Decolonial Perspective Research Articles

Dismantling the Master’s House

While critical scholars have attempted to decenter internationalization, limited research has aimed to understand internationalization efforts in the context of the socio-historical particularities of the postcolonial condition. This paper takes a decolonial perspective in the study of internationalization, in light of the Eurocentric tendencies of modernity, whose major manifestation in higher education is neoliberal globalization. We unpack internationalization in the U.S. and examine how it is embedded in and reproduces neoliberalism, racism, and colonialism. Since decolonization is not merely deconstructive but also regenerative, we reconceive what it means to be international and recommend how internationalization can be deployed as a tool of decolonization, considering various possibilities for hopeful and ethical praxis. We identify promising practices to spark ongoing reflection and action about ways to contest coloniality/modernity and rethink mobility. This paper can benefit educators seeking to reclaim internationalization and [re]align it with an ethos of mutuality and practices geared at strengthening cooperation, rather than competition.

The New Age and the awakening of a decolonial consciousness from Mexico

This article underlines another aspect of New Age spirituality developed in Mexico: although emerging from the Global North, it is also a matrix that gives value to those elements excluded by modernity and produces decolonial critiques and deconstructions from the Global South. The authors analyse four strands of neo-Mexican spirituality in which the decolonial perspective is corroborated: (1) the rise of post-national ethnic nations; (2) the criticism of patriarchy and the emergence of ecofeminist spiritualities; (3) the critique of capitalism and the alternatives of sustainable economy; and (4) the consumption of sacred plants and medicines as a spot where the struggle of indigenous ontologies and modern epistemologies takes place.

Um pouco mais de calma

In this article, we analyze contradictions, complexities, limits, and potentialities of internationalization of higher education (IHE) from Latin American decolonial perspectives. We argue that even when scholars may be holding decolonial critiques and aspirations towards IHE, the structures of universities are heavily influenced by colonial legacies, undermining the potentialities of decolonization. We pay special attention to those initiatives that apparently promise a decolonial exit, because they may be acting as traps, or what we called trampas (in Spanish). In this article, we particularly analyze the initiatives that are frequently seen as projects that deviated from the hegemonic discourses of internationalization: i) South-South international higher education cooperation projects, ii) policies and projects that seek to address colonial legacies, and iii) teaching and researching committed with decolonial intentions. In the end, we invite readers, practitioners and scholars alike, to welcome the contradictions we face in such work and not to lose sight of the ongoing, relational, and hyperreflective character of any project that aims to be an alternative to coloniality.

Transformative Practices From the Pluriverse

This Discussant Commentary seeks to delve into the fundamental principles underlying the study conducted by Miraval & Quintana (2023). Their article explores the concept of adaptive humanism as a means to transition from limiting to quantum narratives, recognizing the profound impact of these concepts on our perception of reality. As Latinos, we highly value research that empowers diverse voices, acknowledging the significance of individuals and groups embracing and expressing their unique narratives. This emphasis on understanding one's "modes of being in the world" deviates from the idea of a singular universal worldview, a perspective that Miraval & Quintana (2023) aptly characterized as endorsing "one-size-fits-all" approaches. It is crucial to underscore the necessity of comprehending the intricacies of the modern paradigm, challenging conventional notions of centrality to transcend singular perspectives that perpetuate the prevalence of limiting narratives. Furthermore, this paper places additional emphasis on the pivotal role of methodological approaches in empowering individuals to grasp the intricate processes of transformation within their spaces from a decolonial perspective. This involves fostering dynamics of co-creation and proactive participation within communities to create mechanisms for understanding alternative ways of being and relating to the world. Such an approach requires a direct understanding of narratives from their sources, facilitating the construction of individual, distinctive paths.

