Decolonization of knowledge
Decolonization of knowledge is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitimize other knowledge systems by exploring alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. It is also an intellectual project that aims to "disinfect" academic activities that are believed to have little connection with the objective pursuit of knowledge and truth. The presumption is that if curricula, theories, and knowledge are colonized, it means they have been partly influenced by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. The decolonial knowledge perspective covers a wide variety of subjects including philosophy, science, history of science, and other fundamental categories in social science.
Background
Decolonization of knowledge inquires into the historical mechanisms of knowledge production and their perceived colonial and ethnocentric foundations. Budd L. Hall et al argue that knowledge and the standards that determine the validity of knowledge have been disproportionately informed by Western system of thought and ways of being in the world. According to Jaco S. Dreyer, the western knowledge system that emerged in Europe during renaissance and Enlightenment was deployed to legitimise Europe's colonial endeavour, which eventually became a part of colonial rule and forms of civilization that the colonizers carried with them. This perspective maintains that the knowledge produced by the Western system was deemed superior to that produced by other systems since it had a universal quality. Decolonial scholars concur that the western system of knowledge still continues to determine as to what should be considered as scientific knowledge and continues to "exclude, marginalise and dehumanise" those with different systems of knowledge, expertise and worldviews. Anibal Quijano stated:In effect, all of the experiences, histories, resources, and cultural products ended up in one global cultural order revolving around European or Western hegemony. Europe's hegemony over the new model of global power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity, culture, and especially knowledge and the production of knowledge under its hegemony... They repressed as much as possible the colonized forms of knowledge production, the models of the production of meaning, their symbolic universe, the model of expression and of objectification and subjectivity.
In her book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes:
Imperialism and colonialism brought complete disorder to colonized peoples, disconnecting them from their histories, their landscapes, their languages, their social relations and their own ways of thinking, feeling and interacting with the world.
According to this viewpoint, colonialism has ended in the legal and political sense, but its legacy continues in many "colonial situations" where individuals and groups in historically colonized places are marginalized and exploited. Decolonial scholars refer to this continuing legacy of colonialism as "coloniality", which describes the oppression and exploitation left behind by colonialism in a variety of interrelated domains, including the domain of subjectivity and knowledge.
Origin and development
In community groups and social movements in the Americas, decolonization of knowledge traces its roots back to resistance against colonialism from its very beginning in 1492. Its emergence as an academic concern is rather a recent phenomenon. According to Enrique Dussel, the theme of epistemological decolonization has originated from a group of Latin American thinkers. Although the notion of decolonization of knowledge has been an academic topic since the 1970s, Walter Mignolo says it was the ingenious work of Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano that "explicitly linked coloniality of power in the political and economic spheres with the coloniality of knowledge." It has developed as "an elaboration of a problematic" that began as a result of several critical stances such as postcolonialism, subaltern studies and postmodernism. Enrique Dussel says epistemological decolonization is structured around the notions of coloniality of power and transmodernity, which traces its roots in the thoughts of José Carlos Mariátegui, Frantz Fanon and Immanuel Wallerstein. According to Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, although the political, economic, cultural and epistemological dimensions of decolonization were and are intricately connected to each other, attainment of political sovereignty was preferred as a "practical strategic logic of struggles against colonialism." As a result, political decolonization in the twentieth century failed to attain epistemological decolonization, as it did not widely inquire into the complex domain of knowledge.Themes
According to Alex Broadbent, decolonization is sometimes understood as a rejection of the notion of objectivity, which is seen as a legacy of colonial thought. He argues that universal conception of ideas such as "truth" and "fact" are Western constructs that are imposed on other foreign cultures. This tradition considers notions of truth and fact as "local", arguing that what is "discovered" or "expressed" in one place or time may not be applicable in another. The concerns of decolonization of knowledge are that the western knowledge system has become a norm for global knowledge and that its methodologies are the only ones deemed appropriate for use in knowledge production. This perceived hegemonic approach towards other knowledge systems is said to have reduced epistemic diversity and established the center of knowledge, eventually suppressing all other knowledge forms. Boaventura de Sousa Santos says "throughout the world, not only are there very diverse forms of knowledge of matter, society, life and spirit, but also many and very diverse concepts of what counts as knowledge and criteria that may be used to validate it." However, it is claimed that this variety of knowledge systems has not gained much recognition. According to Lewis Gordon, the formulation of knowledge in its singular form itself was unknown to times before the emergence of European modernity. Modes of knowledge production and notions of knowledge were so diversified that knowledges, in his opinion, would be more appropriate description.According to Walter Mignolo, the modern foundation of knowledge is thus territorial and imperial. This foundation is based on "the socio-historical organization and classification of the world founded on a macro narrative and on a specific concept and principles of knowledge" which finds its roots in European modernity. He articulates epistemic decolonization as an expansive movement that identifies "geo-political locations of theology, secular philosophy and scientific reason" while also affirming "the modes and principles of knowledge that have been denied by the rhetoric of Christianization, civilization, progress, development and market democracy." According to Achille Mbembe, decolonization of knowledge means contesting the hegemonic western epistemology that suppresses anything that is foreseen, conceived and formulated from outside of western epistemology. It has two aspects: a critique of Western knowledge paradigms and the development of new epistemic models. Savo Heleta states that decolonization of knowledge "implies the end of reliance on imposed knowledge, theories and interpretations, and theorizing based on one's own past and present experiences and interpretation of the world."