Aimee-Sophia Puteri LIM1, Siti Umairah Bte Adnan2, NG Jin Ying Emily3, Shelley Tuazon GUYTON3,*
1Global Studies Programme and Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), NUS
2Department of Japanese Studies, FASS, NUS
3Global Studies Programme, FASS, NUS
Lim, A-S. P., Siti Umairah Adnan, Ng, E. J. Y., & Guyton, S. T. (2024). Intersectional encounters with decolonising in a Singapore university [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-stguyton-et-al/
SUB-THEME
Others
KEYWORDS
Decolonial praxis, educational equity, co-learning, intersectionality
CATEGORY
Lightning Talk
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
We present here a collective reflection on the classroom as a space for encountering and co-learning about decolonising, based on our individual and shared experiences in an undergraduate fourth-year seminar in Global Studies called, “Colonial, Anti-colonial and Postcolonial Globalizations.” The writing for this paper was co-produced as individual reflections and group dialogue between four students and the course lecturer centred around these six themes: positions, expectations, frustrations, discoveries, lingering questions, and hopes. In this way, we present a multi-faceted illustration of our classroom encounters with the topic of decolonisation, which happened through readings, films, discussions, a museum visit, and a Participant Action Research project, and which we reflect on by acknowledging our positionalities and the intersectionalities of our identities in encountering these materials and experiences.
This paper is an intellectual experiment, a personal process of hearing and understanding, and a labour of great care, for each other and for our potential audiences. We hope it imparts some clarity and inspiration regarding intersectional encounters with decolonising in the university. Mignolo and Walsh (2018) challenge us to consider the potential and prospects for the “decolonial for”—why, how, and for whom we imagine and put into praxis “decolonial otherwise.” We extend this question to the university classroom as itself a potential space for “decolonial otherwise” in learning.
The writing group first gathered six months after the conclusion of the course for informal and reflective sharing to generate reflection questions for each topic, based on our memories of the class experience. We then journaled individual responses to our group-generated questions, and then returned together for a second and third meeting to share our reflections. From there, we divided and wrote our contributions to this paper. In this way, knowledge about decolonising here was co-produced between the five of us from different positions and perspectives in the university yet also produced from a collective standpoint, together.
We hope that this collective reflection gives educators some insights on how co-learning and more horizontal/non-hierarchical approaches to learning about decolonisation can be designed, and the potential value of doing so within higher education. These are a few insights that surfaced in each of our reflective discussion topics:
- Expectations: Awareness of our own expectations (individual, shared, academic and personal) proved to be an important mode for making our various entry points into a collective dialogue on decolonisation.
- Frustrations: While learning about decolonising, we individually and collectively felt a sense of empowerment through the realisation of the validity of our experiences, but this quickly turned into frustration, as we were unsure what to do about it.
- Discoveries: Many of our personal and intellectual discoveries through encountering decolonisation entailed re-viewing the mundane aspects of our everyday lives with a new, decolonial lens.
- Lingering Questions: We were left with a list of lingering questions, which was useful for understanding how our perspectives continued to develop on decolonisation, even after the course ended.
- Hopes: Our hopes were contingent on our various positions and roles in society, and shaped what decolonisation meant to us. Those who were Singaporean citizens, for example, had hopes aimed at seeing tangible decolonisation efforts beyond the classroom, and questioning sources and creation of knowledge.
REFERENCES
Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press.