Decolonizing Thought and Action – and Higher Education

image courtesy of https://www.dailysabah.com/

Big Questions: How do we reorient ourselves away from the idea that communities that are not attached to the university don't have cultural wealth, or knowledge to bear? How do we disrupt this notion, and participate in a practice of decolonization by recognizing the distorted relationships that exist as a result of colonization and colonialism? What does it mean to engage with decolonization in community-based inquiry and engagement? What is the significance of this engagement to how the concept of global citizenship is used and understood?

Objectives:

• To disrupt superficial and neocolonial conceptions of global citizenship in relation to “service-learning”, acknowledging different knowledges, languages for learning, recognizing and naming power imbalance, positionality, structural inequities 

• To critically analyze the U.S. higher education’s institutional identity and how it impacts our movement in the world; to re-examine the US academy as the entry point of intercultural work, given its historic imbrication with systems of domination

• To identify and take steps to decolonize the way that we think, act, interact with internship sites and learning, recognizing that the work we undertake isn’t decolonial in itself, but an engagement with a process of decolonization in our learning, actions, and interactions that we must keep ourselves accountable for

Time Commitment: indefinite

Why This Matters:

We must begin to recognize typically normalized colonial tools that are conventionally put forward in global “service-learning”, in order to disrupt, eradicate, or repurpose them. As individuals with experiences funded through capitalist notions of philanthropy and socialized in a particular lens for viewing our position (as agents of higher education) in the world, there is a fine line to navigate normalizations of colonialism imposed on other communities. Although the process of decolonization truly lies in the redistribution of resources and rematriation of land, this is an ideological way for us to take social accountability for our positions.

Note from Developers:

We consciously planned this module to center scholars of color, to not be complacent/complicit in whiteness. We see decolonization as a stronger frameworking than just being mindful of human dignity, and we challenge you to engage with this perspective as you continue.  

Question for Application:

How can you begin “decolonizing” your thoughts, actions, and relationships?

Diving In, Part 1:

What can it mean to “decolonize”?

Check out these interviews with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, the author of Decolonising the Mind, discussing what decolonisation means to him and for his work. (10 minutes, 28 seconds)

Decolonizing the Mind with Ngugi wa Thiongo (watch from 0:42 to 4:52)

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Europe and the West must also be decolonised (watch from 7:20 to 14:08)

In western tradition, institutions of higher education have been established as the producers of knowledge. Agents of these spaces, faculty and students, have been tasked with uncovering and exploring the intellectual understandings of the world, and the responsibility to disseminate them to the world. The ideology that all people do not have the right to think is a colonial tool. Thiong’o addresses the suppression of ideas, specifically writers under authoritarian regimes, as the goal to “suppress the capacity of people to imagine different futures.” This is a human right, but as a colonial tool, historically, agents of higher education have been given the privilege to assume this role. As we continue on, we seek to complicate this presumption. When we consider the language and current practice of global citizenship/service learning, it often centralizes western-educated individuals who travel with intentions to change or “fix” what they consider to be problems, not in communication with local stakeholders. Thinking together and producing knowledge, together, can be seen as a practice of decolonization.

Illustration: Joaquin Gonzalez Dorao

Personal/Group Reflection:

How is an investment in interdependence a decolonizing practice?

How may your perceptions of yourself clash with how you are perceived by others?

Diving In, Part 2: How can we wield privilege as a tool of decolonization?

cover image of la paperson's

A Third University is Possible

Read this introductory chapter of la paperson (K. Wayne Yang)’s A Third University is Possible, framing universities as ‘American settler colonial technologies’ that can be reworked and wielded for truer decolonization.

We offer a summary of the types of universities paperson argues exist, to supplement your own reading and interpretation. In a May, 2020, Imaging America Teaching and Learning Circle webinar, paperson explains: 

• The first university is organized and consumed by patents, publications, prestige, and the motivation for operation is fueled by accumulation. Historically, this was attained through chattel slavery, land grants, and colonization. It aims to be inclusive, as anyone can be involved because this generates financial capital. Further, participants in this system accumulate debt, willingly participating in their own colonization - through education - because of the potential gain in proximity to wealth and power gained through oppression, that comes at great costs of history identity, solidarity, and agency.

• The second university is a utopia of sorts, where hierarchy and domination are humanized within selective contexts, for those who insist on their and their members’ special qualities and hold themselves above and apart from the sphere of action.  

