The Importance of Individual Responsibility in the Decolonization of Universities

• In Event: Citizen-Scholars as Agentic Subjects in the University Curriculum Decolonising Initiative in South Africa

Abstract

The importance of individual responsibility in the decolonisation of universities
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of individual responsibility in the decolonisation process and to provide a cartographical account of the author’s journey in the process of decolonisation. Fanon (1967) lamented at the end of the Algerian War that decolonisation had not taken place, only the Africanisation of colonialism. Quijano (2007) provides a more nuanced understanding of what Fanon observed, arguing that the legacy of colonialism is a colonial matrix of power: control of economy; control of authority; control of gender and sexuality; and control of subjectivity and knowledge.
In post-apartheid South Africa many universities have identified themselves as African universities. Some changes have occurred in universities and in many historically white universities we have seen student and staff demographics change. However, the cultures, academic organisation and curricula of South African universities remain Eurocentric. South Africa’s democracy produced the myth that the country has African universities – it has universities in Africa not African universities. This lack of fundamental change was laid bare by the nation-wide student protests of 2015 and 2016, most notably the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall campaigns.
Fanon (1967) argued that there can be no decolonisation without individual liberation and therefore that the reconstruction of subjectivity is central to decolonisation. Pinar (2011) invokes Fanon (1967) and argues that subjective reconstruction, which is at the heart of currere, is one form of decolonisation. Pinar (2011: 40) writes:
Autobiography – the regressive-progressive-analytic-synthetic method of currere – can be political when it disables, through remembrance and reconstruction, colonisation through interpellation. By affirming the capacity to restructure one’s subjectivity, autobiography disentangles us from absorption into collectives – even when presumably these are self-affirming cultural identities.
The author uses the autobiographical method currere that Pinar first developed in 1975 to narrate his own journey of decolonisation as a black South African now working at a historically white and Afrikaans university. He prefers to use cartography to autobiography because there is a spatial dimension to our lives. He concludes that taking individual responsibility in decolonising the university curriculum involves a lifelong affair of unlearning and relearning. Such a lifelong affair will involve multiple cycles of currere’s four steps. This work is important because self-liberation is a necessary condition for collective efforts to decolonise the university. None of us is exempt of this responsibility even those who are leading authorities on decolonisation. Maldonado-Torress (2006: 117) reminds us that as “modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and every day.”
Fanon, F. 1967. Towards the African revolution, trans. H. Chevalier. New York, NY: Grove Press.
Maldonado-Torres, N. 2006. Cesaire's gift and the decolonial turn. Radical Philosophy Review, 9 (2):
111-138.
Pinar, W.F. 2011. The character of curriculum studies: Bildung, currere and the recurring question of
the subject. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Quijano, A. 2007. Coloniality and Modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3): 168–178.

Author

• Lesley Lionel Leonard Le Grange, Stellenbosch University