vix.ing · top · new · best · stats · spec

Rehumanising the university for an alternative future: decolonisation, alternative epistemologies and cognitive justice

2019/05/01 by Marcelle C. Dawson
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Digital Education and Society #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Higher Education Practises and Engagement

paper · doi:10.1080/1070289x.2019.1611072

crossref issued 2019/05/01 · crossref published 2019/05/01 · crossref published-online 2019/05/01 · openalex publication_date 2019/05/01 · crossref created 2019/05/02 · crossref published-print 2020/01/02 · crossref deposited 2022/09/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Reflecting on the shifting landscape of higher education, this discussion highlights how inequality is entrenched within the university, largely as a result of Western-inspired, commodified knowledge production processes. The article grapples with scholarship on cognitive justice and builds a case for transformative resistance that is simultaneously anti-colonial and anti-neoliberal, within, against and beyond the Westernised university. The discussion concentrates specifically on epistemic hegemonies and internationalisation, and argues that substantive decolonisation as a counterhegemonic project must entail an intellectual element that is aimed at transforming the knowledge structures that facilitate dehumanisation. The pursuit of more equitable, anti-racist futures must thus involve the identification and obliteration of deeply embedded epistemic hegemonies, which have been created through the dehumanising processes of capital expansion and colonisation. This article offers a hopeful approach that encourages the collaborative creation of a counter-university that actively pursues epistemic diversity as a pathway to alternative futures.

Citations