• The third university is a return to the practical, but in a new paradigm of freedom from and outside of white supremacy. In its term, the university should be viewed, not as our home, but as a workplace, and there is tremendous work to be done. Here, participants can subvert colonial technologies (as what paperson calls “scyborgs”), to build something else– a privilege of being present. Though it is a temporary time, we can use the opportunity in a radical pragmatic way.

Activity:

As agents of the university, it is our responsibility to name the standardized university structure as a tool of colonialism not to be perpetuated. When it is wielded for justice, it may be transformed into a practice of decolonization. Our positionalities within, and in relation to, the university structure are distorted and often weaponized to the benefit of the university if we are not intentional. 

What are the salient identities you hold? How do these intersect with social structural barriers? What power and privilege are derived from these intersections?

image courtesy of https://www.invistaperforms.org/

As paperson’s text concludes, he introduces the terminology of scyborgs: fighting within the university system for change. Scyborgs – derived from scybornetic organisms (not necessarily robotic, but informational) can include extending ourselves through data and information. In paperson’s explanation, the scyborg is not just an individual person – it is a collective – a system organism. The move away from individual relation to resistance (cyborg) to collective resistance (scyborg), is the goal. The caveat is that, alternatively, we can be participating in colonizing activities without the intention, if we are not actively working to disrupt the colonial university system.

If you are interested, you may wish to explore/revisit the arguments presented in Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown.

Personal/Group Reflection:

How has your identity or claim(s) to social power impacted or distorted your relationships?

What will you have to work into and against in these relationships in order to work as a cyborg or part of a scyborg?

How can you aspire as a cyborg in your more generalized work?

What are your aspirations for the collective scyborg?

Diving In, Part 3:  How do we center community assets, benefits, and knowledges?

These pieces bring Critical Race Theory into conversation with global learning programming in order to provide disruptions to colonial pedagogy that center the perspectives and power of marginalized people.

“Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth,” Tara J. Yosso (if you’re short on time, focus in on 75-82)

“Service Learning as a Pedagogy of Whiteness,” Tania D. Mitchell , David M. Donahue & Courtney Young-Law (pg. 612-616)

Global learning programs have been created for the educational and social benefit of (usually white) students, at the end of the day. Acknowledging this history and shifting away from the deficit-centered intention of university students ‘serving,’ ‘helping,’ or ‘impacting’ communities, will further the work of reconciling the distorted relationships colonialism has fashioned.

Partner/Group Reflection:

Do a 10 minute free write reflecting on your community’s cultural wealth. Take another 10 minutes to reflect on how you could respond when a family member comments on your altruism for spending your summer “helping.” How might you bring your summer experiences working with people who are talked about rather than centered respectfully?

image courtesy of https://www.knovva.com/

Page Completion — Outcomes:

Now that you have completed this page and the readings, videos, and activities within it, you should have strengthened your capacity to:

• Retell your experiences to a broader audience (e.g. presentations, re-entry classes, family/friends, etc) through a decolonizing lens and as a decolonizing practice by disrupting colonial preconceptions

• Reflect on how elite higher education institutions/ “universities” contribute to further distorting relationships with communities and individuals that have been distorted by colonialism and ideologically unseat the university as the pinnacle of knowledge production and dissemination of ideas

• Reconcile the difference between utilizing your skills ethically vs. imparting knowledge that you’ve claimed ownership over due to perceptions of the university as holding knowledge, power, and ability to “save” because of the physical resources being deployed

• Deconstruct the concept of global citizenship to be used as a tool for disruption, rather than as a tool to wield power over others

Please share feedback on this page by taking this brief survey. Thank you!

Citation for this page: Wilson, C. & Evans, S. (2021). Decolonizing Thought and Action. In E. Hartman (Ed.). Interdependence: Global Solidarity and Local Actions. The Community-based Global Learning Collaborative. Retrieved from https://www.cbglcollab.org/decolonizing-thought-and-action

Citations:

la  paperson.  (2017). A  third  university  is  possible. Minneapolis,  MN:  University  of  Minnesota Press.

Mitchell, Tania D., David M. Donahue, Courtney Young-Law (2012). Service Learning as a Pedagogy of Whiteness. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(4), 612-629.

Yosso,  T.J.  (2005).Whose  culture  has  capital? A  critical  race  theory  discussion  of  community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

Videos:

IFRA Nairobi. (2019, October 7). Decolonizing the Mind with Ngugi wa Thiongo [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXq8AurffeQ

CCCB. (2019, September 10). Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: “Europe and the West must also be decolonised”[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOXqc-8zCPE

Further Reading:

Marie Batiste, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision

Paulette Reagan, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling,

and Reconciliation in Canada Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind