Resistance to the Epistemicidios, or Destruction of Ways of Knowing, in Educational Movements and Practices in Latin America

• In Event: Decolonizing the Curriculum: Challenging the Constraints of Colonized Knowledge

Abstract

In this paper we present a conceptual framework around innovative educational practices that have emerged recently from Latin America. We examine these as alternative ways of living and knowing as distinct from hegemonic Western (European and U. S.) ones. From colonial times to the present many voices from the original habitants of the Americas have resisted the genocidios (genocides) and epistemicidios (destruction of ways of knowing) against them. Based primarily on the work of Enrique Dussel, (1985,1990, 2007, 2009, etc.) who has demonstrated how the oppressed peoples of the world are social actors in the construction of knowledge, we show how indigenous epistemologies, including their ways of knowing the impact of coloniality, inform non Western approaches to education.

Authors

• Raul Olmo Fregoso, University of Texas

• Sheila M. Shannon, University of Colorado - Denver