Of Boiled Eggs and Rocket Science: Textual Experiments in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin

Abstract Told from the perspective of a soft-boiled egg, Sharon Dodua Otoo’s German-language story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin serves up a portrait of a retired Nazi rocket scientist at his breakfast table. The text came to public attention in 2016 when Otoo was awarded the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for the story’s experimental pastiche of German culture. This article draws on a posthuman framework to consider the story’s central challenge to a society in which whiteness is presented as the norm. By exploring the story's anthropomorphizing play with narrative perspective, I demonstrate how Otoo moves beyond bourgeois satire to unmask racist categories which ensure that privilege goes unnoticed. Decolonial perspectives, as well as concepts from the materialist thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, will be employed to illuminate the materialist politics of Otoo’s decentring of the white masculine subject, revealing how instead the text foregrounds material forces that act on bodies, both human and nonhuman.

Reconstruction of archive buildings: the case of Brazil

Discussing the decolonial perspective as an element for the reconstruction of Brazilian public archive buildings is the objective of this article. The guide comes from the assumption of a parameter: architectural constructions of power, encompassed by European colonialism and eclecticism, which influenced perception and building in society, impact the formation of archival science and the construction of archive buildings, especially in the logic that privileges the preservation of State collections and the silence of voices in community archives. The characteristics of basic, bibliographical, and documentary research were studied through an exploratory approach. In doing searches in the Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts databases (LISTA and Scopus of Elsevier), a total of 123 retrieved publications were observed and analyzed by titles, abstracts, and keywords. After applying exclusion criteria, it was possible to select four relevant works for this research. The results identified a local culture as a built environment of representation. In conclusion, decoloniality is a promising starting point for rethinking ways of designing from the connection with local roots.

Who Is an Artist? Identity, Individualism, and the Neoliberalism of the Art Complex

The fantasized artist-as-origin began as the quintessential figure manifesting Enlightenment European concepts of individual autonomy and sovereign subjectivity—and thus of identity and meaning as these come to define and situate human expression as well as securing educated, middle-class, European white male hegemony in the Euro-American context. While we think of this conventional figure of the straight white male artist as old-fashioned, as having been relentlessly critiqued since the mid-twentieth century by artists, often from a feminist, queer, anti-racist, or decolonial perspective, this article asserts that the artistic author still drives much of the discourse as well as underlying the money and status attached to visual art today. Citing key works by a range of contemporary artists who have challenged these value systems—Cassils, rafa esparza, James Luna, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Susan Silton—this article foregrounds the critique of whiteness and masculinity and the interrogation of capitalism and neoliberalism necessary to interrogating these structures of value attached to artistic authorship.

Questioning and Listening: An Attempt to Investigate Voinha’s Migration Journey

In this essay I analyze how the artifacts of questioning and listening became resourceful in the procedure of excavating the personal and political reasons behind the migration journey my maternal grandmother Voinha (who turned 100 years old on April 08th 2021 and passed away on March 06th 2022) embarked on in 1945 from Ananindeua and Belém (Amazon rainforest region) to Rio de Janeiro (BR); and further, my own immigration journey from Latin America to the Middle East and on to northern Europe, fifteen years ago. How coupling questioning with listening allowed an oppressed woman to speak for herself, fostering in this way dramaturgies that brought awareness to feminist empowerment as a means to tackle the colonial and patriarchal ways in which the Brazilian national identity, among many others, is constructed. The writing style is mainly anecdotal and based on conversations I had with Voinha on different occasions. The recordings of our last in-person encounter on September 15th 2018 became the foundation for the performance Feliz Aniversário, created primarily as a way of giving Voinha agency in telling her own migration journey. Excerpts of this audio and video footage will be further analyzed alongside this essay. The methodology adopted is autoethnography with the intention to offer nuanced, complex, and specific knowledge about particular lives, experiences and relationships (Adams, Jones, Ellis 2014). Within autoethnographical methodological tools, I delve on reflexivity with the aim of troubling the relationship between researchers ‘selves’ and ‘others’ and offering a re-examination of the paradigm modernity/coloniality as simultaneously shaped through specific articulations of race, gender and sexuality (Lugones 2007). The final intention is to analyze how turning back to my ancestors’ and my own experiences, identities, and their socio-political implications; how analyzing them according to gender and queer theories and from a decolonial perspective, could potentialize my current practice focused on autobiographical performance. One last important point to be acknowledged is my role as an artist-researcher examining the complex ethical and creative processes of working with intimate family memories, observing the growing necessity of developing dramaturgies of care and resistance (Malzacher 2008).

