Think Piece: Learning, Living and Leading into Transgression – A reflection on decolonial praxis in a neoliberal world

Abstract

Three scholar activists from South Africa reflect on what it means to transgress the limits of a neoliberal world and its crisis times, particularly considering transgressions in the service of a decolonial future. The authors explore three questions: i) What kind of learning can help us transgress the status quo? ii) How do we extend this learning into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways? iii) What does it mean to lead in ways that re-generate a transgressive ethic in a neoliberal world? In a dialogical conversation format, the authors outline nine different but interconnected perspectives on learning, living and leading into transgression, with the aim of concurrently revealing the multiple layers of work that a decolonial future depends on, while demonstrating the ambitions of a pluriversal decolonial future through their writing. The intertwined narrative is not conclusive, as the processes marked out in brief are experiences that still need to be fully practised in new relations in times to come within academia-in-society-and-the-world with human and more-than-human actors. However, they do offer a generative set of questions, concepts and metaphors to give courage to boundary-dwelling scholar activists attempting transgressive research. These reflections seek to regenerate the transgressive ‘decolonial gestures’ (decolonialfutures.net) that we can undertake in a neo-liberal world, as an important part of environment and sustainability education practices. It draws out what an embodied practice of transgressive learning can entail when we become discerning of hegemonic discourses that reproduce the status quo. We pay homage to those decolonial scholars in the field of environment and sustainability education as we traverse this terrain, recognising their imagination and the transgressive movement that has come before us, but importantly we seek to also open pathways for those yet to come.

Intersections and collaborative potentials between global citizenship education and education for sustainable development

“…We need to ask how transgressive learning practically extends into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways? (Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka 2020;Lotz-Sisitka et al 2015). Some important insights on what needs transgressing includes challenging 'binary logic' as a technique of coloniality, which reproduces the coloniality of power through oppositional categories of racialized Other, such as 'Black' and 'Indigenous' (Hage 2017;Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka 2020;Mamdani 2020).…”

“…(Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka 2020;Lotz-Sisitka et al 2015). Some important insights on what needs transgressing includes challenging 'binary logic' as a technique of coloniality, which reproduces the coloniality of power through oppositional categories of racialized Other, such as 'Black' and 'Indigenous' (Hage 2017;Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka 2020;Mamdani 2020). These constructs are very difficult to unlearn, and dismantling them involves challenging the link between ontology and epistemology (i.e.…”

“…The post-human perspective, with its 'flat ontology' thinking, brings in ethical questions about relations to non-human others, potentially expanding discussions about what 'a socially just global society' means (Sund and Pashby 2020;Nxumalo and Cedillo 2017). A recent Think Piece on transgressive learning speaks of 'decolonial love' as 'always holding women, young people, children and the most marginalised in our societies in mind, which at times includes not only people but those creatures that are dying out and the soil, waters and air being polluted due to human arrogance, extractivism and exploitation' (Kulundu-Bolus, McGarry and Lotz-Sisitka 2020).…”

Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung – Impulse zu Digitalisierung, Inklusion und Klimaschutz

“…Figure 4.2.2), and our research shows the need to consider socio-emotional (ethical) as well as action oriented dynamics, in accordance with UNESCO's (2019) finding that "there is a great need for countries to pay more attention to the social and emotional and behavioural [action oriented] dimensions of learning, to create synergistic and holistic impacts" (S. 1), but that transformative learning reaches beyond individualised gains, towards transgressive/emancipatory, social or collective learning approaches that challenge taken for granted norms that hold unsustainability and social injustices in place (cf. also Wals/Peters 2017;Wals 2019Wals , 2020Kulundu/McGarry/Lotz-Sisitka 2020). By definition such a process is transdisciplinary in the sense that the ontologically grounded and dialectically emergent actions (in open systems) that are catalysed by education and learning in response to sustainability challenges are most often oriented towards producing new forms of human activity (cf.…”

Sustainability Education for Ontological Re/Configuration: COVID-19 as a Pointer to the Ailing World Asili

“…The transmissibility and eradication realities of COVID-19 underscore the significance of interconnectedness of all humanity, and the futility of values of individualism, aggressive competition, domination and nationalism. The growing educational discourse on decoloniality (e.g., Kulundu-Bolus et al, 2020;Mignolo, 2009Mignolo, , 2001, and the associated indigenous philosophies, have a potential to usher new ontologies of holism, collaboration, co-existence in our education systems, if mainstreamed. A holistic worldview is engendered by education that focuses on and encounters the locale, rather than preoccupation with de-contextual, abstract and universal knowledge forms (Ani, 1994).…”