Tag: epistemic justice

LATIN AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION SERIES: Part I – Body (vs.mind)

by Macarena Montero Lobos

This is PART I of the “Exploring Latin American contributions to education” series. All parts consist of a blog conversation and a video intervention. This part starts off with a conversation between Macarena and Aisling Walsh. 

Aisling was awarded a PhD in Sociology from the University of Galway in 2023 and holds an LLM in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from the Irish Centre for Human Rights and a BA in Sociology, Politics and Spanish in the same university. Her PhD focused on feminist practices of healing justice in Guatemala and was supported by the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship for Post-Conflict Resolution from the Irish Research Council. She has over 7 years of experience working in communications, advocacy and activism with international development organisations including the UN and INGOs in Ireland, Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia and Timor Leste. Currently, Aisling is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick on a project exploring alternative pedagogies in Palestine. See her work in: https://aislingwrites.net/

Originating from Ireland, Aisling has lived in Latin America for over 14 years, including Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, and especially Guatemala, where she has been for the past 10 years. It has been interesting to share with her and learn from the perspective of someone who has voluntarily delved into the depths of Abya Yala[1].

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NEW SERIES: Exploring Latin American contributions to education

Mainstream education, rooted in Eurocentric values, frequently neglects the diversity of worldviews and models of well-being, resulting in the homogenisation of populations under the sway of dominant cultures (Samaniego et al., 2004). This series, created by Macarena Montero Lobos, seeks to promote the recognition of Latin American perspectives and their contributions to the field of education through a decolonial approach, thereby fostering an inclusive and endogenous education that is free from discrimination and closely aligned with the genuine needs of the territory. By offering new insights, the series aims to envision alternative forms of development that prioritise quality of life, agency, and cultural identity.

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POLYLOGUES AT THE INTERSECTION(S) SERIES: Can An African Black Body Think?

by Mwaona Nyirongo

Western Science and Black Bodies

The economics of Black bodies has remained one of the saddest stories of humanity. Throughout space and time, Black bodies have been questioned if they are human enough and capable of thinking. These racist engagements have been practiced and preserved even in spaces that claim to embody high human values such as the church and scientific communities. Western science continues to enslave Black minds to propagate the dismemberment of the Black people (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018).  Black bodies continue to be weighed in the economics of bodies and they rank at the bottom of human hierarchy (Nyamnjoh, 2012). No matter how well educated an African Black person is, even if they were schooled at ‘white’ universities and taught by white teachers, they are simply not human enough to harbor scientific thoughts. This paper explains how Western science preserves and practices racism as far as knowledge creation is concerned.

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The Anthropocene with its problems and solutions

by Adriana Cancar

Recently I read about the “Anthropocene”, which describes a new stage in human history where the driving force for environmental changes is understood to be human activity. Climate change is explained in human and social interference with nature – more specifically in the human and social appropriation of, and intervention in, nature and natural reproduction cycles.

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The Lamps in our House: Reflections on Postcolonial Pedagogy

by Arudra Burra

I

I teach philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. My teaching reflects my training, which is in the Western philosophical tradition: I teach PhD seminars on Plato and Rawls, while Bentham and Mill often figure in my undergraduate courses.

What does it mean to teach these canonical figures of the Western philosophical tradition to students in India? I have often asked myself this question. Similar questions are now being asked by philosophers situated in the West: Anglophone philosophy, at least in the analytic tradition, seems to have arrived at a late moment of post-colonial reckoning.

