Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper looks into specific cases related to the authors’ personal reflections and experiences with internationalization. They are analyzed from a decolonial perspective, taking into account the specificities of Brazilian public education. The thematic categories of analysis were: (1) the social aim/function of higher education, (2) the impact of internationalization processes on higher education, and (3) the myth of a universal language/planetary unity. It is paramount, especially in times of emergency like ours, that we reflect on the formative, social and political role of universities to respond to ontoepistemological crises such as the one we are immersed in at the moment.
Highlights
The drive to internationalization is one of the marks of contemporary neoliberal practices in education
We believe one can never overemphasize that such ideology attempts at eliminating from the subject their subject condition and to erase the right to existence of everything which is considered different, inferior, primitive, dumb
It underlines the desire for stability, homogeneity, previsibility, linearity, order
Summary
The drive to internationalization is one of the marks of contemporary neoliberal practices in education. Even though perhaps imbued with such benefactor spirit, colonization and neoliberalism walk hand-in-hand to construct lifeless identities on the colonized, projecting themselves as superior and magnanimous over the primitive peoples they purportedly are trying to help In such view, there is no need to discuss the social role of education in society, for it is a given: education, schools and universities exist in order to promote, for the colonized, the best access possible to the knowledges of the colonizers. We believe one can never overemphasize that such ideology (of colonization, modernity, neoliberal globalization and many times of internationalization) attempts at eliminating from the subject their subject condition and to erase the right to existence of everything which is considered different, inferior, primitive, dumb By doing so, it underlines the desire for stability (difference can only make life unpredictable), homogeneity (if we are all the same and speak the same language there will be peace and mutual understanding), previsibility, linearity, order. This contradiction will be the starting point of the section, where we explore possibilities about how deep crises, such as the one we are facing with the COVID-19 pandemic as we write this article, can teach us lessons we may not want to learn
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