Book Review: Illicit financial flows from South Africa: Decolonial perspectives on political economy and corruption

Book Review: Illicit financial flows from South Africa: Decolonial perspectives on political economy and corruption

A decolonial look at the past, present and future based on the rescue of memories of visitors to the National History Museum (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

History museums can foster discussions about historical contexts and encourage critical reflections on power relations and values that permeate society, helping to overcome historically constructed prejudices. Knowing the audiences, their perceptions, readings and interpretations, allows the adoption of more efficient communication actions between museums and visitors. Thus, in this qualitative research, we aimed to investigate the memories of the experience of five adult visitors at the National Historical Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, eight months after the visit with their families. The methodology involved the use of a semi-structured interview, with the adoption of the stimulated memory method. The results showed that the exhibition was able to promote long-term impacts, enabling the formation of memorable experiences that favored critical reflections on the part of visitors, mainly on the enslavement of black African populations, slave trade and themes related to the period of the Empire, which still reflect its problems today. It is important for museums to approach historical processes, carrying out adequate contextualization, from a decolonial perspective, which serve to raise awareness, educate and promote a movement to repair and correct the hegemonic narratives perpetuated in society.

African-Centered Psychological Perspective on Happiness

Happiness scholarship has gained prominence in a number of disciplines over the last few decades, including economics and psychology. In South Africa, we have observed an uptick in happiness studies, but also that these studies are mostly using quantitative methodologies. What is missing in nearly all these studies are conceptualizations of happiness from African-centered decolonial psychological perspectives. The main objective in this article is to approach happiness from an African-centered decolonial psychological perspective. The article draws on data from a qualitative study which investigated happiness and gender equality amongst South African women. Convenience sampling was employed to recruit participants. Eleven qualitative individual interviews were conducted with key informants and three focus groups with women who shared their everyday lived experiences of happiness. We draw only from the individual interviews. The interviews were subjected to an adapted, theoretically driven thematic analysis informed by African-centered decolonial psychological interpretations. Whilst we identified four key themes, we report and discuss only two of these, namely: happiness as inter-connectedness and happiness as maintaining a balanced life. The perspective we adopt in this article offers an opportunity to unpack how happiness is inter-connectedness and how happiness is a balanced life. In enmeshing decolonial African-centered perspectives and African feminist psychology, it was possible to not only produce a more situated analysis of women’s happiness but also to center issues of gender and gender inequality within African-centered psychological thought. Potential directions for further contextual and transnational qualitative studies on happiness that incorporate African-centered decolonial perspectives are offered.

The political economy of the climate crisis in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT This article maps out the dynamics of the climate crisis that is unfolding globally, but whose consequences have a disproportionate impact on countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the wider global South. Although these countries have contributed insignificant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions (compared to their industrialised counterparts), their populations are the major victims of climate change, whose disastrous impacts were recently witnessed in Zimbabwe during Cyclone Idai and in South Africa during the Durban floods. In addition, Southern Africa is experiencing climate change-induced droughts, depleting water in major dams and undermining hydroelectric power generation, especially in Zambia and Zimbabwe. As a result, the region is experiencing dangerous power outages affecting agriculture and other key industries. This article adopts a novel decolonial perspective to make sense of these extreme weather events, arguing that the climate crisis is already affecting the livelihoods of many people in Southern Africa and that it is often the poor and vulnerable who suffer most from the impacts of climate change. There is thus a need for industrialised countries to contribute towards the costs of climate change mitigation since they are historically responsible for most of the carbon emissions.

