What does decoloniality mean for Honnours-level learning and teaching at UJ?
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Presentation on the third panel on 'Decolonising the curriculum, teaching and learning at UJ', on 7 April 2016 at Soweto campus of UJ
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What does decoloniality mean for Honnours-level learning and teaching at UJ?
- 1. What does decoloniality mean for Honours-level learning and teaching at UJ? Presentation by Carina van Rooyen on 7 April 2016 at SWC UJ Part of third panel in series on Decolonising the curriculum,teaching and learning at UJ
- 4. - Nelson Maldonado-Torres “By decoloniality it is meant .. the dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that foment the reproduction of racial, gender, and geo-political hierarchies that came into being or found new and more powerful forms of expression in the modern/colonial world.” Source: http://www.unisa.ac.za/chs/news/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/DSCN22201.jpg
- 5. Source:http://percaritatem.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/Frantz_Fanon_The_Wretched_of_the_Earth.jpg “Decolonisation, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder.” (Fanon 1963:36)
- 6. Source: http://i.imgur.com/lqEwm0B.jpg?1 “It has two sides. The first is a critique of the dominant Eurocentric academic model – the fight against what Latin Americans in particular call “epistemic coloniality,” that is, the endless production of theories that are based on European traditions; are produced nearly always by Europeans or Euro-American men who are the only ones accepted as capable of reaching universality …The second is an attempt at imagining what the alternative to this model could look like.” (Mbembe 2015)
- 8. What does this mean for teaching? 1. What we teach? 2. How we teach?
- 9. 1. WHAT is to be taught “A Eurocentric canon is a canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production. It is a canon that disregards other epistemic traditions. …Furthermore, Western epistemic traditions are traditions that claim detachment of the known from the knower. They rest on a division between mind and world, or between reason and nature, as an ontological a priori. They are traditions in which the knowing subject is enclosed in itself and peeks out at a world of objects and produces supposedly objective knowledge of those objects. The knowing subject is thus able, we are told, to know the world without being part of that world and he or she is by all accounts able to produce knowledge that is supposed to be universal and independent of context.” (Mbembe 2015)
- 10. Does decoloniality mean Africanisation? “What then are the materials they should be exposed to, and in what order and perspective? Who should be interpreting that material to them, an African or non-African? If African, what kind of African? One who has internalised the colonial world outlook or one attempting to break free from the inherited slave consciousness?” (Ngugi quoted in Mbembe 2015)
- 11. 2. HOW we teach “A humanising education is the path through which men and women can become conscious about their presence in the world. The way they act and think when they develop all of their capacities, taking into consideration their needs, but also the aspirations and needs of others.” ~ Paulo Freire and Frei Betto (1985)
- 12. “In an age that more than ever valorises different forms of intelligence, the student-teacher relationship has to change. In order to set our institutions firmly on the path of future knowledges, we need to reinvent a classroom without walls in which we are all co-learners; a university that is capable of convening various publics in new forms of assemblies that become points of convergence of and platforms for the redistribution of different kinds of knowledges.” (Mbembe 2015)
- 13. Student participation Gardner’s taxonomy of student engagement Seehttp://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=2511
- 14. Attempts in our Honours programme
- 16. Teaching research Acknowledge co-production of knowledges, a pluriversity Different methodologies, e.g., transdisciplinarities Teach underlying assumptions of various research paradigms, and interrelated principles of epistemology (nature of knowledge), ontology (nature of being) and axiology (ethics)
- 17. -Ewe-Mina (peoples from Benin, Ghana and Togo) proverb “Until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
- 18. Interdisciplinary Co-teaching Science-society course with Philosophy “a transcendence of our disciplinary divisions” (Mbembe 2015) Different education levels in one course
- 20. Next attempts?
