shrink)

A decolonial practice and understanding of education (whether theological or otherwise) requires engaging, subverting, deposing and reimagining a whole ecology of imaginaries, practices, structures, institutionalities, traditions, power asymmetries etc.: a task that is far beyond the capacities of any individual, community or even generation. Cognisant of this reality, the article foregrounds the question of pedagogy in theological education (but only as an integral part of the colonial/decolonial ecology of education) and argues that in so far as our (...) pedagogies in theological education treat students primarily as ‘thinking creatures’, we are engaging in a dis-membering pedagogy that reproduces the coloniality of being. I identify a Cartesian anthropology (‘ego cogito sum’) – engendering a host of dualisms giving artificial supremacy to certain dimensions of reality over others – as a key animating source of dis-membering pedagogies. Drawing on the ‘pedagogical excess’ (i.e. underexplored pedagogical themes) in the theological anthropology of Simon Maimela in conversation with pedagogical visions that cohere and extend his anthropological commitments, I argue that a re-membering pedagogy is, at minimum: a pedagogy of performative action, embodiment and (community based) liminality. I argue throughout the article that in the work of re-sourcing our animating anthropologies and re-imagining our pedagogies, we are engaged in the healing work of re-membering that which coloniality has torn apart: theory and practice, mind and body, the individual and relationality, the student and the teacher, the theological school and society. Contribution: This article outlines my attempts to theoretically and theologically ground (and extend) my espoused pedagogical commitments forged at the intersection of my community work and teaching as a theological educator in an undergraduate BTh programme. This article invites other theological educators to become conscious of the theological anthropology that their espoused pedagogical commitments assume and reflect on the pedagogical commitments that their theological anthropology entails, especially as it relates to the ongoing calls for the Africanisation/decolonisation of theological education in South Africa. (shrink)

This article is a collective discussion with undergraduate students about their work in a second-year gender studies course. The discussion shares how active engagement in collective art production for social change can provide the seeds for decolonial, anti-racist and anti-ableist pedagogical practice. The course encourages students to actively engage in the classroom, raise questions and concerns about social justice, and implement ways to challenge social relations of power. Students work collectively on projects using a range of alternative ways of (...) knowing, including sensory, heart, intellectual, and spiritual knowledge, to connect with the course material in creative ways. The article is a conversation with three students in the course and the work they produced. They discuss the various mediums they used, including poetry, collaging, and a case study of artists’ street art. The students touch on the politics of joy, self-care, heart knowledge, politics of suffering, and accessibility, illustrating how combining art with various ways of knowing has helped them develop deeply analytic, compassionate, and relational work for social change. The work affirms ways of knowing that have often evolved outside the colonial academic institution. The anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-ableist, feminist and Indigenous pedagogies used in the course help to pluralize constructive capacities for more decolonizing, equitable, inclusive, anti-racist and expansive educational futures. (shrink)

This article investigates whether Conversational Thinking can suitably serve as a pedagogical approach for philosophy education in African schools (primary and secondary levels). We argue that there is a need to introduce and teach philosophy in schools in Africa. Additionally, we argue that it would be apropos to adopt a decolonial approach in developing such curricula, which, amongst others, could accommodate African approaches to philosophy. We contend that African homegrown frameworks, such as Conversational Thinking, can serve as appropriate (...) class='Hi'>decolonial strategies for philosophy education in parts of Africa. Our reason is that the proposed approach can train the emerging young generations in Africa, not only to be critical, creative, and innovative, but also to view reality from African epistemic perspectives. This stems from the fact that Conversational Thinking is one strategy amongst others that can promote African culture-inspired approaches to knowledge that combine with basic thinking skills to offer truly African forms of epistemic liberation. (shrink)

The paper argues that the theme of cultural and racial oppression is present throughout Freire’s work. In particular, it explores Paulo Freire’s contribution to the discussion of colonialism and decolonization. To this purpose, first of all it takes into consideration some writings elaborated between the end of the 1950s and the 1970s, enhancing the dialogue with authors such as Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral. Then it focuses on concepts which, although not directly linked to the analysis of colonialism, (...) can help reinvent and expand Freire’s proposal in a decolonial key. The last part is dedicated to Freire’s influence on decolonial pedagogy and intercultural critical pedagogy, developed in recent decades starting from the Latin American context. (shrink)

The recent debate on decolonisation calls for all academic disciplines, including missiology modules, at public universities to reflect on its content, curriculum and pedagogies. However, the danger is always that to ‘de-…’ might lead to an exclusivist and essentialist pattern of a person or institution, and an act that does not take all epistemic communities seriously. The author argues in this article that such tendencies would not be conducive in South Africa, a country with a rich heritage of various cultures. (...) Epistemologies at public universities should embrace all cultures in order to be relevant and transformative. The article oscillates between essentialism in social, racial identities and non-essentialism thereof – primarily contending for the inclusion and appreciation of all social and cultural identities in South African curriculum and content for higher education, in particular, the cultural tradition and heritage among the so-called ‘coloured’ communities. The article reassesses the contributions of theologians towards racial and ethnic identity. The author uses one particular ‘racial identity’ as a case study for racial essentialism and to argue for an inclusive approach in mission education. The article conclusively argues for the re-imagination and inclusion of ‘coloured’ as an African identity in the discipline of missiology. (shrink)

Assata Zerai reflects on three decades of scholarship and examines ways in which scholars and professors have begun to move their disciplines from a focus on traditional canons of the modernist era to embrace decolonial sensibilities in research, teaching, and institutional transformation, bringing about change within higher education.

