Decolonial Thinking Research Articles

The Canary Islands, an Imperial Frontier: Decolonial Thought in South-South Relations in Northwest Africa

ABSTRACT The Canary Islands have been denied their Africanness throughout history. This has served to legitimise the problematic role of the archipelago as West’s imperial frontier in Northwest Africa. Through agenealogy of the available literature on relations between the African continent and the Islands, the effects of this position are critically evaluated. To this purpose, this article presents a sociological analysis of the dialectic of North-South domination and its effects on the ambivalent representations that insist on the archipelago being referred to, in some cases, as the South of the North, and, in others, as the North of the South. From the point of view of decolonial thought, it is affirmed that the Canary Islands, despite its links with the Kingdom of Spain and European Union, can also recognise itself in the African political, cultural, and epistemic plurality and interact with it in the framework of South-South relations.

Decolonizar o pensamento decolonial

In the last decade, decolonial thinking has been gaining momentum in the field of human sciences in Brazil, above all through the introduction of theories produced by the Modernity/Coloniality Group and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. These authors have taken centre stage in the theoretical references of academic productions with this approach, producing a sense of hegemony over an epistemology that proposes to be counter-hegemonic. The aim of this theoretical-conceptual study is to highlight the most relevant criticisms of the hegemony and centrality acquired by the Group and Boaventura de Sousa Santos: the prominence of white men, the absence of Brazilian male and female authors among its exponents, the sidelining of gender and race issues, the predilection for epistemological studies and its excessive academicist tendency. Some contributions from other decolonial voices, positioned further south in the Global South, such as Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Ailton Krenak, are also analysed. It concludes that the existence of a hegemony in the decolonial field is an indication of the need to decolonise it, above all by seeking to listen to voices from further south in the Global South. It points to the need to bring different decolonial perspectives into radical dialogue, without fearing tensions or shying away from inflections.

Emancipation and liberation as normative horizons in critical theory

Although they are often used as synonyms, emancipation and liberation constitute two distinct normative horizons in critical theory of society. In this article, I offer an analysis of these two concepts, including their historical and epistemological characteristics, pointing out similarities, differences and the possibilities for their combined use as basis of models of normative social criticism. I argue that the critical horizon of human emancipation emerges in post-Kantian European thought, while the horizon of liberation was developed in Latin American decolonial thinking in the second half of the 20th century. The horizon of emancipation arises with the critique of the primacy of systemic domination, while liberation emerges in the resistance to the primacy of the experience of oppression. The analytical distinction between these two normative horizons can be helpful to better understand both the foundations of epistemic decolonization and the potential for dialogue between the critical perspectives of center and periphery.

Dinosaurs and Exile: Reflections on Colonial Logics and Liberation Theologies

This article explores the potential danger of reproducing colonial logics in recent liberation theological articulations. I have divided the article into three parts to examine the works of two theologians. In the first part, I analyze the concept of the “organization of the absurd” developed by Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves, who argued that contemporary society is organized around symbiotic power relations that aim to solve all human problems through increased power and force. He compares modern society to dinosaurs to highlight the fundamental issues in social organization and suggests that theological reflection needs to delink from this governing logic. For this, Alves suggests using imagination, dreams, magic, and creativity to rethink contemporary theological articulations. In the second part, I delve into the critical analysis of Puerto Rican theologian Luis Rivera Pagán, who critiques the almost exclusive use of the Exodus experience for liberation, arguing that it leads to replicating colonial mechanisms of oppression and conquest. From his Puerto Rican colonized context, he suggests that the painful experience of exile is a theological key for rethinking justice and liberation. In the third part, I propose that Alves and Rivera Pagán's theological reflections mirror decolonial insights long before contemporary decolonial discuourses. I contend that while both authors distance themselves from normative knowledge patterns to rethink theological thought from an alternative framework, echoing, in a way, decolonial thinking, their contributions—and those of many Latin American liberation theologians—are continuously overlooked and unacknowledged in many decolonial analyses. My goal with this article is to provide a profound exploration of Alves and Rivera Pagán's theological methods to avoid the trap of repackaging colonial mechanisms under the guise of liberation theological reflections.

