Decolonisation Of Knowledge Research Articles

Feyerabend and Decolonisation

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in literature on decolonisation of knowledge. The impression often given in recent literature is of wholesale neglect of the concerns of the decolonisation literature in what might be called ‘Western thought’ of preceding decades. This paper argues that Feyerabend was a notable figure within Western epistemic communities who expressed positions analogous to those of proponents of decolonisation. The first section presents the most striking contributions from Feyerabend’s work that, I suggest, bear on questions of decolonisation. Four specific issues are identified based on those: the curriculum and the role of universities; the inspirational role of student protests; the concept of ‘epistemicide’; and, indigenous knowledge systems. The second section suggests a range of limitations of, and weaknesses in, Feyerabend’s analysis: no substantive engagement with history or literature on decolonisation; implicitly accepting the Сclaimed inherent association of science, rationalism and various forms of modernity with Western countries and cultures; the (rhetorical) construction of an unnecessary binary choice between science and traditional knowledge systems; underplaying agency through a form of othering; creating an unnecessarily stark binary of Western science and non-Western indigenous knowledge; and, as a consequence of all these, providing no substantive analysis of how science might be integrated with other knowledge systems and cultures. The concluding section provides a brief summary and identifies areas for future work.

Ukuzwa ngenkaba: connecting with African ways of knowing through the umbilical cord

ABSTRACT The Nguni term inkaba refers both to the umbilical cord and the navel. In this paper, we use the idea of the umbilical cord to explain an enduring intellectual connection that many African scholars feel towards African epistemes. By drawing on the term inkaba, the paper explores the idea of “umbilical sense” as an intellectual instinct that one develops in relation to a range of knowledges that have been marginalised. This sense speaks to the intellectual orientation drawn from growing and developing as persons within indigenous communities. We argue that the desire and ability to respond to the conceptual shortcomings in Western academe stems from an umbilical sense, or a navel sense – ukuzwa ngenkaba in Nguni languages. Drawing on African writers such as Mazisi Kunene and Ifeanyi Menkiti, we propose that the acquisition of knowledge forms part of an African conception of personhood that links one to many corpuses of historical knowledges. Knowledge thus forms part of how we emerge as persons and, in turn, make other persons. We explore the implications of our concept for current debates on the decolonisation of knowledge and the meaning of post-human knowledge with the emergence of artificial intelligence.

African epistemologies and the decolonial curriculum

In this article we argue that a discussion on African epistemologies must precede the quest for both the decolonisation of knowledge and curriculum in Africa. Decolonial thought in Africa is significant because it focuses, among other things, on the decolonisation of Western epistemological supremacy within the space where knowledge is produced and transferred. We contend that knowledge acquired through the process of learning must resonate with people’s lived experiences and realities. To meaningfully pursue that involves placing in focus people’s modes of thought and epistemic ideas, in the interpretation of their experiences and the realities around them. This article argues that designing a decolonised curriculum that centres unique African intellectual ideas should be informed by the understanding of African epistemologies, whose principle of epistemic validation is grounded on the idea of interconnectedness in African thought. Considering a decolonial curriculum as an attempt in pursuing ‘centring’ is to align curricula with the modes of knowledge validation in African thought.

The SDG agenda and university transformation in Africa: The decolonial turn deferred?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in September 2015 set the scene for a renewed and ambitious development framework in a global context of widening inequalities within and between countries, global economic crises, conflict and climate change. Higher education is framed in several of the targets that make up SDG 4 and is also argued as central to achieving all 17 goals. However, the extent to which they engage with higher education in the context of calls for responsive, decolonised higher education remains underexplored. It is this gap that this paper addresses, arguing that while the SDGs take a broad approach to education the focus on specific targets and indicators limit states’ autonomy by de-territorialising local frameworks (Sayed & Moriarty, 2020). As a result, universities in Africa struggle to assert their agendas as power is overly located at the supra national level. We use the case of South African higher education to examine how and in what ways the national education agenda articulates with the SDG agenda. In particular, we focus on the lack of a clear equity and anti-racist focus in the SDG agenda which fails to engage with the disciplinary hold of racism over knowledge. We use Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ (2014) notion of difficult questions in higher education with weak answers to address what a decolonised and deracialised higher education system might look like. In particular, we articulate how Western domination has marginalised knowledge present in the global South. In so doing, we describe the influence of the SDGs in higher education noting the strides made but also their limited application in the global South and the decolonial turn. We argue that the decolonisation of knowledge in higher education is a collective process in which disruptive disciplinary practices contribute to cognitive global justice.

