Beyond Higher Education as We Know It: Gesturing Toward Decolonial Horizons

• In Event: 63.033 - Reimagining the Modern/Colonial University: Toward Alternative Horizons of Higher Education Otherwise

Abstract

Purpose: This paper addresses the conceptual challenges of articulating the ethical-political limits of ‘higher education as we know it’, and the practical challenges of exploring alternative higher education futures that are unimaginable from within the imaginary that currently dominates the higher education field. To do so, this paper critically engages and extends existing higher education philosophy literature.

Perspective: De-, anti-, and post-colonial theorists have long pointed to the coloniality of modern western ways of knowing and being, and by extension, to the coloniality of modern western educational institutions and their supporting infrastructures (e.g. Andreotti, Stein, Ahenakew & Hunt, 2015; Grande, 2004; Grosfoguel, 2013; Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Silva, 2007; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Wynter, 2003). These critiques indicate that if we pursue alternative horizons of higher education from within the inherited onto-epistemological frames that uphold colonial modernity, then we risk reproducing the violences that are at the root of many contemporary problems.

Methods: To problematize abstract, disembodied ideas of and about the world in ways that universalize a single perspective (Silva, 2007; Wynter, 2003), I engage philosophical inquiry in ways that address the bio- and geo-politics of knowledge production in higher education (Shahjahan, 2016), and consider the implications of the contingency, contextuality, and partiality of all knowledges and ways of knowing (Santos, 2007).

Evidence: I review the kinds of research that higher education scholars are encouraged to pursue, then consider different possible diagnoses of contemporary higher education problems at three different layers of philosophical inquiry: methodological, epistemological, and ontological. I suggest that failure to engage at all of these layers is rooted in how colonization shapes dominant forms of higher education. In order to provincialize this particular idea of higher education, I consider Leanne Simpson’s (2014) work on Nishnaabeg philosophies of education.

Conclusions: There are many complexities and difficulties involved in provincializing Western ways of knowing and being. If we re-imagine higher education from where we currently stand, then we will likely continue to imagine more of the same. Further, if we only fix the problems that can be addressed with the immediate solutions available within our existing system, then we will likely only have addressed the symptoms of today’s crises, while the root causes that originate from within the system itself remain unaddressed and will continue to cause harm. At the same time it is necessary to engage ‘otherwise’ possibilities for higher education (Crawley, 2015). Thus, I argue for the need to nurture the “possibility of possibilities” from which different futures might ultimately emerge (Barnett, 2014), rather than advocate for any particular future.

Significance: This paper offers possible ways forward in a contemporary conjuncture in which existing possibilities for higher education have been significantly narrowed, and yet these possibilities also appear increasingly unsustainable and unethical.

Author

• Sharon Stein, The University of British Columbia