In an earlier blog I raised questions about the idea of ‘decolonisation’ in academia, arguing that ‘western thought’ is a kind of ‘tradition’ with an internal integrity and logic that needs to be respected, even while it evolves and modifies. Here I add to that argument, focussing on decolonising the curriculum as a practical agenda within the academy, rather than as an intellectual project.
In my university there is a project to support colleagues who want to decolonise their teaching and research, but are unsure how to do that. This project comes under the mantle of a wider Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda, and so is conceptually linked to that agenda. EDI is concerned with, among other things, fairness in employment, promotion, and other institutional opportunities. It is about how the institution exercises oversight in regard to its general practices, not about matters intellectual merit. The latter is the business we attend to as academics, engaged in civil argument and debate.
But this is where it gets strange. Because the provenance of decolonising the curriculum comes from within the field of academic debates and theories that seek to explain society. It has roots in postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and the analysis of ‘orientalism’ associated with Edward Said. These are all legitimate bodies of thought which one can subscribe to or argue with, in the arena of academic debate. The purpose of the university is to allow such contending views to engage with and test one another. However, the question arises, how do such ideas travel from being objects of contestation within that intellectual arena, to being matters of programmatic administrative policy?
Imagine a comparison. In my work I draw on social evolutionary ideas to analyse and explain social and historical processes. That is my preferred approach. And there are many other theoretical paradigms that inform colleagues’ work, e.g. actor-network theory, symbolic interactionism, and so on. But imagine if any of these were to be presented as part of the general administrative agenda of the institution as a whole. If it chose to privilege one of these theoretical orientations above the others. Even if this was done in the relatively light touch way of assisting those who want to, rather than mandating people’s practices, it would seem odd. A necessary boundary between scholarly intellectual practice, and administrative policy, is being transgressed here. One has a sense that a referee is playing favourites.
I suppose those for whom this state of affairs seems all well and good, might argue that this is simply a promotion of the wider norms of society. An extension of the general public value of preventing discrimination and widening access (as in hiring practices, etc.). But does that really work? If decolonisation has the status of a wider public value, why not make the same claim for the other bodies of ideas and theories just mentioned? In which case, how do we choose among them, especially when they conflict? One of the main points of a university is that it creates a bounded arena of intellectual dispute, that follows its own rules and is demarcated as separate in practice from matters of administration or wider social pressures that might interfere. This allows the contest and interplay of ideas to be as autonomous as possible. This is an ideal. No-one claims that academics can completely detach themselves from their own and wider social values. But we try to keep the practice of scholarship reasonably contained within that arena. Just because no sport can be absolutely free of corruption, and no hospital can be absolutely antiseptic, doesn’t mean we give up on trying. There are contexts where favouritism (with friends) and exposure to germs (childhood play) are perfectly appropriate and healthy. But there are contexts where they interfere with the practice at hand. I think that blurring the boundary between decolonisation as a theoretical idea, and as administratively promoted practice, is such a case.
Uneasy Essays 