Academic freedom and the decolonisation of knowledge: curriculum transformation in South Africa from a UNESCO perspective

ABSTRACT Decolonisation aims at exposing the ills of colonialism in an attempt to undo their long-standing effects. Important criticism of curriculum decolonisation has focused on potential conflicts with academic freedom. However, this criticism has to some extent suffered from a perceived lack of agreement on the concept and status of academic freedom itself. The present study views decolonisation in South Africa from the perspective of the international standard afforded by the UNESCO recommendation concerning the status of higher-education teaching personnel (1997). It is argued that, whereas some conceptions of decolonisation are intrinsically in conflict with the recommendation, compliance depends in other cases on implementational details. Moreover, regarding several conceptions, furthering decolonisation and implementing the UNESCO recommendation go hand in hand. In a case study, the Nelson Mandela University Transformation Plan 2018–2020 is critically examined. Finally, it is suggested that there may be considerable benefits associated with using the UNESCO recommendation as a guide in and throughout curriculum transformation.

Critical Review of the Policy Framework for Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa

In 2019, the South African government approved the Department of Higher Education and Training's (DHET) Policy Framework for Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa. The framework provides policy guidelines universities will need to follow when developing institutional internationalisation policies. Using critical discourse analysis, this review posits that the DHET missed an opportunity to rethink internationalisation in line with critical debates and scholarship on transformation and decolonisation of knowledge. Instead of aligning internationalisation of higher education in South Africa with progressive visions of contextually relevant and decolonised education, the framework reflects dominant Eurocentric approaches, practices and definitions of internationalisation. As such, DHET’s framework fails to provide a much-needed guide for development of institutional policies that can contribute to higher education internationalisation in South Africa becoming more authentically international and embracing a more representative set of global knowledges and ways of knowing in a horizontal, pluralistic and non-hegemonic way.

Democratising Heritage Values: A Methodological Review

This paper explores the transformation of heritage values from a critical perspective. The de-authorising conceptual shift in cultural heritage has not always been accompanied by a revitalisation of the dynamics of valorisation. To achieve the integration of multivocal discourses in sustainable preservation strategies, experts and academics need to work with methods that enable this to happen. This article presents a methodological analysis articulated through three different case studies that bring new experiences regarding the decolonisation of knowledge in the field of heritage values, addressing different aspects of the social dimension of cultural heritage. The first deals with contestation processes associated with productive winemaking traditions in the Rias Baixas, Galicia, Spain. The second case addresses the rebellious Paris of the Commune and the narratives associated with the valorisation of the traces that it has left in the city’s landscape. Finally, the third case analyses the values that come into play when citizens’ participation governs the transformation of an archaeological site in Barcelona. To conclude, we reflect on the idea of sustainability as a way of listening to, sharing and co-creating knowledge connected to communities.

The stories African lawyers could tell when analysing legal issues: Lessons for social sciences teachers

Activists and academics have clamoured for the decolonisation of knowledge, including law. But, unfortunately hardly anyone has put forth strategies for how faculties should decolonise the law. A number of jurists have underscored the necessity to draw on customary laws and traditional values. Still, the #RhodesMustFall movement has, for the most part, been loud on the outcomes, but quiet on the methodologies. Joining the conversation on the decolonisation of epistemologies, this article contributes to the ongoing efforts to sanitise the law by proposing to revive African oral storytelling cultures as a way to analyse the questions of law facing society. To live up to this task, this article adopts decolonial theory and, through stylised examples, illustrates how lawyers and social scientists in Africa can utilise storytelling to contextualise, (de)construct, and comprehend those questions. This article assumes that lawyers can use African storytelling alongside the prevailing doctrinal method. That method, relaying the coloniality of law and captured by the acronym IRAC (issue(s), rules, application, and conclusion), trains students to approach conflict in society through a highly abstract and decontextualised problem-solving model. Lately, some (Western) social scientists have (re)discovered the practicality of storytelling in presenting analysis and research. However, in African oral traditions, stories worked differently from the manner in which those scientists employ them. African storytelling played a leading role, not only in conveying collective wisdom and social memory from one generation to the next, but also as a medium through which communities transmit the values that hold them together.Contribution: This article adds to the scholarship on storytelling and narratology by showing how educators can utilise stories to analyse legal questions. That rich scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences has so far not taken seriously the possibility of using stories to analyse research problems. Instead, scholars focus on storytelling mainly as a way of presenting science, not as an analytical tool. This article bridges that gap and demonstrates the analytical value of storytelling.

