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That the West invented science. That the West alone knows how to think; that at the borders of the Western world there begins the shadowy realm of primitive thinking (…) Cesaire, 1950, p. 69
Higher education is a colonial education. It is an experience that is dominated by peoples, histories and ideas of the Euro-West, wherein the valuing of contributions of a few is entrenched in textbooks and required reading lists. Absent is the majority of humanity, save the odd critical studies course or area studies minor, which these exceptions prove the rule. The idea of decolonization returns because colonization continues, upheld and maintained in systems, socio-economic hierarchies, institutions and logics; Nkrumah (1965) spoke of neocolonialism, Quijano (2000) of coloniality. In what follows we begin with a diagnosis and then turn to new directions, exploring horizons we may seek to move toward.
In the dance of reinvention, steps are made in many directions. Some appear as progressive, but are illusions; others give impressions of mundane regularity and ignite fires of resistance. What we call for is decolonization, but not what we see in much of the discourse. We need not a ‘decolonization’ of what some call for: representation. Nor do we need a ‘decolonization’ of addition, nor of even of balance, as Achebe (2000) has spoken. This is a call for the ceasing of colonist ideas and attitudes, a confrontation of the mind not of the hand, from which we may then contest logics, systems, structures, and institutions. Can one say that colonialist attitudes of superiority have ended when some are valued over others, and when many continue to be dehumanized? The dehumanized life is not equally valued, health not equally funded, rights not equally protected, justice not equally granted, work not equally paid. We could cite statistics of the outcomes of systemic dehumanization, past and present. If such a case is demanded, a wealth of literature is available. Evidence abound, if we stop and listen, as Malcom X called society to do. Establishing that dehumanization exists, within individuals, institutions and societies, is not our objective. We draw our attention to how colonialist ideas and attitudes are inculcated, encultured and normalized through higher education.
We return to Amie Cesaire, who pointed out that the colonialist established superiority by rewriting history. What is viewed as the pinnacle of modernity, regardless of the age or area, is the colonialist. As then, is now. We are taught the history of science with Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein. We are taught about ethics with Mill, Kant, Hobbes, Bentham, Rawls, Singer, Nozick, Gilligan, Walzer. We are taught about economics with Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, Keynes. We are taught about psychology with Wundt, Hall, Watson, Freud, Jung, Adler, Skinner, Mendel, Pavlov, Thorndike, Ebbinghaus, Galton, Binet, Bandura, Rogers. We are taught about public affairs and policy with Locke, Rousseau, de Tocqueville, Madison, Hayek, Schumpeter, Barber, Habermas, Marion. It goes on. Knowledge begins and ends in the Euro-West. It begins and ends with Euro-Western ideas. It begins and continues with Euro-Westerners, nearly all of whom are male. Or, so we are taught.
Reading the dominant offerings of curricula in history, ethics, economics, psychology, public affairs, policy… implicitly and explicitly, there is no knowledge elsewhere, not at least any that matters. There is nothing outside of the Euro-Western cannon that is worthy of consideration, or worthy of inclusion. Thus, the complete absence of anything else, from any other place or people, in curricula. Except, one might add, when oriented to be a form of ridicule and rebuke. The derogatory ways of engaging with ideas outside of Euro-Western thought have been repeated for hundreds of years and normalized (Amin, 1988; Kiros, 2005, p. 99; Mbembe, 2013, p. 63; Said, 1978). This is but one tool in the box of dehumanization. As Mbembe notes, in “its avid need for myths through which to justify its power, the Western world considered itself the center of the earth and the birthplace of reason, universal life, and the truth of humanity” (2016, p. 11). Undoubtedly, there are Critical Studies courses and occasional faculty that counter the dominant trend. We point to the dominant narrative, not to the exceptions that prove it.
The training and education granted to the majority in their experience of higher education is not an accurate rendering. All fields of knowledge have much deeper origins. Leading thinkers existed centuries before, as seen in the works of Ibn Sina (e.g. The Canon of Medicine (1025) and The Book of Healing (1027), which were used as textbooks around the world for hundreds of years, written when Europe was in the Dark Ages. Those advancements were predated by Chinese and Indian scholarship. Similarly absent are lineages and histories that show the social sciences having originated in North Africa with Ibn Khaldun (1377) and that Enlightenment ideas may have been earlier cultivated in the Ethiopian highlands (Kiros, 2005). Political development in Africa is not considered at all (Diop, 1960). A faulty disregard is offered by adjectives: modern science, contemporary ethics, European enlightenment. We may also speak of extracted and expropriated knowledge, which Adesanmi analogizes with the Yoruba proverb about the boy, never having left his family farm, proclaims his father’s farm to be the largest in the world. The Western conception of originality and innovation, Adesanmi explains (2020, p. 56), is when Euro-Westerners are hearing about an idea, philosophy or theory “for the first time from a Western source”, otherwise they go unheard. These are fictions. Manufactured, insidious fictions. It is a process of inculcation, enculturation and normalization of dehumanization, as the ideas and contributions of others are removed and replaced. It is also a cleansing and sanitization of other ways of thinking, viewing and conceptualizing that diverge from that found in the Euro-West.