Drawing on a historical ethnography of how Brazil’s post-dictatorial psychiatric reforms have shaped young people’s lives, this paper builds on Eve Sedgwick’s analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion to show that narrow applications of Foucault’s biopower concept nurture forms of resistance to bio-reductionism centred primarily on epistemic deconstruction. To unsettle this hermeneutic, I put young people’s theories of power into conversation with Georges Canguilhem’s concept of the milieu and with feminist scholars’ work on prefigurative politics. I introduce the concepts of (...) threading and unthreading to consider how one subject of biopower, the child-like biobehavioural figure, was continuously being threaded within a specific milieu and in relation to another key figure: the elite angst-ridden ‘storm-and-stress’ adolescent. Young people’s subsequent unthreading and reweaving politics, flourishing in co-construction with what I call the politicizing clinic, illustrate how decolonial pedagogies can incrementally change the patterning of social life. (shrink)

Apoio: Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) – Brasil – Código de Financiamento 001 Filosofia, educação a descolonização epistêmica do saber Resumo: O artigo pretende abordar as possíveis contribuições da filosofia latino-americana e das filosofias e pedagogias indígenas na descolonização epistêmica do saber. Para tanto, investiga o trabalho de libertação da filosofia proposto Enrique Dussel e Raúl Fornet-Bettancourt, bem como a noção de colonialidade do saber, pensada por diferentes teóricos da concepção decolonial. Identifica-se a necessidade de (...) compreender o Outro a partir dele mesmo como matriz de um processo decolonizador, e por isso propomos a leitura do trabalho do autor, filósofo e educador indígena Daniel Munduruku, a fim de identificar aspectos que nos ajudem a empreender um trabalho de reconfiguração e descolonização epistemológica. Palavras chave: Filosofia indígena, Pedagogias decoloniais, Colonialidade do saber. Philosophy, education and the epistemic decolonization of knowledge Abstract: The article intends to approach the possible contributions of Latin American philosophy and indigenous philosophies and pedagogies for the epistemic decolonization of knowledge. To this end, we investigates the work of liberating philosophy proposed by Enrique Dussel and Raúl Fornet-Bettancourt, as well as the notion of coloniality of knowledge, thought by different theorists of the decolonial conception. The need to understand the other from himself is identified as the matrix of a decolonizing process, and for this reason we propose the reading of the work of the author, philosopher and indigenous educator Daniel Munduruku, in order to identify aspects that help us to undertake a work of epistemological reconfiguration and decolonization. Key-words: Indigenous philosophy, Decolonial pedagogies, Cooloniality of knowledge. Filosofía, educación y descolonización epistémica del conocimiento Resumen: El artículo pretende abordar los posibles aportes de la filosofía latinoamericana y las filosofías y pedagogías indígenas en la descolonización epistémica del conocimiento. Para ello, investiga el trabajo de filosofía liberadora propuesto por Enrique Dussel y Raúl Fornet-Bettancourt, así como la noción de colonialidad del conocimiento, pensada por diferentes teóricos de la concepción descolonial. La necesidad de comprender al otro desde sí mismo se identifica como la matriz de un proceso descolonizador, por lo que proponemos la lectura de la obra del autor, filósofo y educador indígena Daniel Munduruku, a fin de identificar aspectos que nos ayuden a emprender un trabajo. de reconfiguración y descolonización epistemológica. Palabras clave: Filosofía indígena, Pedagogías decoloniales, Colonialidad del saber. Data de registro: 08/01/2021 Data de aceite: 28/04/2021. (shrink)

This paper traces an expanded ethical perspective for youth and community work (YCW) practice in response to the climate and biodiversity crises. Discussing ecological ethics, we problematise the liberal humanist emphasis on utilitarianism and reject it as inappropriate for YCW in these times. Instead, we argue for an ecocentric practice ethic which intrinsically values the non-human world. To advance an ecocentric ethical perspective for YCW we draw on decolonial and posthuman theory. Inspired by a Freirean dialogical approach, we apply (...) these theoretical domains as lenses to problematise YCW practice, seeking a generative dialogue between perspectives. Through this, we identify three emergent tasks for ecocentric YCW: (a) thinking and acting beyond the individual; (b) cultivating reciprocal care and connection and (c) practicing critical pedagogies of place. This third element builds on YCW's social pedagogic tradition and provides a practical means to incorporate ecocentric ideas into practice. We conclude that, given the unprecedented implications of climate crises and biodiversity collapse, a YCW ethics that does not consider these implications for young people is insufficient for the context of practice today. Enacting an ecocentric YCW ethics requires ongoing collective praxis and dialogue between young people, practitioners, educators, managers and students. (shrink)

Climate change has been called both a ‘slow emergency’ and an ‘urgent crisis’, it creates tensions between human and non-human temporalities, it asks some communities to ‘speed up’ and demands others slow down, and requires choices between present needs, historical responsibilities and future consequences. If students are to understand and confront climate (in)justice, then a ‘temporal imagination’ (Adam, 1998) is required that is alert to the ways that time is central to the politics of a warming world. This paper therefore (...) explores how ‘teaching time’ can support the awareness of and attention to (in)justice. The paper discusses the limits of current approaches to teaching time in education and explores a range of practices for developing ‘temporal attunement’ (Jensen, 2023) that can be found in public arts, Indigenous education, educational philosophy, futures studies and decolonial praxis. It maps out five temporal educational practices of: relational time; rhythm; anticipation and reparation; temporal suspension; and critical time keeping. It argues that these practices can be put into dialogue as a basis for a ‘temporal pedagogy’ that comprises three moves: interruption (of habitual and dominant temporal frames and their production of injustice), attention (to the latent, situated, plural timings and rhythms of the situation), and encounter (through invitations to judgement about the temporal practices that should govern more just collective action in response to climate change). It concludes by working through an example of how such a pedagogy might be deployed to negotiate the conflicting temporalities of socio-ecological change. (shrink)