A localised perspective in educational policy studies: understanding actor interaction in a Hong Kong school through mohap

ABSTRACT Asia as Method, in decolonial thinking, endorses the value of local knowledge while concurrently recognizing colonial and global knowledges’ ongoing influence and potential value in knowledge production. The author takes such a decolonial approach to examine how actors interact in translating the Fine-tuning Medium of Instruction Policy in a Hong Kong school. To grasp the nuances of actor interaction, the Cantonese term mohap (wearing in) is employed. Three concepts from distinct traditions are used to explain mohap: meritocracy, harmony and agency. This study examines actors’ mohap process through three stages: How actors perceive the government guidelines, form the school-based policy, and develop the school-based policy. The findings show that actors’ mohap in the local context entails the meritocracy ideology, sought-after harmony, and actor agency. It reveals the need and the potential of localised approaches to educational policy studies in the Global South.

The Cannibal’s Antidote for Resentment: Diffracting Ressentiment through Decolonial Thought

Abstract This essay is split into two thought experiments. The first will be to diffract ressentiment through the works of Gloria Anzaldúa and Édouard Glissant. I will create a bridge with decolonial thought by interpreting Anzaldúa’s concept of the nopal de castilla and mestiza consciousness through the interpretive lens of ressentiment to show the affinity that exists between the work of Anzaldúa and Nietzsche. I then look at ressentiment through some of the concepts Glissant offers in the Poetics of Relation. I argue that ressentiment resists the creolization of identity and culture, and that Glissant’s demand for the right to opacity for all signals the overcoming of ressentiment. The second experiment diffracts ressentiment through Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, beginning with an analysis of the most relevant points of that text for our discussion, then putting our diffracted ressentiment in conversation with the Brazilian anthropologist’s post-structural interpretation of Amerindian perspectivism.

Advancing Sociology in Portuguese-Speaking African Countries (PALOPs): Perspectives and Challenges

This paper highlights some of the challenges faced by the Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOPs) to consolidate Sociology as a relevant area of knowledge, both at university and school level. For this purpose, we will rely on part of the scarce existing bibliography on the subject, as well as on interviews with African teachers and students. Decolonial thinking inspires the elaboration of this article, as it criticizes the perspective of the modernity of knowledge solely linked to Eurocentric or American thinking. In these young countries, the university and this field of knowledge are new and lack institutionalization. The lack of investment by the State, the precarious structure, the difficulty of academic cooperation, the persistence of a strong coloniality in the production of knowledge and linguistic obstacles further complicate the process. It is important to seek synergy between countries, with exchanges of experiences and international cooperation - including Brazil - and also between professors and students in the struggle for the consolidation of the discipline.

Extension research in the promotion of mental health: a balancing act for navigating literary craftsmanship

The aim of this study is to present a way of constructing knowledge through the weaving of literary craftsmanship as a possibility of decolonizing the Eurocentric logic of the academic universe. To this end, a critical literature review was carried out, taking decolonial thinking as its epistemological direction, thus interweaving a dialogue between publications from academically recognized digital platforms, with other knowledge that is recorded in narratives present in marginal memories. It emerged from an extension research project built on the interface between the transVERgente Extension Program and the Postgraduate Program in Psychology, Practices and Innovation in Mental Health (PRISMAL/UPE). Literary craftsmanship has been countering the coloniality of knowledge, proposing a way of spinning the pluriversity of experiences, dialogues and the sharing of knowledge. It has also shown itself to be a possible way to decolonize academic research writing, listening to the voices of marginal memories in conversation with voices already legitimized in the scientific universe.

