A Decolonizing Epistemological Critique of Historical Thinking: Time, Tangibility, Science, and the Grand Narrative

• In Event: Framing Instructional Design in Humanities and Social Science Classrooms

Abstract

In this paper presentation, I explore the implications of historical thinking for a pedagogical context that has, at its core, a decolonizing commitment. More specifically, this theoretical paper explores what the author argues are four crucial epistemological problems with historical thinking as a disciplinary approach to the past that reinforces Western and colonial approaches to understanding and “doing history.” These four concerns, briefly, are historical thinking’s commitment to Western conceptions of time, its privileging of tangible documentary evidence, its deference to Western scientific method as a justification for its methodological articulation and its reinscription of a Western Eurocentric grand narrative & concomitant inability to dislodge the grand narrative. Together, these concerns impede the development of a decolonizing history praxis.

Author

• Bryan Smith, James Cook University - Australia