This paper traces the ethnocentric structure of U.S.-published anthologies in global ethics and related fields and it examines the ethical and philosophical implications of such ethnocentrism. The author argues that the ethnocentric structure of prominent work in global ethics not only impairs the field's ability to prepare students for global citizenship but contributes to the ideological processes that maintain global inequities. In conclusion, the author makes a case that fuller engagement with global-South and indigenous writers on global issues can encourage (...) U.S. students and scholars to examine more closely the ideologies that order our lives and to risk the kind of self examination that is necessary in order to build effective relationships with diverse global communities. (shrink)

This text reports experiences of a decolonial Mathematics Education practice in a municipal public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, that resulted in the elaboration of this ongoing master's project. More specifically, it discusses the tensions between an official curriculum and school practices. The experiences occurred with the production of school gardens, executed from the knowledge of agroecology and agroforestry. Among the objectives of this work, we seek to highlight the collective construction of a project, carried out (...) with families, the community, research groups, students, and school staff, which occurred from meetings and discussions about the theories, practices, and public policies necessary for the construction of the garden. Thus, we highlighted some mathematical knowledge of the decolonial Afroindigenous curriculum, based on the cultivation practices of the Guarani M'bya calendar. With this, we discuss the possibilities of school pedagogical practices, in which the indigenous cosmology is inserted into the Basic Education curriculum. (shrink)

This article argues for a redefinition of difficulty in relation to the inextricable violence of modernity and examines the consecutive challenge to notions of understanding and interpretation — of a text, of language or of the other — that this repositioning brings. To this end, the article offers a nuanced rereading of Steiner’s canonical fourfold categorization of difficulty, in dialogue with, first, Édouard Glissant’s opacity and, second, Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler’s theorizations of ‘abyssal thought’, an approach emerging from Caribbean (...) and critical Black studies, exploring the key challenge it poses to forging an unmasterful, after Julietta Singh, comparative literary practice. With an equal attention to the theoretical and pedagogical dimensions of reading difficulty, the article emphasizes the importance of the accretive and embodied nature of the reading process and offers a repositioning of textual difficulty, as a meeting site of opacities, and a reformulation of a difficult, unmasterful reading practice, after catastrophe and with others. (shrink)

Providing a decolonial, action-focused account of Yoga philosophy, this practical work from Dr. Shyam Ranganathan, pioneering scholar in the field of Indian moral philosophy, focuses on the South Asian tradition to explore what Yoga was like prior to colonization. It challenges teachers and trainees to reflect on the impact of Western colonialism on Yoga as well as understand Yoga as the original decolonial practice in a way that is accessible. -/- This book is accessible but thought provoking in (...) its approach, but it will also challenge the way you think. Each chapter takes the reader through a journey of sources and traditions, beginning with an investigation into the colonial -Platonic and Aristotelian- approaches to pedagogy in colonized yoga spaces, through contrary, ancient philosophies of South Asia, such as Jainism, Buddhism, Sankhya, and various forms of Vedanta, to sources of Yoga, including the Upanisads, Yoga Sutra, Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika. With discussions of the precolonial philosophy of Yoga, its relationship to social justice, and modern postural yoga's relationship with colonial trauma, this is a comprehensive guide for any yoga teacher or trainee to activate and synergize their practice. (shrink)

