Interrogating Differential Outcomes in Degree Awarding: towards a - PowerPoint Presentation

Interrogating Differential Outcomes in Degree Awarding: towards a post-race/decolonised) pedagogy.Part 2Gurnam Singh and Glynis Cousin Wednesday, 16th November, 2016University of Chester Law School, 67 Liverpool Road, Chester, CH2 1AW 1

Decolonizing the curriculumConcepts: What do we mean by colonisation and decolonisation?Locating self: How has/does colonisation impact me? Models: Surface to deep decolonisation.Obstacles: What are the material, organisational and political obstacles to decolonisation? 2

Philosophy and Philosophers“The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. For example, of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty. Most philosophy departments also offer no courses on Africana, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, Native American or other non-European traditions”Jay Garfield & Bryan Van Norden "If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is" New York Times. 11th May 2016. 3

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273) – Father of Sufiism.Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy. The Panjab and Panjabi culture and religions are heavily influenced by his teachings in the form of Suffi Kawal(i) Music.“Someone asked, “What is loverhood ?”I replied, “Don’t ask me about these meanings –“When you become like me, you’ll know ; When it calls you, you’ll tell its tale . What is it to be a lover? To have perfect thirst . So let me explain the water of life. “ 4

Decolonising the curriculum – The Scale of the ChallengeMore than mere symbolism but a whole new paradigm for developing education for a post-colonial, denationalised world. Decolonising knowledge in universities ... involves a deep sense of recognition of and challenge to colonial forms of knowledge, pedagogical strategies and research methodologies . McLaughlin, and Whatman, L. (2007) “The university is not racist; the university is racism”- the university is the masters house” (Kehinde Andrews, Decolonsing the Curriculum, 19th Oct 2016 http :// www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26978 Ref: McLaughlin , J. M. and Whatman, L. (2007) embedding indigenous perspectives in university teaching and learning: lessons learnt and possibilities of reforming / decolonising curriculum. In Proceedings 4th International Conference on Indigenous Education: Asia/ Pacific, Vancouver, Canadahttp://eprints.qut.edu.au/10350/1/10350.pdf 5

Impact of British and European Colonialism “No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).” Said, E (1993) Culture and Imperialsim . 6

British Attitudes - divided the world into civilised and barbarian nations‘I have never found one amongst them [the orientalists] who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgment used at preparatory schools in England.’ Thomas Macaulay (1835) The Civilizing Mission, from "Minute on Indian Education” https:// www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/topic_4/macaulay.htm Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie : “The danger of a single story” https :// www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story 7

Black Athena – Martin BernalAfrican and Semitic lineage of Western civilization has been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their times.The rise of new strains of racism and anti-Semitism along with nationalism and colonialism in Europe, historians expunged Egyptians and Phoenicians from the story. Bernal, M. ed., 2006. Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization; Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence. Rutgers University Press. 8

European Imperialism of knowledge.Alvares, Claude. 1991. Decolonising History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West, 1492 to the Present Day. Goa: The Other India Press, India .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cySj7da5fB0 9

Decolonisation of the Curriculum – developing models. Not without its problems – not enough to inverse everything. “humanity expects other things from us than this grotesque and generally obscene emulation. if we want to transform Africa into a new Europe, America into a new Europe, then let us entrust the destinies of our countries to the Europeans. they will do a better job than the best of us. but if we want humanity to take one step forward, if we want to take it to another level than the one where Europe has placed it, then we must innovate, we must be pioneers. If we want to respond to the expectations of our peoples, we must look elsewhere besides Europe. moreover, if we want to respond to the expectations of the Europeans we must not send them back a reflection, however ideal, of their society and their thought that periodically sickens even them. for Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man.” Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. 1961. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 10

