Decolonizing Journeys of Transition: Struggles for Articulation in the Academy

• In Event: Transgressing the Academy of Apathy: The Inner Plantation, Possibilities for the Public Good

Abstract

We write from geopolitical positions of the emerging South. Our stories of being, becoming and empowerment, provide a practical, reflective demonstration, of our struggle for balance in the articulation between the personal, the public and agentic personas of the educator- researcher (ER). We adopt an evocative auto-ethnographic approach that captures our transitions towards self-emancipation. ERs are central to the development of the sociological imagination and play a critical role through research-informed teaching, illuminating the social and developmental horizon. The caution is in recognising practices of recolonization that serve to promote practices of erasure by omission; negate practices of the politics of space; and deny the legitimate self as a struggle of marginalised peoples; undermining voices of liberation, hope and remembrance.

Authors

• Laurette Maria Stacy Bristol, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat

• Ann Cheryl Armstrong, University of the South Pacific

• Lisa Joanna Perez, The University of Trinidad and Tobago