Indigenous education and (re)existence through self-writing - for a pedagogy of sensibilities: dialogue between Paulo Freire and Maria Amélia Pinho Pereira

Based on decolonial thinking that originated in the late 20th century, we will discuss the importance of indigenous resistance practices promoted through “ taking the floor ,” a term coined by philosopher Michel de Certeau and appropriated in this research to refer to the development of research and literary productions carried out by indigenous researchers and writers in order to confront and resignify colonizing narratives about these peoples, indicating how these productions contribute to thinking about decolonial education, such as the school model proposed by pedagogue Maria AP Pereira and her Education of Sensitivity. Based on Catherine Walsh, Paulo Freire, Márcia Kambeba, Daniel Munduruku, and Albert Memmi, we understand that the colonizer finds in scientific-intellectual knowledge devices of knowledge-power that underpin oppressive Eurocentric structures to justify exploitation, violence, inequality, inferiority, and discrimination, bases that still exert a strong influence on the various sectors of contemporary society. It is identified in the contributions of the aforementioned researchers that an educational model critical of scientism and the hierarchy of knowledge is possible based on an educational praxis and that dialogues with the diversity of knowledge and cultures, where education is liberating, promoting the overcoming of the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy as proposed by Freire, and is applied in the Education of Sensitivity promoted by the pedagogue Maria AP Pereira.

Decolonizing Travel(ing Theory): Vernacular Travels in (Post)Colonial India

Abstract: Postcolonial scholars, in general, institute a clear distinction between the "pre-modern-religious" and the "modern-secular" practices of travel. The problem is not so much with using this framework as with the pervasive tendency to unreflectively project it onto certain alternative travel performances that do not fit into the taxonomy. In this essay, I argue that this framework is inadequate in making sense of the alternative imaginaries and conditions that rendered possible the emergence of a new decolonial episteme of traveling in the Indian context that occasioned the articulation of vernacular modernity. Here, I insist that, within the remit of postcolonial scholarship, vernacular travel cults, when approached from a longue durée perspective, become subservient to the telos of postcoloniality. Conversely, I situate the decolonial travel(er)s beyond the prevailing postcolonialist regime. I also furnish a preliminary but provocative framework for decolonial thinking as a gesture toward alternative imageries of vernacular travel.

Critical Theory and the Global Civic Imagination: Ethics and the Reconstitution of Citizenship in Decolonial Thought

Abstract: In this essay, I show how critical projects of decoloniality might help build a new humanity. I focus on the intellectual output of Chielozona Eze, arguing that, as public-service scholarship, it bears witness to the shifts occurring in contemporary decolonial thought and thus exemplifies the role the humanities can play to midwife an inclusive and empathetic global democratic culture so central to decolonial studies. My analysis aims to demonstrate how the humanities can be a tool in meeting civic needs and interests and thereby help rehabilitate modern society.

Decolonial thinking and Europe: Decolonisation between particularity and universalism

Colonisation continues to have a tremendous impact on large parts of the globe and not only on previously colonised countries. Many of the current geopolitical, economic and environmental challenges that the globe faces cannot be thought of without taking decolonial thinking into consideration. In his Preface to Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre argues that this book is not written for Europeans, yet he challenges Europeans to read it. It is between such particularism and universalism that this article will engage with decolonial thinking in the context of the globe’s various geopolitical, environmental and political challenges. Europe’s colonial claim to universalism cannot be separated from Christendom. In this article, this Christian colonial universalism will be brought into conversation with an attempt at a decolonial theology.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article is an interdisciplinary conversation between philosophy and theology.

In Defense of a Peripheral Epistemology: Exploring “Decolonial Cognitive Triggers” for Epistemic Disobedience in Urban Peripheries

This paper presents an approach to decolonial thinking and epistemological disobedience through what we call “decolonial cognitive triggers”. It is based on the struggles of urban peripheral communities in Brazil and explores eight triggers in the making of a Peripheral Epistemology. The unique points of our reflection are the sociocultural practices emerging from urban peripheral communities in Brazil and their responses to structural racism. As a part of this, we will explore the concepts of potência and convivência as core components of the decolonial debate, as well as their role in enabling epistemic disobedience in urban peripheries. We conclude by suggesting shifts in policy-making directed towards urban peripheries through the recognition and incorporation of such concepts and triggers.

