critical | decolonial | collaborative
by Bruni Sonne
(This post is also available to read in German and French)
I am white[1], German, female and by and large quite privileged[2], in Germany – and even more so globally. I wore dreadlocks for six years, and very often clothes made from African fabrics. Now you can basically stop reading and immediately label me racist. My sin: Cultural Appropriation[3].
Or you can read on and get to know me as a person first.
Continue reading “Is an appreciative appropriation of culture possible?”
by Jane Robb, Arinola Adefila, José Pablo Prado Córdova
In this series of essays, we use stories from the life experiences of the three international authors to air the pitfalls we come across while sharing knowledge and discuss how this can influence practice in higher education and what this might mean for life outside academia.
Use of language
José Pablo Prado Córdova, Tenured Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Rural Development, Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala
At the risk of committing an act of discursive funambulism, I’d say that knowing that we don’t know something, opens up a crack in the mechanical obsession with certainty. The realisation of a knowledge void triggers curiosity and sets our mind in a state of enquiry. We grasp reality, concepts and even socially sanctioned ways of being in a socialisation process starting from scratch. Ignoring falseability, for instance, brings about intellectual stiffness and, in the most extreme cases, sheer fundamentalism.
Continue reading “Journey Without An Answer – Part III: Use of language”
by Jane Robb, Arinola Adefila, José Pablo Prado Córdova
In this series of essays, we use stories from the life experiences of the three international authors to air the pitfalls we come across while sharing knowledge and discuss how this can influence practice in higher education and what this might mean for life outside academia.
Part II: Use of cultural norms
Arinola Adefila, Deputy Director, Staffordshire Centre for Learning and Pedagogic Practice, Staffordshire University. Now based at Buckinghamshire New University.
Knowledge is a very powerful human tool, in many cultures knowing is understood to be continuous and lifelong, associated with a sacred respect for the elderly who have accumulated a treasure trove of knowledge through experience.
Continue reading “Journey Without An Answer – Part II: Use of Cultural Norms”
by Jane Robb, Arinola Adefila, José Pablo Prado Córdova
Part I
In modern day higher education institutions, we too often arrive at an understanding of the world around us through repetition of learnt facts and exposure to the same (Meissner, 1974). There is little room for generating new knowledge until what are considered the ‘higher tiers’ of learning (McGregor, 2020), and often this is bounded within strict academic and organisational standards: ways of finding and expressing knowledge that relies on other commonly accepted knowledge (Bagga-Gupta, 2023).
by Rossella Marino
This is a reflection stemming from a particular emotional state, that, considering emotions integral to political inquiry, I did not want or intend to polish in any way.
It is about a game. A game of uttering and reacting. The game of who calls what how. A game of power, realisation, resistance.
Continue reading “On Epistemic Violence and Personal Growth”
by Adriana Cancar
Recently I was part of a quite special Summer School and when I look back at it, I especially remember the feeling of trust – trusting each other to listen, to understand as far as possible, to comprehend, to speak, to respond, to feel with each other, to sit in silence together.
Broadly framed by concepts, theories and debates of and around ‘decolonization’ and ‘development critique’ the Summer School was attempting to confront and question hegemonic narratives and naming the most problematic aspects of growth and development imperatives and promises.
by Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde and Mieke Berghmans*
From periphery to center: Belgium’s decolonization debate
Over the last decades, the Belgian public has, on many occasions, been confronted with the problematic nature of its colonial past. A secretive activist organization for instance cut of the hand of a King Leopold II monument in Ostend. Media regularly covered the works of a commission of inquiry that investigated the murder on Patrice Lumumba. The debates on Saint Nicholas and Black Pete – a holiday tradition in which Saint Nicholas’ helper is depicted as a blackface stereotype- flew over from the Netherlands to the Belgian public every year, and so on. These events appeared on and disappeared from the media scene and contributed to some public debate about (the effects of) the Belgian colonial period. These discussions however remained at the periphery of the public debate. They touched upon matters that were controversial and contested, but only concerned a specific historical event, a specific institution, or a specific cultural phenomenon and as such did not require a general moral response.
Continue reading “POLYLOGUES AT THE INTERSECTION(S) SERIES: In Pursuit of Decolonization in Belgium”
by Lisa-Marlen Gronemeier
This contribution is situated within the beginning of my un-learning the single feminist story and its underlying violence, which constitute whiteness in German universities’ gender studies departments. I argue that the dominant knowledge politics enforces and normalizes white feminists’ epistemic privilege as well as practices that are “considered ‘unmarked’ – yet unmarked only if viewed from the perspective of normative whiteness”. As white feminists, ‘our’ epistemic privilege is reproduced through specific knowledge politics that has as a referent white, middle-class, cis-female herstory and experience. Insisting on ‘gender’ as isolated meta-category, this politics upholds patriarchy as a universal and transhistorical phenomenon, whilst trivializing the enmeshment of power relations resulting from (neo)colonialism and racial capitalism. Disconnected from ‘other’ (her)stories of struggle, ‘our’ story is not only produced as normative; white feminists are also authorized as ‘natural’ inhabitant of gender studies departments, with the prerogative of speaking for, on behalf, and instead of ‘others’. Thereby, knowledge politics re-produces violence against knowledge holders and knowledges beyond white feminisms’ genealogy. As Audre Lorde diagnosed long ago, white feminists’ self-centeredness and ignorance signify that “only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable”.
Continue reading “On feminist entanglements and white politics of knowledge”
by Jeevika Vivekananthan
Are you working in aid and development? Are you passionate about the work you do? Do you want to change the world for good?
by Maren Seehawer
“Indigenous and non-indigenous alliances cut across localities, nations, and continents” and the struggle for decolonisation and “recovering indigenous peoples’ identities … knows no borders”, writes Norwegian professor Anders Breidlid in his (2013) book Education, Indigenous Knowledges, and Development in in the global South.
Continue reading “How to be an ally? An ongoing (un-)learning journey”