In this piece, we ask, what are the risks of a pedagogy and politics that begins and ends with privilege? What does it mean to declare privilege when embedded in institutions of the settler colonial state? These questions are raised through an ongoing project where we interview provincial public sector workers on Treaty 6, 7 and 8 and Coast Salish Territories about their implications in settler colonialism through public sector work. In the project, we articulate the interdisciplinary framework of (...) settler colonial socialization to consider the space between individuals and structures – the meso-space where settlers are made by learning how to take up the work of settler colonialism. For these reasons, in our research we ask, “what do the pedagogical processes of settler colonial socialization tell us about how systemic colonial violence is sustained, and how it might be disrupted or refused in public sector work?” In this paper, we narrow our focus to the declarations of privilege that many of our interview participants are making. We reflect on these declarations and consider whether focusing on settler complicity and Indigenous refusals can better support a decolonial politics for settlers working in the public sector. We argue that declarations of privilege risk reproducing settler-centric logics that maintain settler colonialism, settler jurisdiction, and settler certainty, and we reflect on how to orient participants towards the material realization of relational accountability and towards imagining otherwise. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to determine what Robert Bernasconi’s body of work in Critical Philosophy of Race can teach us about the way in which we, philosophers and professors of philosophy, ought to treat our institutional heritage. What should we make, for instance, of moral claims made by philosophers of the modern era who – tacitly or explicitly – manifested certain levels of endorsement toward the Atlantic Slave Trade? How should we comprehend the conceptual tools that we have inherited (...) from them, knowing that those were formulated alongside justificatory claims for the enslavement of Africans – claims that we now deem undoubtably and universally immoral? I extract from Bernasconi’s writings an implicit methodology that can be broken down into three main moves: (1) a historiographical work, akin to Michel Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ method, aimed at uncovering the material conditions that allowed for the emergence of philosophical ideas of the past, (2) a dialectical work aimed at interpreting this collection of historical data through the critical lens of race, and (3) a pedagogical work aimed at transforming the practice of academic philosophy in light of the critique. I conclude that his methodological contribution culminates in an invitation to revisit and transform the past of the institution by treating the history of academic philosophy as philosophically and conceptually relevant rather than merely incidental. Such a commitment toward critically engaging the past of our institution urges us to revisit the canon in specific ways. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce a dialogue between (post-)phenomenological and decolonial approaches to propose a sentipensante ethics. Emancipating from hegemonic approaches to ethics that privilege rationality over feeling bodies, we conceptualise an analogical ethics of virtues that emerge in the framework of an analectic-responsive experience. In this experience, we specify the affective, interoceptive, and inter-bodily aspects as elements of a sentipensante ethics from an enactivist perspective. This exercise allows us to highlight the foundation of the ethical experience as a (...) participatory virtue-making oriented towards solidary well-being. Finally, it invites us to search for pedagogical practices that cultivate this virtue-making. En este artículo introducimos un diálogo entre enfoques (post-)fenomenológicos y decoloniales para proponer una ética sentipensante. Nos emancipamos de perspectivas hegemónicas que privilegian la racionalidad sobre los cuerpos que sienten, y conceptualizamos una ética analógica de virtudes que emergen en el marco de una experiencia responsiva analéctica. De esta experiencia, precisamos los aspectos afectivos, interoceptivos, e inter-corporales, como elementos de una ética sentipensante desde una perspectiva enactivista. Este ejercicio nos permite resaltar el fundamento de la experiencia ética como un hacer-virtud participativo orientado hacia el bienestar solidario. Finalmente, nos invita a buscar prácticas pedagógicas que cultiven este hacer-virtud. (shrink)

In a precarious occupation, martial arts instructors must be inspiring and build a shared philosophy. Drawing on Taijiquan and Capoeira, which have their philosophical or epistemological roots in Asia and Africa, this article explores core concepts that feature in students’ enculturation. These concepts are grounded in epistemologies contrasting with Papineau’s work on popular and elite sport, Knowing the Score. More specifically, the philosophical approach used builds upon Papineau’s chapters on focus, cheating and racism, although these martial practices are not grounded (...) in the Judeo-Christian Western epistemologies underlying Papineau’s thinking. Indeed, one of the attractions for Western Capoeira and Taijiquan students is precisely their “strange” or exotic philosophical concepts driving specific pedagogical practices. Ethnographic fieldwork in Britain and written and oral accounts of embodied expertise are used to explore the practical uses of these non-Western epistemologies by teachers to build shared cultures for their students. Specifically, we examine the concepts of axé (life force) and malicia (artful trickery) in Capoeira, noting its contrast to Western ideas of energy and fair play. We then examine Taijiquan and the concepts of song (鬆 or “letting go”) and ting (听 or “focused listening”), considering the movement skill of systematic relaxation and the focus on specific components of human anatomy and body technique among adults unlearning embodied tension built throughout their lives. We close with considerations for projects examining the diverse, alternative southern, non-Western, and potentially decolonial and subaltern epistemologies in such martial activities. (shrink)

This study explores young students’ negotiation of their citizenship identities at the intersection of their class, gender, religious and ethnic identifications in the conflict-affected setting of Pakistan. While much of the global literature on global citizenship education (GCE) primarily takes into account the perspectives of middle-class or elite students located in richer economies, the current study is centred on a socio-demographically diverse group of young people in a low-income setting. With a specific focus on their negotiation of issues around diversity (...) and justice, students’ narratives generated important recommendations for a transformative and historically nuanced postcolonial/decolonial approach to global citizenship engagement that should be considered more broadly. The study illuminates the ways the global/local historical, cultural, political and economic factors influence individual relationship with GCE and offers useful pedagogical and policy implications for GCE ‘from below’. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the Guam Department of Education's (GDOE) decolonization efforts and the potential role of Philosophy for Children (P4C) as a strategic tool for its advancement. I begin with a discussion of Guam's colonial context and its implications for contemporary education on the island. While the GDOE's current attempts to decolonize Guam's public education emphasize the need for an "official body of knowledge," many CHamoru scholars and activists have argued that it is not enough. This paper agrees (...) that such content-based reforms are insufficient and advocates for a more nuanced approach to education through P4C. Drawing on the P4C literature and decolonial education, I argue that while P4C alone may not bring about structural change, its pedagogical framework offers a promising alternative when adapted to indigenous contexts. The paper proposes that P4C can serve as a "Trojan Horse" within public schools, fostering decolonial acts of resurgence by elevating indigenous knowledge, welcoming indigenous masters, and empowering CHamoru students within a Westernized educational setting. (shrink)

This essay aims to reflect on the impacts of state violence upon black lives and childhoods. In the wanderings through the city of Rio de Janeiro and in the theoretical trails proposed by antiracist and decolonial thinkers, we discuss the impacts and challenges of racism in the formative and existential itineraries of racialized bodies, crossed by the public necropolitics that provides the premises of the pedagogical government of peripheral childhoods and adolescences in large Brazilian cities. From the bumping into (...) M., 11 years old, who sells chewing gum in the surroundings of a train station in Rio de Janeiro, we problematize the vulnerabilities produced and the systematic violations of the black children’s human rights, which hinder racial justice in the country, in face of the permanent conversion of differences into inferiorized inequalities. The violence of this injustice, according to the argument developed in the text, culminates in the reinforcement of the vilification and naturalization of racial inequalities against populations historically inferiorized by the colonial wrath. It also points to the need to think about black childhoods from the territory, in order to problematize inequities and disparities that persist. We conclude, finally, that the capture and nullification of black childhoods is a State project, guided by criminalizing and stereotyping practices of subjectivation which brutalize bodies and dehumanize black lives. (shrink)

