Employing memories of biopolitical racism for consciousness raising across time and space

Abstract

This critical autoethnographic account describes a journey from marginalization, as a racialized Muslim minority woman in the age of American Islamophobia and biopolitical racism, to a position of dominance as my identity changed with my move from the United States to Pakistan. I reflect on the feelings of solidarity that welled up inside me with those being marginalized in my new political space and how this ended up shaping my pedagogical practice. The analysis allows me to make several contributions to the scholarship on academic activism. First, I show that it is possible for constructed vulnerabilities to be carried to a time and space where they no longer appear relevant. When management educators draw upon their own racialized encounters, they can engage in academic activism more authentically and powerfully. Second, the focus of a pedagogical framework that privileges academic activism should be on local contexts, perspectives, and knowledges. My experience demonstrates that to decolonize management education that is premised on the American managerialist model, faculty and students have to step out of the elite space of the business school classroom. Finally, I push business school academics to pursue relentless humility and reflexivity for decolonizing does not come naturally to the neocolonial elite.