- 21. Students taking lead in designing course Use of African languages in courses
- 22. My role as white female lecturer? Source: http://36.media.tumblr.com/d62c67254f06e94fd00827d ba9187b48/tumblr_nesbhhxomD1rwazoko1_1280.jpg Source: http://mrphamodi.co.za/wp- content/uploads/2013/01Whiteness- 300x300.jpg
- 23. I am part of a lost generation and I refuse to believe that I can change the world I realise this may be a shock but “Happiness comes from within.” is a lie, and “Money will make me happy.” So in 30 years I will tell my children they are not the most important thing in my life My employer will know that I have my priorities straight because work is more important than family I tell you this Once upon a time Families stayed together but this will not be true in my era This is a quick fix society Source: http://genius.com/Jonathan-reed-the-lost-generation-annotated
- 24. Experts tell me 30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce I do not concede that I will live in a country of my own making In the future Environmental destruction will be the norm No longer can it be said that My peers and I care about this earth It will be evident that My generation is apathetic and lethargic It is foolish to presume that There is hope. And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it. [NOW READ THE POEM FROM BACK TO FRONT] Source: http://genius.com/Jonathan-reed-the-lost-generation-annotated
- 25. List of references Agier M 2016 Epistemological decentring: At the root of a contemporary and situational anthropology. Anthropological Theory 16(1): 22-47 Allen SJ & Jobson RC 2016 The decolonizing generation: (Race and) theory in Anthropology since the eighties. Current Anthropology 57(2) Bali M 2016a Love and anger in postcolonial being. Blog posting on Reflecting allowed on 19 March. http://blog.mahabali.me/blog/pedagogy/love-and-anger-in-postcolonial- being/ Bali M 2016b Love First, Design Later; Love as Praxis. Blog posting on Reflecting allowed on 14 February. http://blog.mahabali.me/blog/pedagogy/love-first-design-later-love-as- praxis/ Bassier I 2016 On a UCT economics undergrad. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1teBYI6FfkPGZCGcE4pp8DTq0db 137293c-OjK8YymFE/mobilebasic?pli=1
- 26. Burke BJ & Heynen N 2014 Transforming participatory science into socioecological praxis:Valuing marginalised environmental knowledges in the face of the neoliberalisation of nature and science. Environment and Society: Advances in Research 5(1): 7-27 de Oliveira Andreotti V, Stein S, Ahenakew C & Hunt D 2015 Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 4(1): 21-40 Ellsworth E 1989 Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 59(3): 297-324 Fenwick T 2006 The audacity of hope: Towards poorer pedagogies. Studies In The Education Of Adults 38(1): 9-24 Gardner E 2015 Maldonado-Torres N 2006 Césaire’s gift and the decolonial turn. Radical Philosophy Review 9(2): 111-138 Maton K 2016 Bringing it all back home: The art of building knowledge from diverse sources. Paper to be presented at the Wallenberg Centre (STIAS) in Stellenbosch on 13 April
- 27. Maudlin JG 2014 The abandonment of hope: Curriculum theory and White moral responsibility. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 11:136- 153 Mbembe A 2015 Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. https://africaisacountry.atavist.com/decolonizing-knowledge- and-the-question-of-the-archive Miller J 2016 Teachers as allies: A #digped discussion. Blog posting on Digital Pedagogy Lab on 9 March. http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/teachers-as-allies-a-digped- discussion/ Mitra W The diary and the field: Methodological reflections on transformative praxis, or, the lesson from anthropology. https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1450344/Methodolo gical-reflections-on-transformative-praxis-Wrick-Mitra.pdf Moreira S 2015 Steps Towards decolonial higher education in Southern Africa? Epistemic disobedience in the Humanities. Journal of Asian and African Studies DOI: 10.1177/0021909615577499
- 28. Morris SM 2016 On love, critical pedagogy, and the work we must do. Blog posting on Sean Michael Morris Blog on 23 March. http://www.seanmichaelmorris.com/blog//on-love-critical-pedagogy-and-the-work- we-must-do Noonan J 2016 Ten theses in support of teaching and against learning outcomes. Blog posting on Jeff Noonan: Interventions and invocations on 6 March. http://www.jeffnoonan.org/?p=2793 Rose DB 2004 Reports from a wild country: Ethics for decolonisation. Sydney: UNSW Press Shabangu M 2016 Precarious silence: Decentering the power of Whiteness in South Africa. The Johannesburg Salon 10. http://jwtc.org.za/volume_10/mohammad_shabangu.htm Tuck E & Gaztambide-Fernández RA 2013 Curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. Journal of Curriculum Theorising Tuck E & Yang KW 2012 Decolonisation is not a metaphor. Decolonisation: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1): 1-40 wa Thiong’o N 1981 Decolonizing the mind.
Editor's Notes
- I agree with Achille Mbembe (2015) that this time requires “modes of address” that speaks both to reason and to affect. When Prof Brenda asked me to be on this panel, I hesitated. So far in these discussions within UJ and wider, there has not been many white speakers, In fact, after the first panel someone commented in encouragement that white academics should also speak up. Maybe like me, other white academics, felt uncertain: “What do I as a White scholar to have to offer?” “Should I apologise? Must I acknowledge my guilt?” “What I am supposed to do, and how/where do I fit into decoloniality discussion?” (similar to questions asked by Maudlin (2014:137) and Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013:85)). Shabangu (2016) in a recent response article argued that the two responses of ‘silence’ and ‘humility’ simply serve to reinforce the invisibility upon which white privilege is founded. “the way to confront whiteness is not to adopt a strategy of silence, but to engage …while being mindful of not presenting whiteness as a normative standard to which [others] should aspire.”