The oppression witnessed in the Euro-West is not coincidental. Serendipity or historical accident are not at fault. These are not legacies being overcome. Rather, the ideas that are the foundation of discrimination and oppression are upheld, perpetuated and entrenched in our curricula. As Memmi noted in 1957 (p. 74), discrimination is not “an incidental detail, but as a consubstantial part of colonialism,” indeed, it is “one of the most significant features of the colonialist.” Discrimination may be experienced as an event, but it exists as a product of an ideological system and institutional structure. When we are taught about overt colonialist oppression, we are given examples of systems past, of Nazism and Apartheid. Cesaire and Mbembe note how the ideological roots of discrimination, oppression, and genocidal practices were acceptable and advocated when they were practiced on others. Colonized non-Euro-Western peoples experienced colonialist oppression for centuries in slavery, on the plantation and in the colony. For the Euro-West, those who fled persecution in Europe went on to inflict genocide upon indigenous peoples. The plantation existed alongside the liberty and fraternity of the so-called enlightenment. Slavery existed alongside ‘all men were created equal’. Colonization existed alongside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Germany conducted the first genocide of the 20th century in the colony, of the Herero people in what is today Namibia (Mamdani, 2001). The ideologies and outcomes of the genocidal systems unleashed by the Euro-West became only evil when they were practiced in Europe. Or, so that rendering of the history goes.
While the manifestations have changed, systems perpetuating colonialist discrimination and oppression have not. The Cameroonian scholar and philosopher Mbembe describes its modern form as consisting of
placing the greatest number of those that we regard as undesirable in intolerable conditions, to surround them daily, to inflict upon them, repeatedly, an incalculable number of racist jabs and injuries, to strip them of all their acquired rights, to smoke them out of their hives and dishonor them until they are left with no choice but to self-deport. (2016, p. 58)
Normalizing dehumanization. Some calculable (e.g. carding, ‘random’ checks, lower pay, expulsions, imprisonment), some incalculable (e.g. ‘othering’ of look, social exclusion). These are experiences that are omnipresent for those who are kept at a lower class in order for the dominant to maintain status and privilege.
That some benefit by colonialist systems is not coincidental. Nor, as we have been often told, is it circumstantial or rooted in ignorance. Oppression was apparently not visible within the past, within those institutions, within those socio-cultural settings. These are intentionally created and upheld fictions. Mbembe (2013, p. 45) corrects this: “far from being spontaneous, the belief was cultivated, nourished, reproduced, and disseminated by a set of theological, cultural, political, economic, and institutional mechanisms.” The rapist and the thief were not blinded by history, policy or attitude. Injustice was and is apparent. Drawing upon the Ethiopian rationalist philosopher, Zara Yacob (1599-1692), who predated Descartes by nearly a century, Kiros reflects on the philosophy Zara Yacob expounds on the intentionality of evil:
Those who subjected the Jew to the torture chamber, and those who consciously enslaved and colonized others chose to do so. They chose wickedness to enrich themselves. Some will mistakenly think that these were classic cases of ignorance moving people to choose evil. I disagree. I think instead that these are powerful cases that prove Zara Yacob’s thesis that choosing wicked things produces wicked human beings with wicked characters that easily lead them to choose wickedness over and over again. (Kiros, 2005, p. 66)
That the beneficiaries of systems of colonialist discrimination maintain it, and continue their wickedness, ought not surprise. Justifications are advanced and adopted, given and granted. We are told that the colonizers are not beneficiary of ill-distribution, this is the reward of hard work; the colonized are not deprived, this is the product of indolence and unbelievable laziness. No better a narrative could rationalize privilege and destitution (Memmi, 1957, p. 79). To be clear, we are not speaking strictly about race. Justifications of oppression have long been rooted in colonial conceptualizations of ‘race’, the utilization of which is steeped within the colonial project. Liberation requires breaking free from these chains, and their shapeshifting forms. As Mbembe (2013) explains, the oppression that was once rooted in a biology is being generalized into biologies alongside the security state, what he calls the ‘Becoming Black of the world’ (2013, p. 6), or “the dissolving of human beings into things, objects, and merchandise” (2013, p. 11). Building upon this broader conceptualization of framing oppression and discrimination, we are speaking about systems that privilege and systems that dehumanize and marginalize. People of all colours and backgrounds can seek the benefits of colonial systems, even if such are only partly granted to some (Nkrumah, 1968). That the oppressed exploit and marginalize others does not make it any less wicked. Anyone can perpetuate the enculturation and normalization of colonial ideologies through their curricula, and thereby throughout society (Thiong’o, 2012). Perpetuated, nonetheless. Our resistance is of the colonialist education system, as per Nkrumah (1968) and Cabral (1977), not of peoples, colours or backgrounds.
