Read on Twitter
I want to have a heart to heart talk with Global North scholars about decolonial research.
1). Connect to what is being written in global south, Indigenous scholarship especially within settler colonies first. This is where the ideas began & where it keeps re-emerging.
1). Connect to what is being written in global south, Indigenous scholarship especially within settler colonies first. This is where the ideas began & where it keeps re-emerging.
2) right now, GN decoloniality is more fixated in self-flagellation than actually engaging with knowledge production from the Global South. Redirect the gaze. Even if you’re trying to show how awful colonialism is, decolonisation is alwaud focused on liberatory theories.
3) decoloniality is not diversity, inclusion and equality work nor is it about representational politics. These are important but independent fields which intersect in multiple arenas. Conflating them doesn’t help anything.
4) and this is going to get me into trouble. Please don’t position yourself as a leader of decolonial work if you still haven’t done the reading. The importance of decoloniality is too great to have it derailed by people putting forward events and papers without purpose.
5) if you get a paper for review on the topic, pass it on to an editor with skillsets in analysing this work & can recommend adequate reviewers. Too much misguided work published on decolonial work is due to editors/reviewers who can’t distinguish inclusion from decoloniality.
6) this field of studies did not begin in 2020. It started as soon as people in the global south began organising to counter the ideologies & oppressors who sought to enforce power and seize land. As a practice it is hundreds of years old, as an academic discipline it is younger.
7) if you are in a department of area of regional studies (African, Asian Indigenous) that has never taught the subject or had a scholar in this field, then recognise that department is not suited to lead on decolonial work. Demand that the institution learns before it teaches.
8) with any idea that it is new to you, it is okay to teach yourself to swim before you dive. I deeply fear that the collapse of decolonial scholarship is being driven by well meaning GN initiatives which simply could do better by learning more before engaging.