Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons
The international Summer School, Decolonizing Knowledge and Power, is an undertaking that aims at enlarging the scope of the conversation (analysis and investigation) of the hidden agenda of modernity (that is, coloniality) in the sphere of knowledge and higher education. The program is a lecture intensive seminar and will take place completely online given the Covid-19 crisis. This course is offered through the Center of Study and Investigation for Decolonial Dialogues, in Barcelona, Spain.
Our summer institute will question basic assumptions engrained in the idea of modernity, progress, and development and will encourage thinking and living in search of non-Eurocentric and non-corporate social and human values.
We will arrive at “decolonial horizons” by following three interrelated routes: a) embracing epistemic diversity in order to move beyond the mono-epistemic privilege of the West; b) examining the different moments of imperial/colonial histories and geographies in which the West colonized other cultures, civilizations and historical systems; c) providing a series of basic questions and concepts to facilitate the decolonization of power, knowledge and being.
De-colonizing knowledge means then to call into question the principles that sustain the current dominant knowledge, understanding and expectation of what society should be like, how social subjects should behave, what kind of knowledge is accepted as relevant, what applications receive grants or fellowships, and which knowledge and understanding is encouraged and which is devalued, silenced or simply not supported. De-colonizing knowledge means to open up horizons and visions that are generally denied by mainstream academia and media.