As much as we are speaking against colonialist dehumanization, we are also speaking against colonialist privilege. While some of the leaders of the struggle against colonialism and its structures pointed out the denigration of the colonizers as they oppress (e.g. Cesaire, Fanon, Mbembe, Memmi), others have criticized the ways in which the continuation of these systems entrenches power and wealth, the colonialist privilege (e.g. Amin, Chang, Mbembe, Rodney). Of the former group, arguments have been made that colonialism and its systems may inflict suffering and exploit those in the colonies, or those colonized within them, but that suffering and exploitation, they argue, are not contained. Like a virus, the ideologies of oppression spread (Amin, 2004). Mbembe (2016) argues that brutalities inflicted upon others, as in European colonialism, transformed the colonizers, themselves becoming wicked. Democratic norms and values morphed into hatred and enmity, inflicted upon themselves. As then, also today. The privileges of the plantations of yesterday were visible, their savagery direct, apparent for all. Colonialist discrimination today renders the savagery opaque, hidden, shifting in form: sweatshops afar, temporary workers nearby; tiered work permits with threats of deportation and blacklists; lives of indebtedness lived for the dream of a child’s unlikely escape; bailouts and subsidies when privilege is touched, bankruptcy and foreclosure for lives unequally valued. Privilege demands; their bananas and tomatoes arrive clean and fresh, without blemish, at the local supermarket every day of the year, or delivered to their door by drone without need of seeing anyone involved. There is utter dismay and angst when these privileges are disrupted or delayed. Privilege makes ease, built upon the oppression of others. The statuses of the system are devoid of visible exploitation, upholding the colonialist privilege narrative: the Protestant ethic of well-earned, God-granted wealth gained from hard work, values unknown to the poor.
After the gun, the chalkboard
When Euro-Western ideas and people are presented as the fountain, foundation, and future of knowledge, their ideas shape how policies are crafted, laws are passed, assessments made, relations in society influenced. This presentation does not only misrepresent the collective, it disfigures the disempowered. Adesanmi (2020) explains: “It takes effort and considerable organization and diligence to tell lies about you or distort your story. Once your story is distorted, your world is equally distorted.” (p. 56). What is taught matters; it shapes privilege as much as it shapes alienation and dehumanization (Fanon, 1952, 1963; Thiong’o, 2012). The conscious and unconscious ways of discriminating not only work against the oppressed in the hands of those who benefit, but also the dehumanized in viewing themselves (Baldwin, 1963). The oppressed are left “hating what they are and seeking to be what they are not” (Mbembe, 2013, p. 33). The results can be, and have been, disastrous (Mamdani, 1996, 2001). We may even become arrogant with our mastery of self-debasing knowledge, but what appears as a path to freedom is snake hole.
This is not the first time that Euro-Western personalities and their oft-repeated philosophies and worldviews resulted in the abandonment of what was previously well-established knowledge (al-Ghazali, 1095). In the more recent experience, Thiong’o reminded us that colonialism enforced by the gun was unsustainable, colonization of the mind much more gentle, even apparently charitable: “The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom” (Thiong’o, 1986, p. 9). The maintenance of relations with do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do have impacts that are systemic, society-wide, and consistent (Amin, 1976, 1997; Chang, 2003; Rodney, 1972). Questions thus arise about how Higher Education offers such a bland platter, for each meal, and every day. Education systems are made of individuals, their practices reflective of its history. Students of yesterday are faculty of tomorrow. Authorities of ideological lineages are akin to scholars of monarchies; depth of intricate detail, but narrow knowledge. Campus by campus, things look the same: Geographically, temporally and linguistically limited. Replication automated. The child resembles the parent. Systems and relationships continue (Thiong’o, 2012).
