Abstract
This article discusses a “pragmatic toolkit” for decolonizing a course by intersectionality combining key notions in literature in decolonial education with four components extracted from the works of Orlando Fals-Borda and Paulo Freire by Joao Mota Neto (2018). As a kind of toolkit for decolonial change, the article first combines the role of being a subversive scholar to address “injuries of coloniality” that places the discipline as part of a landscape of power in the context of a gender studies BA-course. Repairing these injuries of coloniality demanded curriculum changes, to restore the disobedient epistemology inherent in the concept of intersectionality. Second, in so doing, the pragmatic toolkit provided a participatory frame for exchanges of knowledge in a classroom composed of multiple identities, which then aimed to promote diversity and difference. Third, this orientation made a frame suitable for searching for other epistemic coordinates, exploring for example politics of emotion to erase barriers toward potential others, and including literature on coalitional politics. And fourth, revisiting the “telluric origins” of feminist research helped the students reinvent power through writing critical reflections that awaked their “interest in social action” to contest racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, transphobia, and speciesism.
Highlights
There is a concern, at least in Sweden, that university classrooms poorly represent the diversity of social groups existing in society
Wealthier groups are overrepresented in higher education, while discriminated groups continue to be underrepresented (Berggren, 2007), among teaching faculty (Hübinette & Mählck, 2015)
In the Freirean pedagogical tradition, the distribution of power in the educational institution is seen as an enactment for the power relation in society at large (Freire, 1973)
Summary
There is a concern, at least in Sweden, that university classrooms poorly represent the diversity of social groups existing in society. In the case at issue in this article, this relation means to conceive the classroom as the border landscape that facilitates collective work to enable change together in between faculty members and students Both Lugones’ understanding of the term “border landscape” coined by Anzaldúa, and the “contact zone” (Gill & White, 2013) explored by Silva and her students conceive the classroom as a border landscape within which to perform a decolonial education. The second component of a decolonial agenda is to advance teaching and research based on contextualization grounded in a critical reading of the world to awaken consciousness in the oppressed groups, overcoming the dichotomy between subject and objects of study, and a participatory character, to enable a permanent dialogue of knowledges In developing my pedagogic philosophy, I have been studying the writing evolution of the students through my own insights from reading their texts, and from observing how the students’ participation evolved in class situations
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