- I am aware and acknowledge my White privilege, as well as my class privilege. I am implicated in the structures I am trying to change. I try to be sensitive, to be an advocate, to be an ally. I am on a process of unlearning, where I make mistakes, but hope to keep learning from such mistakes.
- I am lecturing in Anthropology and Development Studies. Being trained in DEV Studies, I was awakened to post-development as a critique of the idea of development. Authors such as Arturo Escobar, Walter Mignolo, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ivan Illich had me excited and despondent as a Honours student. Anthropology has been criticised for the part it played in colonial ideologies and practices regarding race, “tribes”, and “the other”; called by some “the handmaiden of colonialism” (Garuba 2012; Zeleza 2003). For some Anthropology is a “science of difference” / otherness and a science of similarities. “the tension within anthropology between the universal and the particular, between objectivity and subjectivity, between emic and etic, between theory and practice, and between science and advocacy” (Forte 2009) is well-debated within the discipline, through the writing culture debates (or crisis of representivity) in the1980s (Clifford 1988; Clifford & Marcus 1986). Cultural relativism (being against an ethnocentric lens) is a key idea within Social Anthropology.
- “The de-colonial turn involves interventions at the level of power, knowledge, and being through varied actions of decolonisation …” (Maldonado-Torres 2007:262). “decolonisation as an ethical, political, and epistemic project” (Maldonado-Torres 2006:114). As epistemic project it is about confronting ‘epistemic violence’ of a “Modern/Colonial Capitalist/Patriarchal Western-centric/Christian-centric World-System”, as Grosfoguel (2012:82) phrased it. Include cys-het. Francis Nyamnjoh (2012a:131) shows that “in the social sciences, colonial epistemology has privileged an ahistorical mode of thinking…which ‘sacrifices pluriversity for university and imposes a one best way of attaining a singular and universal truth’”. Prominence of particular type of knowledge in HE, namely the Eurocentric epistemic canon.
- “The call for decolonisation effectively declared a state of emergency in a system that promotes the hegemony of oppressive narratives and tolerates the negation of particularly black [female, homosexual, etc.] lives.” (Bassier 2016). For Fanon “Decolonisation is not about design, tinkering with the margins. It is about reshaping, turning human beings once again into craftsmen and craftswomen who, in reshaping matters and forms, need not to look at the pre-existing models and need not use them as paradigms.” (Mbembe 2015). “Decolonial thinking aims to engage in ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo 2011: 9)”. It is about subverting. Transformation and decoloniality different: reformist nature vs radical nature.
- New edited book out this month (April 2016) by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Siphamandla Zondi, called Decolonising the University, Knowledge Systems and Disciplines in Africa, I think is attempt at both these.
- The concept of (cultural) decentring is for Agier (2016:23) a core principle of social anthropology. It is consciously acknowledging and acting aware of power dynamics. For Ngugi wa Thiong’o decolonisation is a project of “re-centering” - it is not about replacing, rejecting or closing out, but about “defining clearly what the centre is.” (Mbembe 2015). We are rather asking: What are the relevance of knowledges to our situation and understanding ourselves? “I think that it is deeply immoral to teach uncontextualised models” (Bassier 2016). We require a situational approach. Decoloniality then is about “developing a perspective which can allow us to see ourselves clearly, but always in relationship to ourselves and to other selves in the universe, non-humans included” (Mbebe 2015 rephrasing argument of Ngugi). And such decolonising is not an event, but an ongoing process of “seeing ourselves clearly” (Mbembe 2015).
- I want to focus on two aspects, namely WHAT we teach, and HOW we teach. And I want to make an argument that if we focus only on what we teach (i.e., content-driven transformation), we will not achieve the decoloniality agenda regarding challenging epistemic violence.