From yoga to the Anthropocene to feminist theory, recent calls to ‘decolonise’ have resulted in a resurgence of the term. This article problematises the language of the decolonial within feminist theory and pedagogy, problematising its rhetoric, particularly in the context of the US. The article considers the romanticised transnational solidarities produced by decolonial rhetoric within feminist theory, asking, among other questions: What are the assumptions underpinning the decolonial project in feminist theory? How might the language of (...) ‘decolonising’ serve to actually de-politicise feminism, while keeping dominant race logics in place? Furthermore, how does decolonial rhetoric in sites such as the US continue to romanticise feminist solidarities while positioning non-US-born women of colour at the pedagogical end of feminist theory? I argue that ‘decolonial’, in its current proliferation, is mainstreamed uncritically while serving as a catachresis within feminist discourse. This article asks feminism to reconsider its ease at an incitement to decolonise as a caution for resisting the call to decolonise as simply another form of multicultural liberalism that masks oppression through imagined transnational solidarities, while calling attention to the homogenous construction of the ‘Global South’ within decolonising discourse. (shrink)

The first in-depth analysis of the radical feminist theory and coalitional praxis of scholar-activist María Lugones. Speaking Face to Face provides an unprecedented, in-depth look at the feminist philosophy and practice of the renowned Argentinian-born scholar-activist María Lugones. Informed by her identification as “nondiasporic Latina” and US Woman of Color, as well as her long-term commitment to grassroots organizing in Chicana/o communities, Lugones’s work dovetails with, while remaining distinct from, that of other prominent transnational, decolonial, and women of color (...) feminists. Her visionary philosophy motivates transformative modes of engaging cultural others, inviting us to create political intimacies rooted in a shared yearning for interdependence. Bringing together scholars and activists across fields, this volume charts her profound impact in and beyond the academy for the past thirty years. In so doing, it exemplifies a new method of coalitional theorizing—traversing racial, ethnic, sexual, national, gendered, political, and disciplinary borders in order to cultivate learning, embrace heterogeneity, and provide a unique framework for engaging contemporary debates about identity, oppression, and activism. Across thirteen original contributions, authors address issues of intersectionality, colonial and decolonial subjectivities, the multiplicity and the coloniality of gender, indigenous spiritualities and cosmologies, pluralist and women of color feminisms, radical multiculturalism, popular education, and resistance to multiple oppressions. The book also includes a rare interview with Lugones and an afterword by Paula Moya, ultimately offering both new critical resources for longstanding admirers of Lugones and a welcome introduction for newcomers to her groundbreaking work. “This is an important contribution to Latinx studies, Latina feminist philosophy, queer studies, and the burgeoning field of decolonial feminism, a field that Lugones almost single-handedly launched. It is interdisciplinary, but also a wonderful pedagogical resource. It provides readers who are both familiar and unfamiliar with her work a thorough and judicious point of entry.” — Eduardo Mendieta, author of Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Max Horkheimer’s intellectual project, known as critical Theory, was crucial to revealing the contradictions and illusions of capitalist modernity. There is no doubt that the contributions from the Frankfurt School continue to be necessary for a critique of the destructive dynamic of the formation of social hegemony: instrumental rationality, cultural industry, a deepening of social antagonisms, the self-destruction of the Enlightenment, the pedagogy of oppression, amongst other things. However, since the decolonial turn, it is possible to observe some (...) limits of its critique of modernity. The object of this article is to point out some geo-political limitations of the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

