Reflections of an international graduate student in a North American Communication Department

Abstract

This essay examines various aspects of my intellectual experience as an international graduate student studying in a North American university grappling with questions of postcolonial life in Africa. Specifically, I examine the intellectual tensions of dealing with the underdeveloped questions of colonialism in communication theory. The article draws on work calling for the de-Westernization and decolonization of communication theory. While the call for decentering ‘academic Eurocentrism’ is important, it is pertinent not to erect another epistemic fundamentalism in its place. Overall, the article calls attention to epistemic plurality and why communication scholarship needs to seriously consider what Comaroff and Comaroff (2012) call ‘Theory from the South’.

Rural radio and the everyday politics of settlement on Indigenous land

“…It is our contention that media, alongside other forms of cultural production, performs a key role in structuring and perpetuating this hegemony, or ‘settler common sense’ (Rifkin, 2014). In doing so, we contribute to the conversations taking place in Media Communication & Society that aim to address under-developed questions of colonialism in media theory and practice, with Nikoi (2019) most recently entreating communication scholars to take the colonial question seriously. Aoetearoa/New Zealand researchers writing in this journal have explored how newspapers construct child abuse as ‘a Māori issue’ that extends the trauma of colonisation for Māori while also providing non-Indigenous people with grounds for denying the further effects of colonisation (Maydell, 2018).…”

Editorial: encounters with Western media theory

“…The initial prompt for putting together the section came from a submission that was published in the journal in 2019. In his article “Reflections of an international graduate student in a North American Communication Department,” Nikoi (2019) examines the intellectual tensions of dealing with the underdeveloped questions of colonialism in communication theory. Among many things that are interesting and thought-provoking in this piece is the way in which the author advanced theory through a reflective consideration of his personal perspective: the point of view of an international graduate student studying in a North American university.…”