EDS341 Decolonial Theory

In this course we explore positions in academic writing associated with the South, with First Nations, and indigenous, subaltern, feminist and more-than-human scholarship. We introduce students to research that attempts to decolonize theory by challenging, decentring and destabilizing universal explanations of human reality, and by creating awareness about other forms of knowing and being. Much of the de-colonial writing we consider respond critically to different kinds of colonial legacies, processes of invisibilization and marginalization, the pressure from extractive economies, environmental damage, and exclusionary politics of recognition.

EDS 341 introduces the students to the idea of situated knowledge. Students will be asked to ponder on the power of universal knowledge production. What are the implications of universal claims to knowledge with the capacity to explain the world as it is, while other kinds of knowledge are deemed partial and local? We read and discuss a series of texts written from different ‘world positions’ and based on different post-, de-, anti- and settler colonial perspectives that address issues of elimination, marginalization, recognition, history writing, epistemological and ontological pluralism, and more-than-human relationality. The aim is not to challenge the students to dismiss any academic traditions, but to increase awareness about knowledge practices’ limited epistemological and ontological reach. The students are encouraged to think through the implications of increasing awareness of this kind.

• Students will gain a good understanding of perspectives within the post-development literature that questions universal claims to knowledge about the human condition, human improvement and the world order.
• Students will be familiar with central theoretical debates on decolonization, pluralism and human-non-human interrelations.
• Students will be able to identify power mechanisms in dominant knowledge production and use this insight to capture the meaning and purpose of decolonial critique.
• Students will through interactive learning be able to reflect on the implications of applying situated knowledge as a research strategy.