A abstração da presença – a sublimação do corpo e a desconsideração dos sentidos – é, como diria Hans Gumbrecht, um dos efeitos da metafísica, pela qual realiza-se a “perda do mundo”, a radical descorporalização exigida pela razão moderna. Alimentada pelas concepções filosóficas da Modernidade, esta tendência foi constantemente enfatizada pelas teorias educacionais até hoje influentes nos meios pedagógicos, além de sedimentada pelas limitações próprias ao modelo escolar amplamente instituído. A crítica e a superação desse modo de ser configura-se hoje (...) como urgência eminentemente política de enfrentamento das múltiplas ameaças que pesam hoje sobre a sociedade brasileira, e particularmente sobre todos os grupos que fazem corpo contra a intolerância, contra o racismo, enfim contra o que Achille Mbembé denominou necropolítica. Mas, estaria a filosofia da educação preparada para enfrentar tal urgência? Palavras-chave: corpo-mundo; cosmopolitismo; filosofia da educação; decolonialidade; formação humana. Recovering the body-world Abstract: The abstraction of the presence – the sublimation of the body and the disregard of the senses – is, as Hans Gumbrecht would say, one of the effects of metaphysics, by which takes place the "loss of the world", the radical decorpocorporality required by modern reason. Fueled by the philosophical conceptions of Modernity, this tendency was constantly emphasized by the educational theories that are still influential in the pedagogical environments, being sedimented by the inherent limitations of the widely established school model. The criticism and the overcoming of this way of being is configured today as an eminently political urgency to confront the multiple threats to Brazilian society, and particularly to all groups that make body against intolerance, against racism, and finally against Achille Mbembé called “necropolitics”. But is the philosophy of education prepared to meet such an urgency? Key-words: body-world; cosmopolitanism; philosophy of education; decoloniality; human paideia. Récupérer le corps-monde Résumé : L’abstraction de la présence – la sublimation du corps et le mépris des sens – est, comme le dirait Hans Gumbrecht, l'un des effets de la métaphysique, par lequel s’opère la “ perte du monde “, la désincarnation radicale qu’exige la raison moderne. Nourrie par les conceptions philosophiques de la Modernité, cette tendance a été constamment mise en avant par des théories pédagogiques qui font encore autorité dans les milieux pédagogiques, en plus d’être sédimentée par les limites inhérentes au modèle scolaire largement établi. La critique et le dépassement de ce mode d’être se fait aujourd’hui une urgence éminemment politique, car il s’agit de faire face aux multiples menaces qui pèsent aujourd’hui sur la société brésilienne et singulièrement sur tous les groupes qui font corps contre l'intolérance, contre le racisme, bref, contre ce qu’Achille Mbembé appelle la nécropolitique. Mais la philosophie de l’éducation serait-elle en mesure d’étayer la réponse à une telle urgence? Mots-clés: corps-monde; cosmopolitisme; philosophie de l’éducation; décolonisation; formation humaine. Data de registro: 14/03/2022 Data de aceite: 20/07/2022. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline various pedagogical practices that I believe are important for diversifying the field of philosophy. I outline these practices through a discussion of knowledge and its production, the production of relations through collective acts, the creation of space in and beyond the institution, and finally moving beyond inclusion narratives. The various pedagogical practices that I outline have been developed in, and drawn from, a workshop titled the Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop. Ultimately, in this paper I (...) utilize what I call a “tenderness approach to philosophy”—tenderness as devotion of time and concentration, as directional, relational, and embodied—in order to demonstrate how tenderness can be applied to a pedagogical context. (shrink)

Resumo: O artigo apresenta um problema que se apresenta no tempo presente e que nos coloca diante da tarefa de repensar os paradigmas da educação e do pensamento. O texto questiona qual o impacto da globalização em como pensamos a Educação e a Filosofia. A base epistemológica do artigo se ancora no pensamento da desconstrução e nas suas interseções com o debate sobre políticas das diferenças e seu desenrolar em autores como Achille Mbembe, Louis Althusser, Frantz Fanon, Lélia Gonzales, Jean-Luc (...) Nancy, entre outros. No artigo apresentamos o conflito entre o mundo ocidental e seu pensamento único com a reflexão de autores que trazem aquilo que excede a este pensamento e que é marginalizado por ele. Colocamos em debate e relação conceitos como brutalismo, raça, desconstrução, ideologia, antropoceno etc. Palavras-chave: Desconstrução; Pedagogia; Filosofia da Diferença; Decolonialidade; Globalização. Education in the face of the end of the World and the end of Philosophy: Brutalism, deconstruction and some reflections on decoloniality, anti-racism and their intersections Abstract: The article presents a problem that arises in the present time and that puts us before the task of rethinking the paradigms of education and thought. The text questions the impact of globalization on how we think about Education and Philosophy. The epistemological basis of the article is anchored in the thought of deconstruction and its intersections with the debate on the politics of differences and its revelation in authors such as Achille Mbembe, Louis Althusser, Frantz Fanon, Lélia Gonzales, Jean-Luc Nancy, among others. The article presents the conflict between the Western world and its monolithic thought with the reflection of authors who bring what exceeds this thought and is marginalized by it. We put into debate and relationships such as brutalism, race, deconstruction, ideology, anthropocene, etc. Keywords: Deconstruction; Pedagogy; Philosophy of Difference; Decoloniality; Globalization. L'éducation face à la fin du monde et à la fin de la philosophie: Brutalisme, déconstruction et quelques réflexions sur la décolonialité, l'antiracisme et leurs intersections Résumé: L'article présente un problème qui se pose à l'heure actuelle et qui nous met face à la tâche de repenser les paradigmes de l'éducation et de la pensée. Le texte s'interroge sur l'impact de la mondialisation sur notre façon de penser l'éducation et la philosophie. La base épistémologique de l'article est ancrée dans la pensée de la déconstruction et ses intersections avec le débat sur la politique des différences et son déploiement chez des auteurs tels qu'Achille Mbembe, Louis Althusser, Frantz Fanon, Lélia Gonzales et Jean-Luc Nancy. Dans l'article, nous présentons le conflit entre le monde occidental et sa pensée unique avec la réflexion d'auteurs qui apportent ce qui dépasse cette pensée et est marginalisé par elle. Nous débattons et mettons en relation des concepts tels que le brutalisme, la race, la déconstruction, l'idéologie, l'anthropocène, etc. Mots-clés: Déconstruction; La Pédagogie; Philosophie de la Différence; Décolonialité; Mondialisation. Data de registro: 24/05/2024 Data de aceite: 18/12/2024. (shrink)