Raza, nación, olvidos y falacias históricas: análisis de libros de texto de español en Estados Unidos

Abstract: A decolonial analysis of teaching materials provides insight into the ways in which Spanish culture, history, and society are conveyed in the language curriculum in the United States. Focusing on textbooks adopted for the course "Culture and Civilization", this article evaluates the identities which are privileged in the discourse, and the ones that are discriminated. Non-white ethnic or racial groups are subcategorized through negative stereotypes. This marginalization –– or even exclusion–– invites us to consider the degree of racism distilled in such manuals. First, after reviewing decolonial perspectives in education, this article assesses the degrading bias applied to the Roma community. Second, it analyzes two historical lacunae: the planned genocide against them and the presence of enslaved Black people. These absences privilege a cultural identity narrative focused on white men since the so-called Reconquista . Third, this article reviews an uncritically reiterated historical fallacy: the loss of the Spanish colonies in 1898. In this sense, the article summons the incidence of Spanish colonialism in Africa to be included in textbooks. Finally, it evaluates approaches to promote an active decolonization, without resorting to diversity as a mere agglutinating ornament.

Decolonizing Language Resources in The Human-Machine Era

This essay engages with the issue of future developing language technologies. In recent policy publications that attempt to predict and document an increasingly technologized linguistic future, we see a set of assumptions and presuppositions at work that we approach from a decolonial perspective. We use a sociolinguistically inspired lens of critical engagement with colonialist premises underlying these ideologies and beliefs in universal technological progress in the arena of language and communication. Based on decolonial insights, we make a critical reading of, and an allegorical comparison to, these premises, and ask whether a pluralistic, decolonial view of the role of language/language resources in society could aid in counteracting potential automatic reproductions of existing macro- and micro-sociolinguistic inequalities embodied in future language devices as described and forecast in the LITHME (Languages in the Human-Machine Era) report, Microsoft Corporation’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Principles and the Digital Language Vitality Scale, three examples of recent publications on this topic. We frame critical rejoinders, from the theoretical perspectives of linguistic imperialism, the sociolinguistics of globalization, and languaging theory, with the aim to address future linguistic and sociolinguistic outcomes in the human-machine era in a decoloniality-inspired manner. We conclude that persistent beliefs in the inevitability of technological progress will continue to underpin and drive dominant Western interests in a digital future, and, unless radical reappraisal and reprioritization take place, these will continue to systematically disadvantage speakers in many locales across the globe. We end by encouraging continued critical linguistic reflection in this area in the future.

The politics of decolonising the curriculum through adopting mother tongue instruction in a South African historically disadvantaged university setting

This paper focuses on the dynamics of decolonising the curriculum by adopting mother tongue language as a medium for instruction in South African universities. There has been growing criticism on the slow pace of decoloniality within university spaces amid mounting challenges of lack of development in society. The paper speaks to the experiences of historically disadvantaged universities regarding adopting mother tongue instruction, especially considering the complexities and contradictions posed by institutional culture and epistemological traditions. The paper presents insights into how a decolonial perspective can assist in ridding African universities of epistemological and pedagogical practices that hinder decolonial efforts and broader societal development. The paper focuses on the synergies between mother tongue instruction and curriculum transformation in light of the contradictions associated with the use of the mother tongue that could enhance students’ epistemic access and success. It thus presents opportunities and controversies surrounding the introduction of the language policy, especially among historically disadvantaged universities. A Kaupapa Māori approach philosophical lens of reimagination evoked during the 1980s revolution becomes a central theoretical framework. It helps understand how indigenous philosophies can be essential in decolonising African knowledge and epistemological traditions. In this regard, the paper concludes that applying the Kaupapa Māori approach—and in particular, the principle of reimagination on the curriculum transformation in African universities (especially the formerly disadvantaged ones)—can propel a decolonial drive. The paper resulted from experiential knowledge and observations, informal interviews targeting students and scholars and empirical evidence from previous studies.

Toward a Decolonial Cybersecurity: Interrogating the Racial-Epistemic Hierarchies That Constitute Cybersecurity Expertise

Beginning with a startling pattern of racialized practices in cybersecurity expert communities in the Gulf States, and drawing on the decolonial insights of the modernity/coloniality school, this article argues that race operates as a marker of who is a legitimate knower of dominant Euro-American knowledges of cybersecurity and who is not, and therefore whose understandings, experiences, and practices of cybersecurity are privileged. In demonstrating that decolonial thought can be fruitfully applied to questions of cybersecurity, this article makes three contributions to security studies. The first is empirical, drawing on original interview data to identify racial hierarchies of rationality and authority in cybersecurity expert communities. The second contribution is theoretical, demonstrating how a decolonial perspective is especially well equipped to understand racialized practices in cybersecurity knowledge production. The third contribution is programmatic, outlining a decolonial research agenda for cybersecurity—or, as we put it in the title, a path toward a decolonial cybersecurity.