The authority of knowledge and the authority to convey it are not natural conditions. The constructed lineages we have been taught are not an organic, neutral rendering of reality. What has become ‘established’ and ‘foundational’ knowledge are cannons that have been crafted, their judgements and tastes reproduced (Said, 1978, pp. 19-20). Nothing beyond what the cannonizers seek is sought. Said reminds us that systems of misrepresentation are not merely misreadings in need of correction, balance or better representation. Rather, the intentional creation of these lineages and narratives operate as “representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting. In other words, representations have purposes, they are effective much of the time, they accomplish one or many tasks” (Said, 1978, p. 273). Colonized minds, Thiong’o (1986) reminds, encounter certain literatures and experience ideas with cultivated eyes. Worldviews are shaped not by specific courses, but by repetition. A Euro-Western view of the world is taught, encultured, and passed on (Amin, 1988). The history of ideas, the centre of geographic space, the imagery in literature, the science and scientists, technology and the technologists; all conveying Euro-Western ideology and superiority (Thiong’o, 1986).
Colonialist ideas and attitudes are not imposed upon us by dictators. Not usually. We learn them. Adopt them. Often uncritically, thereby internalizing them, even at our own detriment. While the chains may not be apparent, the colonialist may even be “stronger, more powerful than ever before, hidden inside us” (Ousmane, 1976, p. 84). For Fanon, refusal of colonial systems was not moderation or balance; rather, decolonial struggle was the courage of complete reorientation (1952, 1963). Mbembe (2016, p. 5) revives this call, reminding us that some forms of so-called decolonization are to our deteriment; the crafting of a new generation who will end up “desiring and becoming the accomplice of castration.” A correct rendering, a true decolonization, may indeed require relinquishment. As Cabral (1977) described: “we have to destroy in order to construct a new life.” This does not necessitate violent transformation, it may also mean intentional and proactive retreat and recreation. Ibrahim Niasse and the Community of the Flood lead such a response during the colonization of Senegal, drawing upon their own ideological and religious basis, seeking peaceful cohabitation and collaboration in the ‘one great village’ (Wright, 2013, p. 217). Asad (2018) put forth similar sentiments in his seeking of alternative futures that are radically different from the contemporary liberal capitalist states.
This raises questions of what type of learning the alternative could be: what recreations could be fostered (Abdi, 2013; Mandela, 1994) and in what mediums (Thiong’o, 1986)? What is the role of teachers in that transformation (Abdi, 2009)? While we see a place for balance and representation, even for the ideas of Euro-Western origin that we are angry about, that is not for today. A mind free from colonization, a life lived without the societal constraints part and parcel of that colonialist logic, must encounter these ideas with the suspicion of a silent night. Like the guard dogs who only bark after the hyenas have left; engaging on our terms not reacting to theirs. When our first taste is dehumanizing, we forget its bitterness as it is fed to us year after year. Decolonization of the balance-and-representation type easily takes the form of tokenism, new masks on old ideas or ridicule of an oddity. The slave was not banished from the Colosseum, but given a place. To entertain. To suffer. To die. Included on another’s terms. Systems perpetuated.
We are taught of the desire to ‘consolidate’ ideas, that they become the ‘only game in town.’ Dissent is unwelcome. Alternatives have no space. This ought not be a desired intellectual arena, disastrous for learners, even worse for our resistance of dominant ideologies and norms (Shivji, 2007). Divergence within the bounds that are set by the colonialist fails to allow us to see our own confinement. Recall Baldwin (1963, p. 94): Is this the burning house we desperately wish to enter? We lose sight of the prison walls if we only look out the window. Immensely intelligent and determined people, as Asad (2018, p. 157) notes, are constricted by chains invisible to them; the linguistic, institutional and psychological imprisonment of dominant ideologies. A different future necessitates the freeing of minds, unchained and freed from the rot of colonialist ideas and ideologies. The courage to dislodge Euro-Western centrality should be our starting point, but not our focus. We need new ground to stand on, lest the cracks on the walls simply be painted over (Mbembe, 2020).
