Decolonisation, knowledge production, and interests in liberal higher education

Abstract

This essay explores how calls for decolonisation in universities have engaged with ideas about liberalism and liberal education. It maps the historical context of liberal education as embodied in the development of modern European universities and colonial interests in their respective nation-states. It offers comparative perspectives on how ideas of decolonisation in higher education have confronted liberal and nation-state interests at different historical conjunctures in three postcolonial settings: in the establishment of a national university in India during the 1960s; in protests by university students in postapartheid South Africa between 2015 and 2017; and in growing commitments to Indigenous recognition and knowledges in Australian universities from the 2000s. The essay highlights the need for those active in contemporary decolonisation movements in universities in the global North and South to confront the paradoxical interests of liberal education and nationalisms in knowledge production, epistemic and socio-economic justice, and sociality in higher education.

Beyond Green: Human–environment geographies for the ‘new’ century

“…Can we frame disciplinary history not against the Anglo-American centre but from multiple and different places in the rest of the world? Rangan (2021) argues that we have not worked hard enough on re-constituting our own institutions. Steele and Rickards’ (2021) analysis of transformative change as a reciprocal agenda for universities provides an energising way to think through some of these issues.…”

Why aren’t we there yet? A typology for evaluating resistant and counter-hegemonic practices

“…Neo-liberalism has intricate linkages to the colonial past. While there have been criticisms against neo-liberalism, ‘little is said about the parallels, overlaps, and continuities between old and new colonial forms of epistemic violence in Australian universities today’ (Rangan, 2022: 68). Historically, some of the most prestigious Western universities assisted and directly benefited from colonial power and slavery (Pietsch, 2013; Smith and Ellis, 2017).…”

“…Nonetheless, this rupture does not indicate the eradication of the past. Unsurprisingly, today's Australian universities’ ‘elite knowledge production status’ in the global rankings is a result of the claim of ‘European racial and civilisational superiority’ – the same claim that enabled Western universities’ ascendancy in the colonial era (Rangan, 2022: 68). In this sense, neo-liberalism is not only entrenched with colonialism, but it also depends and thrives on it.…”

“…In addition, many decolonial and anti-liberal studies rely on the body of dominant knowledge produced primarily in the West. In other words, decolonisation movements in universities use ideas of liberal education and liberalism that paradoxically legitimise the colonial legacy (Rangan, 2022). Connell (2007) has coined the term ‘Northern theory’ to describe dominant knowledge from the Global North – the industrial West and its alliance.…”

The university in modern South Asia: Historiographical framings between the local and the global

“…The reasons to carve out this historiographical space arise in part due to the ubiquity of the university‐idea in contemporary cultural debates, such as around the legacies of colonialism, the meanings of modernity, and the (ongoing) project of decolonization. The wide‐ranging relevance of these questions — not only across the Global South but also, as Priyamvada Gopal (2021) has recently argued, in the self‐understanding of the “West” — has sparked reflections that often engage comparative, transnational, and global frames (Mamdani, 2016; Mbembe, 2016; Rangan, 2022). In a recent collection of critical writings on The Idea of the University (Bhattacharya, 2019), the South Asian case has been considered against broader debates about the ideology of the university as a world‐historical entity.…”