Answerability in computer-assisted language learning: a critical examination of social justice research from a decolonial perspective

Abstract In this conceptual article, the author introduces decolonization as an alternative to social justice frameworks. As stakeholders in second language (L2) teaching, the author stresses decolonization as a means for L2 researchers to work against colonial practices in educational research, which negatively impact historically disenfranchised communities. Specifically, Patel’s (Patel, Leigh. 2016. Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. New York: Routledge) answerability framework is introduced as a practical method to support decolonization in L2 research. The article is made up of four main sections. The first section explains the concept of settler colonialism and highlights how it is ingrained in educational research. In the second section, the author defines decolonization and distinguishes it from the more popular social justice movement. In the third section, the author summarizes four computer-assisted language learning (CALL) papers which were featured in a recent special issue on the topic of social justice. The author then provides a critical analysis of the reviewed studies from a decolonial perspective in the fourth and final section, while also suggesting ways in which researchers and educators can re-orient their work towards decolonization.

Towards a Conceptualisation of Relational Humanitarianism

In this article we suggest that the call for widening participation as part of the quest for a more localised humanitarianism has overlooked the clash of ethical registers that this would entail. We show that the formal script of the professionalised humanitarian system operates with an individualised ethics, while multiple other actors that exist alongside the humanitarian system operate with a relational ethical register. Based on a literature review on civic humanitarianism and humanitarianism embedded in social practice, we explore dimensions of the web of social interaction within which humanitarian practices often take place. We ask how to conceptualise these humanitarian relationships when relationships in themselves are understood as compromising humanitarian principles. Inspired by decolonial perspectives and relational ontologies and ethics, we then identify key dimensions of a relational humanitarianism: solidarity, responsibility and justice; identity and belonging; social distance and proximity; and temporality. In conclusion we suggest that for calls for localisation to succeed in genuinely changing power relations and practices, better understanding and recognition of relational ethical registers that operate alongside the formal script of the professionalised humanitarian system is required.

Interview with Nicholas Mirzoeff

The text addresses the conversation held with the Visual Culture theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff. Although the author is a central reference in the field of Visual Studies –with wide reception in the Ibero-American academy thanks to the publication of books in Spanish such as An Introduction to Visual Culture or How to See the World. A New Introduction to Visual Culture– a fundamental part of his most recent contributions, which present an eloquent colonial critique, has been scarcely reviewed in our region, including conceptual approaches around "visuality complexes", "countervisuality" and "the right to look”. This interview recovers these notions with the aim of putting them into dialogue with the decolonial perspectives and the symbolic and material struggles of the Global South.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Adopting a Decolonial Stance in Teaching Clinical Social Work Students to Intervene on Anti-Black Racism

ABSTRACTAs the social work landscape rapidly changes to more directly address the effects of racism, colonialism and all areas of oppression on individuals, communities and systems, the delivery of responsive clinical social work services is being called to radically transform. This transformation starts with social work education, both in curriculum and in pedagogy, and must include an emphasis on anti-Blackness, starting with raising consciousness and increasing awareness of its prevalence and then deciding how to move beyond awareness. Although clinical social work educators are charged with the task of training emerging social workers to effectively translate theory into practice, missing is guidance on how to do so with an anti-Black, decolonial sensitivity. In 2022, the authors introduced a model – the Trajectory of Awareness (ToA) – to address an aspect of anti-Black racism and in this paper, we return to the ToA model, incorporating decolonial principles. Decoloniality is very much aligned with teaching about anti-Black racism and developing a skill set in teaching about anti-Black racism from a decolonial perspective is essential.