Decoloniality and the Humanities: Possibilities and Predicaments

Abstract

The humanities continue to witness a decolonial turn. The decolonial project is radical and dangerous because it is an epistemic, political, and ethical project that marches toward a vision of humanity-in-difference. The exhaustion of the episteme, border, and oppositional consciousness politics, though, exposes limitations and indicates the difficulty in actually doing decolonial work. This essay traces decolonial discourse and focuses on its affordances, as well as its predicaments. This has implications for research and teaching.

Precarious Authority and the Future of the University

“…In this respect, the democratisation of the knowledge project, García's (2018) conception of the "geo-and body-politics and loci of enunciation" concurs with Wicomb andVan der Vlies's (2018 [1994]:105) observation that "[ideology] operates within discursive formations precisely because interdiscourse remains disguised, or rather is absorbed/forgotten in intradiscourse". In response to the shift in the knowledge paradigm that governed the University, institutional leadership took to securitisation and derailing efforts at institutional democratisation on the premise of security threats.…”

“…In what can be interpreted in one sense -which is by no means totalising -as the inversion of power relations, with vice-chancellors being forced to meet students on an equal footing, 8 decolonial praxis was enacted and challenged the University's universal authority. This inversion, presumably, is what García (2018:3) has in mind when he references the "geo-and body-politics and loci of enunciation", in his maintaining that…”

Latinx Authorship and Representation in Digital Spaces: Wikipedia as a Tool to Decolonize the HSI Classroom

“…For some students, particularly those from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds, their work was something they framed as a means of decolonizing their views about knowledge (G.A. R. Garcia, 2018;Stein & de Andreotti, 2016).…”

“…That is, the "way things are," even if undesirable, becomes accepted. (p. 3) Adopting a decolonial approach in classroom practice can enable Latinx students to center their experiences and validate their cultures, which has been long ignored in scholarship and the college classroom in general (Cuadraz, 2005;R. Garcia, 2018;García-Louis, 2019).…”

Suficiente, Enough: Reckoning With the Complexities of a Colonial Past That Racializes LatinXs as MestizXs

“…Tensions arise when it comes to decolonial work. R. García (2018) noted decoloniality of the student mind can lead to recolonization "when the resistant and decolonial agent [educator] assume the right to intervene in the student's mind" (p. 313). He implied that decolonial educators will still colonize the student's mind with anti-Western knowledge.…”