The first in-depth analysis of the radical feminist theory and coalitional praxis of scholar-activist María Lugones. Speaking Face to Face provides an unprecedented, in-depth look at the feminist philosophy and practice of the renowned Argentinian-born scholar-activist María Lugones. Informed by her identification as “nondiasporic Latina” and US Woman of Color, as well as her long-term commitment to grassroots organizing in Chicana/o communities, Lugones’s work dovetails with, while remaining distinct from, that of other prominent transnational, decolonial, and women of color (...) feminists. Her visionary philosophy motivates transformative modes of engaging cultural others, inviting us to create political intimacies rooted in a shared yearning for interdependence. Bringing together scholars and activists across fields, this volume charts her profound impact in and beyond the academy for the past thirty years. In so doing, it exemplifies a new method of coalitional theorizing—traversing racial, ethnic, sexual, national, gendered, political, and disciplinary borders in order to cultivate learning, embrace heterogeneity, and provide a unique framework for engaging contemporary debates about identity, oppression, and activism. Across thirteen original contributions, authors address issues of intersectionality, colonial and decolonial subjectivities, the multiplicity and the coloniality of gender, indigenous spiritualities and cosmologies, pluralist and women of color feminisms, radical multiculturalism, popular education, and resistance to multiple oppressions. The book also includes a rare interview with Lugones and an afterword by Paula Moya, ultimately offering both new critical resources for longstanding admirers of Lugones and a welcome introduction for newcomers to her groundbreaking work. “This is an important contribution to Latinx studies, Latina feminist philosophy, queer studies, and the burgeoning field of decolonial feminism, a field that Lugones almost single-handedly launched. It is interdisciplinary, but also a wonderful pedagogical resource. It provides readers who are both familiar and unfamiliar with her work a thorough and judicious point of entry.” — Eduardo Mendieta, author of Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

My goal in this project is to understand how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) manifests—or fails to manifest—in environmental education policy issued by the Ministry of Education in Oman. I also seek to explore whether there are cultural pressures in Omani society to overlook traditional ecological knowledge in environmental education policy. Specifically, my aim is to understand how forces of globalization interact with traditional ecological knowledge in Oman and whether these forces are behind the tendency to unknowingly ignore traditional ecological knowledge (...) when designing the environmental education policy. Drawing on critical decolonial studies, post-Heideggerian philosophy and environmental education pedagogy, this paper investigates the Policy of Environmental Education for Sustainable Development in Oman, which is a government document issued by the ministry of education in 2012 as a blueprint for designing environmental education curricula in Oman. My analysis of the Policy reveals that there is both a tension with and a potential for a pluriversal approach—one that embraces the coexistence and mutual enrichment of scientific knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge in environmental education. While the focus on scientism has historically marginalized TEK, this paper argues for a pluriversal framework that values multiple ways of knowing. By fostering a dialogue between these knowledge systems, environmental education can become more inclusive, holistic, and ecoculturally sustainable. I argue for honoring indigenous worldviews and celebrating the manifestations of our ecological heritage by integrating traditional ecological knowledge into a land-based pedagogy that works alongside scientific perspectives, promoting a richer understanding of the environment. (shrink)

