Predicaments of knowledge : decolonisation and deracialisation in universities / Suren Pillay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pillay, Suren, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education, Higher--Social aspects--South Africa.

Education, Higher.

Decolonization--South Africa.

Decolonization.

Racism in higher education--Africa.

Racism in higher education.

Racial justice--South Africa.

Racial justice.

Social justice--South Africa.

Social justice.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 198 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

Published edition.

Place of Publication:

Johannesburg : Wits University Press, 2024.

Summary:

Reflections on race, language, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial knowledge projects that explore the pitfalls and possibilities that face South African universities and a post-apartheid generation inventing the future of knowledge.<br><br><i>Predicaments of Knowledge</i> explores the difficult questions South African universities face after apartheid: Is there a difference between Africanising a university and decolonising a university? Or between deracialising and decolonising curricula taught at universities across disciplines?<br><br>Through a range of reflections on race, language, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial knowledge projects this book clarifies the pitfalls and possibilities that face a post-apartheid generation inventing the future of knowledge.<br><br>Current plans to 'decolonise' the university after apartheid often conflate three distinct but equally important imperatives: decolonisation, deracialisation and Africanisation. These distinction between decolonisation and deracialisation is sometimes conflated in the political demands put to universities as well. By parsing out the distinction between decolonisation, deracialisation and Africanisation Suren Pillay emphasises all three as important but distinct imperatives.<br><br>Drawing on more than two and half decades of the author's participation in these debates, the essays gathered here are to be read as 'interventions' in a larger living debate. They elucidate what our predicaments might be rather than foreclose debate or solutions and are dialogical in spirit even when occasionally polemical in tone. They self-consciously seek to be in conversation with prior continental African and Latin American experiences, as well as offer reflections on current South African debates.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Anti-colonial nationalism and worldliness: remaking the humanities after apartheid

Chapter 2. Between transformation, deracialisation and decolonisation

Chapter 3. Provincialising decolonial theory: comparing the legacies of colonialism in Africa and Latin America

Chapter 4. Conquests, contracts and modernity: political theory and teaching the state in Africa

Chapter 5. Justice and the historically disadvantaged

Chapter 6. Decolonising the history of scientific ways of knowing.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 18 Apr 2025).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781776149070

1776149076

OCLC:

1456541336