Dalit Conversion Memories in Colonial Kerala and Decolonisation of knowledge

This article seeks to decolonise knowledge of the conventional history of Dalits’ Christian conversion and its implications in colonial Kerala. As the missionary archive is the only source of Dalit Christian history writing in Kerala, in this historiography social historians have been unable to include the memories of Protestant missionary work at the local level by the local people themselves. Their experiences and rich accounts are marked by dramatic actions to gain socio-economic freedom and to establish a safe environment with the scope for future development. This article identifies how Dalit Christians themselves, in a specific locality, remember their conversion history, suggesting thereby the scope for a valuable addition to the archive.

Reflections on the conceptualisation and practices of community engagement as a core function of universities

The world saw the “human” side of universities during the Covid-19 pandemic as universities across the globe were at the forefront of efforts to control the spread of the Coronavirus, and to explore means of making the human population acquire immunity against the virulent disease. This article contends that, although this appeared as unusual, the universities were simply fulfilling their obligation to humanity because the raison d’être of universities includes being of service to society. Therefore, if they are unable to prevent crises from setting in, they should at least be at the forefront of efforts to combat the crises, and mitigate their effects on people. The article seeks to set the scene for the collection of articles that follow in this special issue of the South African Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) on the theme of community engagement as a core function for universities. It argues that universities have social responsibility, and they should therefore serve as anchors of towns and regions; as engines of development in their respective geographical areas; and as champions of social causes. It presents and discusses the concepts and practices of community engagement that are critical to understanding the arguments and counterarguments in the articles that follow. These include the relationship between community engagement, on the one hand, and transformation of higher education as well as decolonisation of knowledge and ways of knowing, on the other. The article also reflects on the state of community engagement in universities in South Africa, and explains that it is mostly regarded as a stepchild because it is not valued, funded or supported in the same way as the other two core functions of teaching and learning, and research and innovation. The article also cautions against the use of rhetoric to romanticise community engagement when the projects on the ground leave much to be desired, and with not potential to make a difference to society.

Owning the Body, Embodying the Owner: Complexity and Discourses of Rights, Citizenship and Heritage of Southern African Bushmen

ABSTRACT This article investigates the problematic position of Bushman heritage. Acknowledging the importance of this heritage in itself, but further as unmissable against the backdrop of calls for the decolonisation of knowledge in South Africa, a discourse of indigenous rights appears as the most just and suitable tool for analysis and critical reflection. Indigenous rights, however, proves to be quite problematic unto itself. This article offers a critique of the framework of indigenous rights, and offers an alternative theorisation through the lens of citizenship. Through critiquing the dominant discourses of rights and ownership which seem to underpin the majority of current debates. citizenship moves the paradigm from the centre of simplicity to the depths of complexity—emphasising the fallacy of ownership, the essentialism of rights and the importance of a shared knowledge and heritage. Citizenship, in contrast with rights and indigeneity, opens to a third space—a space of both conceptual and practical decolonisation.

Canadian and Australian First Nations: Decolonising knowledge

This article explores Indigenous standpoint theory in Australia in the context of postcolonialism and some of its aspects influencing Canadian First Nations scholarship. I look at how cultural metanarratives are ideologically informed and act to lock out of scholarship other ways of knowing, being and doing. I argue that they influence knowledge and education so as to ratify Eurowestern dominant knowledge constructs. I develop insights into redressing this imbalance through advocating two-way learning processes for border crossing between Indigenous axiologies, ontologies and epistemologies, and dominant Western ones. In doing so, I note that decolonisation of knowledge sits alongside decolonisation itself but has been a very slow process in the academy. I also note that this does not mean that decolonisation of knowledge is always necessarily an oppositional process in scholarship, proposing that practice-led research (PLR) provides one model for credentialling Indigenous practitioner-knowledge within scholarship. The article reiterates the position of alienation in their own lands that such colonisation implements again and in an influential and ongoing way. The article further proposes that a PhD by artefact and exegesis based on PLR is potentially an inclusive model for First Nations People to enter into non-traditional research within the academy.

