Unlearning Modernism/Coloniality: Exploring Pedagogies of Decoloniality

Abstract

Scarred by the wounds of a history predicated on colonialism and later modernism/coloniality, the academy can either be a cage of imprisonment, often propagating spaces of dissonance by silencing and marginalizing alternative ontologies and epistemologies, or it can be a key to liberation. This co-participatory research project summoned the collaborative endeavors of scholar/activists and their former students in their task of reworlding (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2023) liberatory pathways by shifting the ontological blueprint of educational structures to portend a pluriverse (Grosfoguel, 2011), where many worlds can fit. Within and outside of the university, in acts of disruption and acts of defiance, resistance to modernism/coloniality has ushered the emergence of two schools of thought under the umbrella of the “decolonial turn” (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 2). On one side, this has manifested in frontline struggles to disrupt modernism/coloniality as an ontology of separations toward its replacement with ontologies of plurivisions (James & Lorenz, 2021c). On the other side, the decolonial turn is aligned with postcolonial epistemologies and social justice advocacy through the platform of equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Drawing on an adapted form of relational case studies and focus groups grounded in post-qualitative research methodologies, post- humanism, feminist epistemologies,

critical inquiry, and Indigenous research methodologies, this project has woven the stories and insights of the collaborators who have attempted to unsettle, disrupt, and transform modernism/coloniality through the development of their own decoloniality praxis within and outside of the university.