Abstract Spaces for Intervention in Libya and Nigeria

Abstract How is the space for contemporary interventions constructed? This article deepens our understanding of counterterrorism as a dialectical form of intervention by highlighting the importance of unifying rationalities in the creation of “ungoverned spaces” as abstract spaces for intervention purposes. We combine dialectical and decolonial thinking to track how unifying rationalities in Nigeria and Libya are deployed across cognitive, normative, and operational constructs. The article examines how interventions are cognitively tied to coloniality of knowing, being, and power, which exploit identity, religion, or societal divisions to justify ungovernance and normalize state and foreign violence. The simultaneous and reciprocal globalization of local security concerns and localization of global security predicaments facilitates the formation of abstract spaces for counterterrorism purposes. Empirically, our analysis shows how portraying Libya and Nigeria as ungoverned creates a void of meaning, putting external actors in charge of restoring governance and protecting human security, modernity, and civility. Interveners in Libya contributed to normalizing a broader spectrum of violence, frequently internalized by competing actors through their normative tropes. In Nigeria, state and foreign interventionism and counterinsurgency have been responsible for the widespread use of violence against entire communities.

Forcing a square into a circle: why South Africa's draft revised material transfer agreement is not fit for purpose.

The South African National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC) recently released a final draft revision of the standard material transfer agreement (MTA) that was promulgated into law in 2018. This new draft MTA raises pertinent questions about the NHREC's mandate, the way in which the draft MTA deals with data and with human biological material, and its avoidance of the concept of ownership. After South Africa's data protection legislation, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), became operational in mid 2021, the legal landscape changed and it is doubtful that the NHREC has a residual mandate to govern personal information in health research. Furthermore, data is dealt with in a superficial, throw-away fashion in the draft MTA. The position with human biological material is not substantially better, as the draft MTA fails to recognise that human biological material can contain pathogens, which has important legal and ethical ramifications that are not sufficiently addressed. A central problem with the draft MTA is its use of the term 'steward', and avoidance of the legal concept of 'ownership'. This is not only misaligned with the South African legal framework, but also fails to consider the ethical case for recognising ownership. Finally, a call to embrace decolonial thinking in health research underscores the importance of recognising ownership in order to foster the growth of the local bio-economy. Key recommendations to reshape the draft MTA include: Making use of the eventual revised MTA optional, and allowing it to evolve with input from scientific and legal communities; regulating the transfer of associated data in a separate data transfer agreement that can be incorporated by reference in the MTA; enhancing guidance on liability and risk management in respect of human biological material that contains pathogens; and, finally, adopting a decolonial approach in health research governance, which requires recognising the ownership rights of South African research institutions.

Physics Education from a decolonial perspective: a case study with Brazilian curriculum

The educational process is characterized as a set of pedagogical actions developed for a particular social group and provided with intentionality. In this sense, every pedagogical action involves an intention, which transfers and reproduces cultural patterns that materialize in social values and traditions. In this context, the postmodern decolonial thinking discussed by Quijano (2019), Mignolo and Walsh (2018), and Abdi (2011) are inserted, as well as the epistemological aspects given by Santos (2020). Thus, with this paper, we seek to present a case study developed in Brazil about the colonial influences that manifest themselves in the science curriculum of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, taking Physics Education as the context for analysis. For that, we used as a method of analysis the Discourse Analysis given by the France perspective about the ideological construction of the discourse. As preliminary results, we identified that the absence of an original Brazilian structure for the construction of the analyzed curriculum corroborates the perspectives of a form of colonization characterized by us as at the primary level, that is, epistemic. With the investigation, we hope to contribute to understanding which the cultural lens that act as a colonizing operator on the set of scientific standards and Brazilian scientific representativeness.