This Special Issue comes at a time when African countries and the Global South in general are facing unprecedented crises in securing energy to power their economies. The crises are necessitated largely by the developed Western countries exerting enormous power and pressure upon the developing world to move away from fossil fuels, while at the same time the West is increasing its uptake on fossils. However, with critical self-reflection we are able to understand that a crisis of this nature is (...) not without historical precedence, as it is preceded by a series of other forms of injustices meted out upon the formerly and still colonized peoples. And not long ago, the COVID-19 pandemic on the health front, and the handling thereof, showed just how skewed and divided the world still is and laid bare race-laden inequalities both at local and global levels. So to be sure, the current crises are part of the history of struggle against race-based social injustices and demonstrate Western desire to continue its stranglehold over its former colonies. And although the energy transition is dubbed the “Just Energy Transition,” for those in the developing world who are negatively affected, there is clearly nothing “Just” about it. So whereas we generally tend to speak of social or historical injustices such as the energy crises and COVID-19, at an epistemological front we find cognitive injustice. Accordingly, the articles in this issue contribute to a series of responses by the anticolonial movement (broadly defined) in relation to injustice, particularly its epistemological ramifications on knowledge and knowledge production in the relation between the colonizer and the colonized, the center and the periphery. Furthermore, the historical exclusion of African and other non-European peoples from participation in reason had the effect that Africans in particular were precluded from philosophy itself, a phenomenon that African philosophy and associated disciplines are today still grappling with in the academy. So in a word, the articles make an important contribution insofar as reckoning with the impact that race and the history of racism has had in philosophy in particular, both as a discipline and as a human mental activity.It should be remembered that the exclusion of Africans from reason and eventually from philosophy is preceded by an earlier one, the exclusion of Africans from recognition at a human level, qua rational beings. One can talk of a history of depersonalizations and dehumanizations; of massacres and deracination inflicted upon the oppressed owing to the colonial encounter. This is why for a scholar and a philosopher of the periphery, to use Enrique Dussel’s term, philosophical inquiry cannot and ought not be divorced from human reality. In fact, scholars of the periphery often stress the need for philosophy not to abstract too much from reality; and for philosophy to confine itself with liberatory human ends, among other things. There are a number of thinkers of the periphery who famously harp upon this point. For instance, Lewis Gordon has introduced the concept of “disciplinary decadence” by which he laments the fetishization of methods and whereby disciplines become an end in themselves, thus not necessarily serving human needs. Other thinkers in this school of thought include the likes of Enrique Dussel, Charles Mills, Cornel West, Angela Davis, and George Yancy to mention but a few. Yancy speaks of the “Density project” with which he has a normative injunction upon Black philosophers. In a similar vein, Dussel remarks in the Philosophy of Liberation that “Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical texts, except as a pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality.”1 This reality, as is averred, is in existential phenomenology, not merely objective reality or perhaps something out there existing on its own accord, but rather it is what Jean-Paul Sartre associates with “human reality,” which is reality as lived by people of flesh and blood. So in a world demarcated between center and periphery, human beings and subhumans, whites and Blacks, the anticolonial thinker cannot afford not to raise questions relating to social existence, “the reality.” Thus for those in the academy, one must be able to come to terms with the reality of non-Western and “non-scientific knowledges” (after Boaventura De Sousa Santos) not being recognized as credible knowledge, coupled with the possibility of being forgotten, of being completely wiped out from history. And, as we see with Bernard Matolino’s article in particular, this is the battle that African philosophy has vigorously had to deal with in the previous two or three decades.In the Western canon, philosophy is generally taken to begin with the Greeks and this, as is observed, is no historical accident but forms part of a project to relegate previous philosophical traditions to relative obscurity, and to preclude the rest of humanity from participation in reason. The idea is that for Western modernity to be a viable project, oppressed cultures must out of necessity be denied reason. On this very point, Frantz Fanon would remark in Black Skin White Masks in the following manner: “That victory [on the rational front] played cat and mouse; it made a fool of me. As the other put it, when I was present, it was not; when it was there, I was no longer.”2 In this regard Mogobe Ramose’s article notes how the Aristotlean concept of man as a rational animal becomes a misnomer insofar as this relates to the Black person. With this sleight of hand, previous civilizations such as the African (Egyptian) and Arab traditions in philosophy are supposed to vanish from history and from the epistemological landscape. In this regard, Mills’s insights will continue to haunt philosophy well into the future, long after his passing. Mills had noted that a typical philosophy program in the Westernized university will normally start off with the two Greek philosophers, namely Plato and Aristotle. From here it moves to cover the Middle Ages and probably end with theories on liberalism. And although this period covers a history of more than two thousand years of Western philosophy, there will be little or no mention of traditions that shaped philosophical thought prior to the Greeks.The above notwithstanding, the articles in this issue show, however, that not only are Africans and oppressed peoples endowed with reflective reason, but that they also possess a unique brand of philosophy. By and large, the articles not only affirm the epistemological standpoint of African philosophy but show its own genealogy, discourse, and objectives among other things.With these short remarks, the following articles cut across these thematic areas: metaphysics of race, epistemic racism, racial ontology, feminism, and decolonial literature. Accordingly, the article by Bernard Matolino begins by delving into the metaphysics of race and notes that while there is no proof that there are distinct races (after Kwame Appiah), race as a matter of social life is alive and relevant. Further, his article goes on to demonstrate how African philosophy emerged as a form of protest and native philosophers’ need to show that indigenous peoples always had a philosophy. In a similar vein, Edwin Etieyibo’s article discusses epistemic racism, and how color prejudice historically translated to other forms of racial injustices such as epistemic racism. His article makes use of the works of such thinkers as Anibal Quijano and Ramon Grosfoguel to trace the genealogy of such injustices in the modern period.Siphiwe Ndlovu’s article looks into the problem of Black marginality, particularly in the modern period. He locates his musings within the social contract tradition but suggests a reading of contemporary marginality through the lens of Mills’s racial contract. Accordingly, instead of seeing Black marginality as a function of exclusion or being cast outside the contract, the article argues that such marginality is due not from exclusions per se but rather from inclusion albeit only as junior—and therefore inferior—partners in the racial contract.Mogobe Ramose’s article begins by endorsing Kwasi Wiredu’s view that there is nothing wrong with African philosophy being preoccupied with questions that are not exactly identical to those of non-African philosophies. Furthermore, his article traces, through D. M. Goldenberg, the roots of anti-Black racism from “colour symbolism” among the Arabs in the classical world, through the Rabbinic era, and later taking the form of race prejudice in Christianity. At the crux of his article is the argument that the prevailing practice of fragmenting the human race into multiple bits and pieces is against the pursuit of justice and peace in human relations.The article by Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse considers Anika Mann’s arguments on race and feminist standpoint as an existential standpoint and foundation. She takes up Mamphela Ramphele’s initial autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele: A Life, to critically reflect on what the actions of “non-subservient Blackwomen” reveal about the lived experience of being Black and a woman under Apartheid South Africa.The article by Siseko Kumalo infuses decolonial and literary criticism as projects that may allow for a recognition of the “ontological legitimacy” of amaqaba (those who rejected colonial influences and education). Through a close reading of S. E. K. Mqhayi’s Intshayelelo: Imbali, the article engages with the question How does a model of inclusive national identity in South Africa, once established, get us to the point of recognition for the Indigene? (shrink)

This book brings Søren Kierkegaard's nineteenth-century existentialist project into our contemporary age, applying his understanding of "freedom" and "despair" to science and science studies, queer, decolonial and critical race theory, and disability studies. The book draws out the materialist dimensions of belief, examining the existential dynamics of phenomena like placebos, epigenetics, pedagogy, and scientific inquiry itself. Each chapter dramatizes the ways in which abstractions like "race" or "genes" and even "belief" are sites of contested practices with pressing political (...) significance. Focusing on the existential dangers posed by neo-liberal and finance capitalist systems, the book brings to life the resources for resistance found within science studies and critical approaches to race, secularity, and disability. Throughout the book, Kierkegaard becomes an ally with ecological and developmental evolutionary theorists, as well as with science studies, critical race, and crip theorists who foreground the relational and impassioned nature of existence. (shrink)

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)