We seek decolonization that frees, enables capacities and capabilities, and opens new horizons. New fountains, foundations, and futures must build upon different lineages. This is not a call to cosmopolitanism or post-colonial or post-modern lineages, it may be for some, but ought not necessarily be for all. We do not outline a replacement, for the creativity of new futures and decolonization of our individual and collective minds needs not a replacement of imposition but an opening. A space for growing. Diverse agroecologies have produced unique flora from which we all have drawn benefit. Those spaces of enculturation are our starting point. We return to Cabral:
Culture proves to be the very cornerstone of the liberation movement, and only societies or groups that have preserved their culture are able to mobilize, organize, and struggle against foreign domination. Whatever the ideological or intellectual characteristics of its expression, culture is an essential element in the historical process. It is culture that has the ability (or responsibility) to elaborate or enrich the elements that make for historical continuity and, at the same time, for the possibility of progress (and not regression) of the society. (1977, pp. 173-174)
As Amin (2004) notes, envisioning futures within the confines of dominant ideologies will not lead us to arrive at authentic theoretical thinking unless alternatives are sought. We call for a re-writing of the errors of colonialist superiority, as raised by Cesaire, and we demand that we do so in our own ways.
Conclusions
Our new horizons require new curricula and new ways of learning. We may teach history with Sima Qian, Komnēnḗ, Ibn Ishaq, Hypatia, Ibn Hisham, al-Fihri, Hemachandra, Ban Zhao, Said al Andalusi, Kalhana. We may teach ethics with Sun Tzu, Kindi, al-Samarqandi, Confucius, Walda Heywat, al-Fudayliyya, Razi, Shōtoku, Nan Asmau, Zara Yacob, Farabi, Abdelkader al Jazairi, and a largely unresearched trove of scripts from Timbuktu. We may teach economics with Abu Yusuf, Chanakya, Mahavira, Fan Li, Ibn Khaldun, Wang Anshi and Tusi. We may teach psychology with Balkhi, Ibn Sina, Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Haytham. We may teach public affairs and policy with the contractualist agreements of Ancient Egypt, Miskawayh, Shaybani, Qin Shi Huang and Shafi. None of these are prescriptions, nor are any of these free from their own limitations. Recentering also requires contestation and remaking (such as addressing the male bias).
New fountains and foundations need not reach into the depths of history, we may draw upon the scholars who have informed this work: Achebe, Adesanmi, Amin, Cabral, Chang, Diop, Fanon, Kiros, Mamdani, Mbembe, Quijano, Thiong’o, Nkrumah, Ousmane, Rodney, Said, Shivji, and beyond. Further still, our path need not be one rooted in a literary tradition, cultures offer us richness, new worldviews, new ways. These alternatives are not requirements, they are options. We are not reifying binaries and divisions created for colonialist gain by rejecting them, nor are we romanticizing worldviews and ideologies arising from elsewhere. We are recognizing falsity and wickedness as it is, wherever it is, and opting for alternatives. We are selecting cornerstones for constructing anew, from beyond the walls. These are vantage points from which we can look out at the world from, providing new perspectives. The objective is not to create new systems of exclusion; it is the recovery of the self (Adesanmi, 2020, p. 130) and the facilitation of openings. Knowledge did not begin in the Euro-West, and it will not end there either. As we were taught, no longer. Mamdani (2001, p. xv) argues that “postcolonial studies brings home the fact that intellectual decolonization will require no less than an intellectual movement to achieve this objective.”
We must engage in a process of (re)becoming ourselves, with our own cultures and traditions. In so doing, we will not be beginning from a point of ‘lesser than’ or ‘in comparison of’ or ‘something similar to.’ Fanon reminds us that these stunt and disfigure ourselves in our own minds. Rather, we may set forth down grounded, historically rich, well-trodden roads, heading down new pathways to create afresh. The production of new theory, which Cabral says all revolutionary movements do (including theory in the form of action), will build upon these new foundations, and upon these new foundations, others will add. It is those who follow that may further the systemic change, the opening of new horizons. That direction may be ‘born suddenly’, as Kanafani (1999, p. 10) writes, when a word enters the heart within a single moment. Or, the directions may require cycles of regeneration and renewal. Our vision of change, therefore, ought not only be of today and tomorrow, but of generations. The remaking is already in progress. Leaders are harvesting heirloom seed, the flowers of which are cross-pollinating across geographies and eras. However, the harvest is at risk; those pushing for an expansion of the monocrop wield pesticides and herbicides. There are no side lines to stand on and observe, there is no neutrality, we are all active participants in the (re)making of higher education. With each required reading and with each departmental review we may encourage a flourishing, or we may perpetuate a toxic epistemicide in silence.