- This is focused on content - what is popularly practiced as curriculum reform. You have to agree with Mbembe (2015) that “There is something profoundly wrong when…syllabi designed to meet the needs of colonialism and Apartheid continue well into the post-Apartheid era.” In curriculum reform we have to challenge Eurocentric canon. I quoted Mbembe (2015) - on slide
- Franz Fanon critiques the idea of “decolonisation-as-Africanisation” was entirely political (in Chapter 3 of Wretched of the earth). In 1960s and 1970s ‘to decolonise’ was part of a nation-building project; it was about Africanising. But for Fanon ‘nation-building’ could not be achieved by “the national middle class” or the “national bourgeoisie”. They were lazy, unscrupulous, parasitic and above all lacking spiritual depth precisely because the postcolonial middle class had “totally assimilated colonialist thought in its most corrupt form”. It was merely to “keep in the running and be part of the racket.”” (Mbembe 2015 rephrasing Fanon). Not to be interpreted for our students, but by our students.
- This is about pedagogy. Paternalistic nature of ‘traditional’ education. It is about getting our students to “think critically about epistemology, where the knowledges come from, what the implications of these epistemologies are, and to think through the relationship of knowledge and power” (Desire Lewis rephrased by Leibowitz 2016). It acknowledges students as epistemological agents of change (Leibowitz 2016) - we thus have to acknowledge the paternalistic nature of ‘traditional’ education with its expert transferring knowledge to passive receivers. Read quote on slide.
- Read quote on slide. Pedagogies of presence (Mbembe 2015). Voice of students become key - ‘voice’ as used by feminists as self-definition, not as defined by others (Ellsworth 1989:309). Rather than teach, accompany your students on paths of learning. Pool partial, socially constructed knowledges (Ellsworth 1989:310). “True teaching is thus a practice, a performance of cognitive freedom which awakens in students a sense of their own cognitive freedom” (Noonan 2016)
- And it is much more than inclusion and diversity. Affective turn in education. Slide: “Love in pedagogical work is an orientation. It’s a commitment to the personhood of learners, to their intersectionality, to their deep emotional backgrounds, to the authenticity of their lives. It is a decision to commit first to the community of learners, and second, to the material we’ve come to teach.” (Morris 2016). “Césaire’s Discourse of colonialism itself is a manual to teach us the right kind of skepticism whose negative function (doubt) is grounded on the ethical mode of reception of otherness, and whose positive goal is none other than love, understood as a force of social activism and a social formation premised on the primacy of ethical human contact.” (Maldonado-Torres 2006:131). Relationships between and among lecturers and students then become key; these relationships acknowledge intersectionality / articulation of multiple identities. “responsive attentiveness” (Deborah Bird Rose 2004:5) - an obligation to relationships among people and between people, other species and place. “social justice is not about fairness and treating everyone the same but about love and treating each person differently because each is a unique individual” (Bali 2016b).
- Getting to know one another; encourage social interactions outside of classroom (Ellsworth 1989:316). Acknowledge own privileges & others oppressions. Focus on attitudes - reflection, cultural relativism, asking questions. Confusion & difficulty in speaking due to multiple & contradictory social positioning (Ellsworth 1989:312). Resentment amongst whites students for feeling that they have to prove they are not the enemy; back students feeling resentment that again have to teach White about consequences of white privilege (Ellworth 1989:316). Not about democratic dialogue between free & equal individuals, but building coalitions between multiple, shifting & contradictory affinity groups - friendships develop (Ellsworth 1989:317). Have discussions in groups (as members of social groups), with others listening Personal commitment printed, signed and hung in hallway of department In DEV Studies do service learning, with reflection.
- The Chuthulucene requires sym-poiesis (making-with), rather than auto-poiesis (self-making) (Donna Haraway).
- Curriculum is fundamentally a colonising enterprise (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández 2013). Accept agency rather than expertise as the core idea of learning - not leaving behind expertise, just not leading with it (Morris 2016). Community as curriculum - Dave Cormier; Accept collegiality as pedagogy (Morris 2016). How to do this? Give part of course design to students: lecturer developed syllabus for 1st half of course & halfway turn over to students to design rest of course. E.g., each student design own syllabus, share & then comment on one another’s. Current project on ‘Writing for development, developing writing’ in which have postgrads help with material to be used in first year tutorials.
- Have “an attitude of mindful engagement” (Fenwick 2006). “allyship is an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalised group of people” (Anti-Oppression Network in Vancouver, BC). Be an ally who foster relationships, dialogue and belonging by - actively acknowledging my privileges and openly discussing them - listening more and speaking less - doing my work with integrity and direct communication - not expecting to be educated by others about their oppressions - building my capacity to receive criticism, to be honest and accountable for my mistakes - embracing the emotions that come with a process of allyship, understanding that I might feel uncomfortable, challenged and hurt - not expecting gratitude, awards, or special recognition. (adapted from Miller 2016)