Curriculum contestation in a post-colonial context: a view from the South

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper was motivated by student protests at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where the Rhodes Must Fall collective called for the ‘decolonisation’ of the university’s curriculum. I deliberately adopt a ‘decolonial gaze’ to re-describe the structural and cultural conditioning of the post-colonial university and the contradictions it sets up for black students. Using Archer’s morphogenetic cycle and Bernsteins’s pedagogic device I tease out what contestation for control of the curriculum entails, with a particular focus on the Humanities and Social Sciences. I identify three groups of students for whom the situational logic of the post-colonial university offers very different opportunities for agential development and therefore academic success. At the level of pedagogy, I suggest there may be a ‘collective hermeneutic gap’ between some academics and their students. Finally the paper makes some suggestions for what curriculum reform in a post-colonial Humanities and Social Sciences might involve.