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The Case for Inter-Philosophical Dialogue: An African Philosophical Perspective

by Ompha Tshikhudo Malima

The History of Philosophy: An Injustice to Africa  

The practice of philosophy cannot be done with innocence and ignorance while true history and reality shows that “the blurred and dotted picture of the history of Western philosophy is a deformation of the African identity.” This was done through denying humanity and thus philosophy to the African. The use of the Cartesian maxim cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) resonates with what Mogobe Ramose problematized as the abuse of the Aristotelian maxim “man is a rational animal.” The false logic then goes, because the African cannot think, s/he is thus not human. Subairi Nasseem argues that the link between epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ontology (the study of the nature of being) leads to the same thing, and this is why I use the Cartesian and Aristotelian maxims. Emevwo Biakolo categorized these colonial attitudes and plots into “cross-cultural cognition of the African condition” and concluded that they serve no purpose in understanding African philosophy and their purpose is only to derail the discipline. Western philosophy created an imaginary centre which marginalizes other philosophical traditions such as Asian, African and Eastern philosophies. It was founded on “scientific and spiritual racism” which was perpetuated by famous thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel. This historical injustice to (African) philosophy lacks valid reasoning and should not have a place in Africa. According to Dennis Masaka, the problem of philosophical racism is attributed to, and located “within the context of Western cultural imperialism, which has historically tended to take its own testimony as having transcultural relevance and application”  while falsifying the idea of an epistemic centre. A historical injustice was committed by the failure of philosophy in not  “understanding different realities differently.”

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Decolonial Praxis, Education and COVID-19: Perspectives from India

An Interview with Sayan Dey

by Hadje Cresencio Sadje

Background: Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 on December 2019, there have been 271.963.258 confirmed cases, including 5.331.019 deaths, reported to World Health Organisation (WHO, 2021). To address the ongoing challenges of the global pandemic, various governments and non-governmental organisations agreed to continue and strengthen cooperation to address the devastating ripple effects of the COVID-19 (Amaya, 2021). Despite these efforts, the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic have posed unprecedented challenges, especially to the poorest, most vulnerable, and marginalized groups. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected racial, ethnic minority, and marginalized groups (Tai et. Al, 2020). According to recent studies, the poorest, most vulnerable, and marginalized groups are left far behind (IFRC, 2021; Economic Policy Institute, 2020).

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From Decolonising the Self to Coming to Voice

by Zuleika Bibi Sheik

Of the myriad calls for decolonising—the university, the museum, the curriculum, the mind, and so on—few have given attention to decolonising the self[1]. In my/our process of decolonising the self, poetry[2] has been pivotal in giving name to the nameless, which is dreamed but not yet realised (Lorde 2007, 73). As a black woman/woman of colour, following the pen strokes of Audre Lorde (2007) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), who put flesh back into words, poetry is a necessity in decolonising and reconstituting the self. In what follows, I hope to walk with the reader on this path of realising my colonised self, decolonising it through the emergence of the plural self, and the eventual reconstituting of self as a coming to voice (Lorde 2007, 79–86).

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Feminist Letters Crossing Borders – Cartas feministas atravessando fronteiras

by Gabriela Monteiro and Ruth Steuerwald

Brasília, February 9th, 2020

Hi, my dearest German girl!

How I miss you. Here in Brazil, carnival is approaching and people are getting more agitated every day. Last week, I was in Salvador and the Blackest city outside Africa is still pulsating. The Iemanjá celebration[1] was happening on 02/02, a celebration that always touches me a lot. It’s also a festival which is full of problems and contradictions, with the presence of white tourists and photographers consuming what is sacred for Black people. Everything is very difficult, but as capoeira teaches us, we need to gingar[2] – and we can’t forget who is the real owner of the party. Never forget who we are.

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News from the Convivial Thinking Writing Collective: Engagements with the (de)coloniality of development research and teaching

The latest issue of Acta Academica contains the Special Focus: How do we know the world? Collective engagements with the (de)coloniality of development research and teaching.

The Special Focus was guest edited by the Convivial Thinking Writing Collective. Our collaborative engagements with the topic have evolved from a workshop in early 2019 and a consecutive blog series. Convivial Thinking is a collective platform seeking to surpass boundaries of origin, ethnicity, professional affiliation and academic disciplines in order to give space to inclusive, interdisciplinary and alternative approaches to mainstream methods of knowledge production, especially in the context of “development”. The articles in the Special Focus reflect these concerns.

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