Rethink our conception of time and space. From ‘shallow to deep time’The present present map of the world, it nations are largely a direct product of colonialism and imperialism over the past 300. E.g. India never existed before the British, Africa and many of the nations are European constructs.We need to remind ourselves that humans have a deeper historical and technological relationship to the planet, which is often revealed by indigenous peoples from who we can learn much. This sense of deep time and place We need to realise that all our histories, psychologies, cultures are products the intimate relationship to nature, species, environments and so we ned to avoid false dichotomies between culture and nature. Colonialism, Imperialism and capital accumulation are not kind to the natural world, so decolonisation must address the relationship between human and non-human objects. Mbembe , (2016) talks of ending of a ‘dual ontology based on the nature-culture split and a shift to an object-orientated philosophy. (p43) 11

Moving from the language of nationality to locality – where are we really from?“When someone asks you where you're from … do you sometimes not know how to answer? "How can I come from a country?”“Countries are concepts and come and go” "How can a human being come from a concept?”“All of us as multi-local, multi-layered citizens of worlds”Taya Selaisi, https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local?language=en 12

Disrupting the mater/slave narrative.“I learned everything from this first spectacle: I saw how the white (French), superior, plutocratic, civilised world founded its power on the repression of populations who had suddenly become ‘invisible’, like proletarians, immigrant workers, minorities who are not the right ‘colour’, women. Invisible as human beings. But, of course, perceived as tools – dirty, stupid, lazy, underhanded, etc. Thanks to some annihilating dialectical magic, I saw that the great, noble, ‘advanced’ countries established themselves by expelling what was ‘strange’; excluding it but not dismissing it; enslaving it. A commonplace gesture of History: there have to be two races – the masters and the slaves.” (Hélène Cixous, in, Cixous, H and Clément, C (1996) http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/ wilson /slavery/ slavhpt.jpgLondon , I.B. Tauris Publishers .) Question: Given the current resurgence all kinds of moral panics and fear of ‘The ‘non-Western Other’ in Europe and North America are we seeing a reticulation of old colonial ‘master slave’ narrative and if so how is this permeating through the world of higher education? http://www.coventry.ac.uk/life-on-campus/the-university/key-information/governance/vice-chancellors-office /

Moving beyond narratives of elitism.“Assigning someone to a group of superior essence...causes that person to undergo a subjective transformation that contributes to bringing about a real transformation likely to bring him closer to the assigned definition” (p112) Bourdieu, P. (1996). The State Nobility: Elite schools in the field of power. (L. C. Clough,Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1989) “People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves “naturally” elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves (p14).” (C.Wright Mills, (1956/2000) The Power Elite, Oxford) 

Concluding Thoughts We need to dislodge the profound Euro/western centric paradigm that has and continues to promote a destructive view of the world and its people – ongoing exploitation and expropriation by stealth.We need to find a way of seeing the ‘non European Other’ not as a threat, or as inferior but as a ‘thinking knowledge producing subject’ (Mbembe, J (2016) Decolonizing the New University: New Directions p36) Each university has its unique set of circumstances/contexts and how this project unravels will have its differences. Decolonisation of the Universities of Oxford, Delhi, Johannesburg, Chester or Coventry will not be the same. We need to realise that capitalism and its most recent incarnation, neoliberaism are also products of colonialism, and therefore if we are serious about the project of decolonisation , we must develop new economic models that are not predicated on the exploitation of human beings and the destruction of the environment. ( Mbembe , 2016) We need to connect the decolonisation of the curriculum with other intimately related initiatives associated with social, economic and environmental justice and co-operation, rather than participate in the new arms race for global educational dominance – the university (like the media, judiciary) is a unique institution essential to democratic renewal, from local to global. 15

Decolonising the Curriculum - Some Questions to prompt discussion “Not sure what decolonising the curriculum means in practice, knowledge is just knowledge!” “Decolonising the curriculum may be relevant to courses in social sciences or humanities perhaps, but what relevance does this have to courses in science, maths, law, medicine?” “Colonialism was by an large a good thing, it is linked to the development of modern secular liberal democratic society based on the rule of law, so why give this up?” "T his is just a case of political correctness gone mad ? " " I do understand the profundity of the task, but if I am honest , it simply is not a priority for me/my colleagues . " “The world is an unfair place, but higher education is an industry, so we can’t become too concerned with this kind of idealism 16