Neither Portugal nor Brazil: An Investigation of the Decolonial Efforts in Instructional Materials Adopted in Early Portuguese Courses at US Universities

Abstract: This study investigates the efforts towards promoting the decolonial teaching of Portuguese as a foreign language in instructional materials adopted in early Portuguese courses at higher education institutions in the United States. A framework for qualitative analysis of course materials, textbooks, and syllabi was designed based on Zavala's (2016) model for decolonial education and Rodríguez's (2015) studies on deep and surface culture. Eleven Portuguese undergraduate language programs in the United States submitted materials for consideration. Seven of these programs use the same textbook, which splits its linguistic and cultural instruction between Brazil and Portugal, and often presents limited views of other Portuguese-speaking countries. Two programs replace Portugal for Brazil as the core linguistic and cultural content of their course, which may suggest a shift away from colonialism, but towards economic power. The remaining materials adopted by two programs, however, promote the pluricentricity of Portuguese and delve into issues beyond surface-level celebrations of culture or the dissemination of factual information about minority Portuguesespeaking countries. Their materials expose the power imbalances between all Portuguese-speaking countries and give learners the opportunity to hear from the subalterns. Findings show a shortage of Portuguese-oriented materials as well as resources for decolonial language teaching. To help address this shortage, intervention ideas for educators planning to promote decolonial thinking in the Portuguese classroom are proposed.

Epistemic territories of kawsak sacha (living forest): cosmopolitics and cosmoeducation

ABSTRACT This article aims to present the experience of Kichwa Indigenous peoples of Pastaza in Ecuador, and their agency in enforcing their rights to their ancestral cultures and lands. In their political action, they express the revitalization of their ecological and cultural knowledge as conditional to the protection of their territorial integrity. Including ancestral and land-based knowledge in education supports politics of inclusion, ontological recognition, and revitalization of ecological and cultural knowledge of Indigenous people. It also enforces their political legitimacy and sovereignty over their lands and conservation practices. The theme of education and power in Ecuador has been addressed within the decolonial thinking of modernity/coloniality, placing knowledge and pedagogical designs at the core of political debates between indigenous organizations and the central state. We will discuss Kichwa’s cosmology of Kawsak Sacha (living forest) and the way it inspires both territorial governance and educational practices.

Dance teaching in HE: further thoughts on the possibilities of artistic citizenship for decolonial practice

ABSTRACT Building on my argument in a recently published book chapter, ‘Toward Decoloniality and Artistic Citizenship’ (2023), this article discusses how the concept of artistic citizenship could create a conceptual space for decolonial thinking for dance teaching within the Higher Education (HE) curriculum. This interrogation is informed by my role as a lecturer who teaches dance practice based on African dance styles and principles in UK HE. I argue that making artistic citizenship an explicit part of the critical framework for dance pedagogy creates a common vantage point for students of all cultural backgrounds and better conditions for their development as culturally literate artists who will work in globalised contexts. The concept of citizenship in relation to artistic practice can be used to generate a theoretical context for existing hybrid dance training in HE, which in Britain has evolved to reflect the multicultural nature of society. This theoretical context will support the research and practice of Black students and those of global majority heritage who require conceptual maps delineating how dance practices that draw on their cultural heritage have existed as part of professional practices, as well as enhancing the cultural literacy and political awareness of the whole student body.

O PENSAMENTO DECOLONIAL NOS ESTUDOS DA INFÂNCIA: EPISTEMOLOGIAS CRÍTICAS E PÓS-CRÍTICAS

ABSTRACT: The paper discusses how decolonial thinking appears in the database of childhood studies composed of dissertations, theses, and complete works of the Working Groups (GTs) presented at ANPEd National Meetings and scientific papers in Qualis A1 journals. This study is characterized as meta-research, that is, research on research in a field and/or area of study, and aims to indicate approaches, focuses, perspectives, and analytical models. The debate on the decolonization of research is followed by the presentation of 11 authors (0.48% of the production) who deal with decolonial thinking in a total of 2,246 cataloged works. As a result, the low presence of decolonial thinking in childhood studies is indicated and three thematic fields emerge for further research at the interface with critical and post-critical epistemologies: 1) critical decolonial thinking, childhoods and inequalities; 2) decolonial thinking, multiculturalism, childhoods and diversities; and 3) postcolonial thinking, post-critical paradigms and contemporary childhoods.