Breathing spaces of fearlessness and generosity in the Anglophone/Western university

Abstract

How can dreams for just futures take flight in universities with colonial legacies that celebrate diversity but silence academics of colour who seek to be more than "institutional ornaments" and "quiet achievers?" Emerging research on decolonising the university focuses on the struggle that hypervisible Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and minority ethnic/ethno-religious academics of colour engage in to negotiate the subtleties of institutional racism. In Australia, academics of colour who struggle to gain entry feel less vulnerable when they retreat to a place of quiet achievement and focus on advancing their careers. But such "quiet" places, which open up through White recognition and White responsibility, fail to unsettle brutal practices and a bitter politics of survival. This article therefore argues for geographies of fearlessness and generosity from sites of vulnerability in the Anglophone/Western university. It is inspired by feminist, Indigenous, and Black politics; personal experiences in Australian universities; and ethnographic research with ethnic/ethno-religious minority migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and Indigenous peoples in Paris and Detroit, among other locations. The findings are significant in showing

Responsibilities of geographers: Are we role models or hypocrites?

“…The same may be said of diversity. Head (2016, p. 170), for example, has encouraged us to find and build community in flexible ways, so we can “maximise the conditions under which diverse life can flourish.” Examples also include decolonising through diversity (Lobo, 2021; Williams et al, 2021), teaching about more‐than‐human communities and community‐based approaches to environmental management (Davidson et al, 2023), and increasing bush fire preparedness by raising neighbourhood communication and awareness (Lucas et al, 2022). Surely we have some responsibility to act on such knowledge as those calling for diverse communities.…”

“…This trend is not helped by geography’s imperial legacy, particularly from the British Empire. Dorling (2019, p. 2) has shown how geography was the “discipline for young men drawn from the upper orders of society, those destined to rule over the lower orders.” Even today, geographical curricula merit reparative actions, including in relation to decolonising and Indigenising knowledge, such as is the case in Australia (Lobo, 2021; Williams et al, 2021).…”

Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities

“…Ray (2021) argues, however, that the archipelago may not be a useful metaphor to explore decolonization in postcolonial contexts such as India, where continentalist thinking prevails and attitudes to Indigenous peoples vary from state domination and exploitation to noninterference, as in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Considerable work is required to produce “political recognition and a well-informed praxis” informed by the diversity of Indigenous and Brown scholarship within and beyond the walls of the western academy (Lobo 2021; Ray 2021, 4). But southern scholars with few accessible resources struggle to engage in these debates that come across as dense, difficult, demanding, and distant; emancipatory subalternist politics situated in many souths of the world often emerge from white and subaltern elites in the western academy (Ray 2021).…”