An obsessively eurocentric anti-Western cult? Contradictions and dangers of decolonial theory in comparative education

• In Event: Is Comparative and International Education Imperialist, Racist, and Patriarchal?

Proposal

The need to challenge lazy assumptions of the normative quality of Western experience is something on which most comparativists can agree. But most decolonial theory is actually marked by what the African scholar Olufemi Taiwo calls ‘obsessive eurocentrism’. Far from parochialising the West, decolonialists’ sweeping demonisations of ‘whiteness’ and Western culture reaffirm the centrality of ‘Western Enlightenment Man’, albeit as malign bogeyman rather than heroic civiliser.
In doing so, decolonial theorists, based primarily in North America, are actually projecting onto the rest of the world the peculiar preoccupations of contemporary American politics. The debates over ‘coloniality’, ‘whiteness’ and so forth that increasingly dominate Anglophone journals and conferences echo the culture wars of the English-speaking world, and of North America in particular. But they are of limited relevance to scholars and educators working in Asia, Africa or most of the Global South. Many Chinese liberals, for example, despair of the narcissistic posturing of ‘white leftists’ (baizuo) ignorant of and uninterested in the plight of those in China seeking to challenge state oppression. Lofty theorising on pervasive ‘Western hegemony’ or dismissal of the ‘jargon of liberal democracy’ are felt as gross betrayals by many suffering brutal oppression under non-Western autocracies.
This is just one reflection of the political naivety that characterises decolonial scholarship. Not only do decolonial theorists echo and amplify the arguments of crypto-fascist non-Western regimes; their obsessive anti-Westernism and demonisation of ‘whiteness’ offers a gift to nationalist populists in the West itself. Dogmatic demonisation of ‘colonial Western modernity’ and ‘whiteness’ may win plaudits in inward-looking scholarly circles, where adherents of the decolonial cult hail each other’s ideological purity. But in the eyes of a wider public, espousal of simplistic anti-Western, anti-white tribalism threatens utterly to marginalise and discredit comparative education as a serious academic endeavour. Framing monumental and complex shared challenges confronting humanity - such as climate change - as attributable simply to ‘colonial Western modernity’, is not just demonstrably inaccurate, but politically self-defeating. It threatens to discredit causes decolonialists profess to hold dear.

Renewal of comparative education as a scholarly field requires breaking the fever-dream of intoxicating dogma. Indeed, a factor in our present predicament is over-reliance on theory at the expense of history. Theory, we should remind ourselves, is an explanatory tool, not a thought-bypass mechanism; it should be used cautiously and reflectively, not venerated as sacred text. The danger from decolonial theory arises from its elevation to an unchallengeable orthodoxy. Countering that danger requires honest engagement with historical nuance and complexity. It also means confronting global politics as it is, not as cloistered Western-based academics imagine it to be. Would-be champions of social justice need to commit to challenging established elites not just in the West - where this can be risk-free or even professionally advantageous - but in Asia, Africa and beyond - where the risks are often very real, and the need to speak out correspondingly urgent.

Author

• Edward Vickers, Kyushu University