Introduction

Abstract

Rethinking research practices and querying knowledge production have emerged as part of a popular movement in the academy to “decolonize” the social and human sciences. This introduction to a forum suggests that if decolonizing has become something of a buzzword applied to curricula and embraced even by mainstream foundations eager to develop funding streams to support (in name) the intellectual/political project, this does not mean we should be cynical. Neither, however, should we take decolonization to be a metaphor. This forum is about one of the most consequential implications of the “decolonizing” move: how it broadens our thinking about ethics. Animated by the particular experiences and concerns of this interdisciplinary group of what Amahl Bishara characterizes as “region-related” scholars of the Middle East and North Africa, the focus turned from the contemporary politics of knowledge production to questions of ethical responsibility.