Unsettling Colonial Innocence: The Complexities of Decolonial Imaginaries

• In Event: Decolonizing Academic Spaces: Engaging Intersectionality, Social Identities, Racial Consciousness, and Action Toward an Anticolonial Education

Abstract

What would happen in a course titled “Decolonizing Education” at a highly selective, hyper-hierarchal, predominately white institution? What does this look/feel like taking place in privileged spaces, on colonized land, and within a social structure like education? This paper will discuss how a class and professor, attempted to unpack what “decolonizing education” means within colonial spaces while re-imagining pedagogical approaches and enacting alternative social arrangements within the classroom. Special attention will be paid to the struggle of “(re)igniting” imaginaries (Green, 1995; Taylor, 2004), moves of settler innocence (Patel, 2016; Tuck and Yang, 2012), and the negotiations around “complex personhood” (Gordon, 1997; Tuck, 2009).

Theoretical Framework(s)

Paulo Freire (1970) stated “in order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform.” (p.49) For Freire this process was enacted through and the result of critical education. Critical educational theorists have noted hidden curriculums (Anyon, 1980; Apple, 1971) within schools leading to the social and cultural reproduction of society (Bourdieu, 1977; Bowles and Gintis, 2011; Giroux, 2001). Many indigenous scholars (Battiste, 2013; Grande, 2004; Tuck and Yang, 2012) have contest formal schooling leads to the social and cultural reproduction of the settler colonial project. The construction of critical decolonial education imaginaries must be formed and cultivated to contest the current colonial project of formal schooling. Greene (1995) discusses how the imaginary allows for young people to see things as if they otherwise could be, an opening through which they can move and a “gateway” to connect the past with the present. For Taylor (2004) the social imaginary is more accessible than social theory, thus allowing for common practice and legitimacy to be shared. Educational social justice and human rights imaginaries need to be challenged and realign to acknowledge how they are/can colonize(d) and/are complicit in the settler colonial project (Patel, 2016; Tuck and Yang, 2012).

Methods/Data

Attention was paid to decolonial methodologies (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Patel, 2016) through the use of counter-storytelling (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002) to capture our journey/history/progress of the class. The classroom was re-invented by both professor and students as a place for learning and (re)imagining, as opposed to performance for grades. The use of social media, discussion boards, meme’s, journaling and in class writing captured the malleableness of students imaginaries. Students ultimately produced a post-trump campus survival guide to pass on to the next class of students as well as the wider university community as a form of sharing knowledge/stories/histories/resistance.

Significance of the study

Students/Professor had difficulties (re)imagining decolonization outside of social justice and human rights projects and their identities as colonized and settler (Patel, 2016). Throughout the class students and professor asked “what they were willing to give up?” if we were really willing to move towards a decolonial society.

Authors

• Alejandro E. Carrión, Northwestern University

• Helen Gutierrez, Northwestern University

• Monica Lizabeth Garcia, Northwestern University

• Danielle Douge, Evanston Township High School

• April-Alexis Navarro, Northwestern University