Feminist Decoloniality as Care joint panel of presentations and arts-based research by USA and South African academics

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Research has established that women academics and particularly Black women academics continue to be marginalised in universities (Mahabeer et al. 2018). They are the statistical minority within academia (Mabokela &Mawila 2005; Mabokela & Mlambo 2017), and when they do occupy academic posts, their collective successes in universities are significantly constrained. Reasons for this include frameworks of inclusion in higher education, which have partially supported their access to academic careers but have done little to facilitate their flourishing as academics in universities that are increasingly neoliberal in practice, a system fuelled by patriarchy and white hegemony. Within this context, individualistic, market driven logics of neoliberalism drive individual performance metrics in a university system assumed to be based on the myth of meritocracy (Feingold 2011) that profoundly impacts academics’ career identities and sense of self-worth. Moreover, barriers to Black women’s success include lack of mentorship, poor promotion trajectories, huge teaching loads and expectations to provide emotional support to students and colleagues. Furthermore, dominant, deficit narratives about Black women academics proliferate especially in South Africa and USA contexts that ascribe to affirmative action policies (Khunou et al. 2019). Women experience institutional cultures as exclusive, detrimental to their (mental) health and wellness and uncaring which impact their capacities to work optimally (Makhuba, 2022). These trends intensified during Covid. Women academics published less, had more domestic responsibilities and felt more exploited in academic institutions (Ronnie, 2022). Given these challenges for Black women in higher education, innovative frameworks for understanding and intervening to support Black women to remain and prosper in higher education, are necessary. We draw on strands of decolonial feminist and ethics of care approaches to suggest a generative theoretical foundation for Black women’s advancement in HE.
Feminist decoloniality is a relatively new concept, coined by Lugones (2008; 2010). It draws on strong traditions of decolonial theory that critiques the nature of Western knowledge production that focuses on “othering” marginalized groups through designating them as voiceless subjects for investigation through a colonial lens of Western knowledge production (Mignolo 2007). Decolonial feminism highlights the intersections between coloniality, racism, gender, geospatial location and modernity in producing particular kinds of feminisms in different contexts of oppression with a strong focus on justice. There are four key foci of decolonial work relevant to our focus on Black women in higher education. It acknowledges gender as a power asymmetry that structures our experience and primarily argues for a rehumanizing and reparative engagement in HE (Ipadeola 2017; Mirza 2014). It secondly aims to disrupt the politics of knowledge production dominated by Euro-American normativity to generate ecologies of knowledge that focus on experiences narrated by and about women in the Global South. It thirdly, centres geospatial, historical and political contexts for academic women in the Global South. It fourthly, draws on critical feminist methodologies such as critical reflexivity, and the value of lived experience. As such feminist decoloniality is an important lens within which to understand the contemporary historical moment in which academic women in the Global South are located.
The Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) project is a 5-year-long collaboration between Black women academics in the USA and South Africa. The first panelist (Assata Zerai) will provide a conceptual backdrop by describing Black decolonial feminisms that underly the work of Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) project researchers. In contemporary academic spaces, FEMDAC has adapted principles of decolonial theory to research, teaching and praxis conducted by colleagues in the social sciences transnationally. In the context of higher education, decoloniality recognizes that at is origin, the westernized university, regardless of location was created to support the interests of elites in our respective societies.
An important locus of FEMDAC’s work has been arts-based methods. Three arts-based presentations inspired by FEMDAC include: that of Luthando Ngema, Siphiwe Motloung, Ongezwa Nomthokozisi Mbele, and Pumelela Nqelenga, titled, Movement and Stagnation for Black Female Academics in the Era of COVID-19 in which authors explore the experiences of female academics as they navigate expectations within the changing higher education arena. Next is Teresa Y. Neely’s, The Day Beyoncé Turned Black: Protest, and Clap Back in the Lyrical and Sonic Sounds of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. And the last includes the poetry of Janice Collins, and her research paper entitled A.C.E.ing It and Healing from Academic Woundedness!

Sub Unit

• African Diaspora SIG

Chair

• Assata Zerai, University of New Mexico

Individual Presentations

• Decolonizing the westernized university: FEMDAC’s Black feminist interventions - Assata Zerai, University of New Mexico

• Movement and Stagnation for Black Female Academics in the Era of COVID-19 - Luthando Ngazile Ngema, University of Kwazulu-Natal; Siphiwe Motloung, Univesity of KwaZulu-Natal; Pumelela Nqelenga, University of Cape Town; Ongezwa Mbele, University of Kwazulu-Natal

• A.C.E.ing It and Healing from Academic Woundedness! - Janice Marie Collins, Ohio University

• The Day Beyoncé Turned Black: Protest, and Clap Back in the Lyrical and Sonic Sounds of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter - TERESA Y NEELY, University of New Mexico University Libraries