Decolonising Universities in South Africa: Rigged Spaces?

This article provides a broad overview of the necessity for and challenges of decolonising universities in South Africa. It situates the student protests for the decolonisation of knowledge within the debates on the African Higher Education landscape, the ideology of Pan-Africanism, and calls for an African Renaissance. The article highlights the context in which the Fallist Movement emerged in South Africa and the demands it articulated. This article questions whether or not the decolonisation of knowledge, and the broader university system, can truly materialise, given the inherent nature and functioning of these institutions and the current practices of decolonising universities. The article argues that to date the decolonisation of universities has largely been ad-hoc, performative, and technical, rather than the sustainable and substantive transformative processes that should be at the heart of any decolonisation project. Furthermore, the article asserts that the universities that we are trying to decolonise are rigged spaces as they have been fashioned in the image of western universities and align with their norms, values, and epistemologies. To break this foundational epistemological and cultural bedrock requires a complete overhaul of the structure, ideology, and functioning of the universities. Without major shifts in the power relations, orientation and forms of knowledge production at these universities, there can be no decolonisation.

Radikale postkolonialisme en die Suid-Afrikaanse universiteitswese

In hierdie artikel word onlangse studenteprotes gekontekstualiseer teen die agtergrond van politieke tendense in die Suid-Afrikaanse staat en samelewing. Die verstryking van die postapartheidstydperk word oorweeg, tesame met die gelyktydige ontluiking van 'n radikale en postkoloniale sosiopolitiese tydsgees. Laasgenoemde word as vertrekpunt gebruik vir 'n evaluasie van studenteprotes en die eise wat aan hoër onderwys en universiteite in Suid-Afrika gestel word. Gevolglik word die universiteit se funksie en verhouding teenoor staat en samelewing oorweeg en word daar gedemonstreer hoe hierdie verhoudings moontlik sal verander in 'n postkoloniale milieu. Die plek en rol van Afrikaans by universiteite word ook spesifiek bespreek.

The question of recentring Africa: Thoughts and issues from the global South

In this essay, which reflects on the ‘unfinished historical and humanistic project’ of decolonisation, my focus is on the question of recentring Africa. I argue that while the issues and problems in postcolonial Africa are multifarious, the need to solve them is driven by an otherwise universally shared telos—the preservation and sustenance of human well-being. I examine the question of recentring Africa, and situate it within the broader framework of the argument on epistemologies from the global South. I appropriate the dictum of the Enlightenment to highlight the centrality of agency in the quest for epistemic justice. To situate the debate within the contemporary struggle in Africa, reference is made to the recent call for the decolonisation of knowledge and the academy in South Africa. My argument in this essay is informed by the position that decolonisation is a process, and recentring Africa as its corollary involves the search for a liberating perspective within which to understand ourselves as a people in relationship with the rest of the world.

African studies and the bias of Eurocentricism

Animating Africa within the field of African studies is presently deeply problematic. This is mainly because the power undergirding the construction of Africa within the field is wielded within the epistemic modes of Western intellectual thought. Consequently, unless Africanism is decolonised from that epistemological mode, African studies not only remains a colonised field of enquiry, but also continues to legitimise and validate the theses on Afro-pessimism. Its utilitarian value for the continent also remains ineffectual. Actualising the decolonisation of knowledge in this regard is no doubt an epistemological project. It is also a matter of intellectual and political struggles. This is mainly because the actual histories of the various disciplinary practices around which knowledge production takes place – on Africa – have a profoundly colonial genealogy. The task of working Africa’s destiny out of that heritage is therefore a compelling task for postcolonial studies. How did Africa become the object of historical and scientific enquiries? Through what historical conditions did the African subject become the object of a possible knowledge system? How can African historical knowledge further African development? And how might African studies serve as an instrument of liberation and progress rather than domination? These questions are central to my attention in this article. Drawing on differend as an illustration of the opposing claims and premises around which knowledge production on Africa takes place, it underlines the Africa-driven interventions in this field and discusses some of the foremost attempts at combating the subjugation of endogenous knowledges on the continent.