‘Thus coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and in so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and everyday.”
(Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p.243).
Decolonising the curriculum is a prevalent topic in universities today, and as academics we feel a responsibility to our students, to the design industry, and to the wider global society to play a role in contributing to this action.
Jess Crilly’s essay ‘Decolonising the library: a theoretical explanation’ has helped me understand the differences in meaning of the term decolonisation and related terms decoloniality, eurocentricity, epistemic totality, and pluriversity, so that I can begin to approach how I can play a role in deconlosing the curriculum through the way I teach, show references, critique and discuss art and design.
Crilly’s essay talks about coloniality living on beyond the period when a colonial power withdraws from its former colonies, that “coloniality refers to the long-standing impacts and ongoing structures of power that came about through colonialism” and “coloniality describes an ongoing present that is pervasive in all aspects of lived experience.”
This suggests we are living within the bias of our colonial past and these biases still affect the way we talk about subjects, the knowledge we have, how we perceive good/bad work, etc. These are, as bell hooks says, the “biases that blind and bind” (hooks, 1995, p.102).
Eurocentricity
‘A perspective of knowledge whose systematic formation began in Western Europe before the middle of the seventeenth century, although its roots are without doubt much older […]. It does not refer to all the modes of knowledge or all Europeans and all epochs. It is instead a specific rationality or perspective of knowledge that was made globally hegemonic, colonizing and overcoming other previous or different conceptual formations as much in Europe as the rest of the world.’ (Quijano and Ennis, 2000, p.549)
My classes, like many other in Europe and US, teach typography from a Eurocentric perspective, tracing the origins of latin typefaces back to writing styles in Europe, the use of the broad-edge pen, Roman inscriptions, Gutenberg’s type and printing press, 42-line bible, etc, to book typefaces, and beyond.
We are already aware of this perspective, so not totally blinded and binded by it, as hooks would say, but teach from this perspective, even if we acknowledge origins of movable type elsewhere in the world and other scripts.
The next steps are working harder to move towards the ‘pluriversity’ approach as advocated by Mignolo and Mbembe, acknowledging and understanding the existence of other traditions and systems.
This essay really helped shape my understanding of decoloniality and opened my eyes to the true meaning. My previous understanding was that decolonising the curriculum / university / library could be achieved by diversifying our references. But the essay explains that:
Decoloniality
Is the “movement to counter, or the struggle against coloniality” (Crilly, 2019, p.3). “Infers an active undoing, deconstructing, or delinking from coloniality”. “In the library or archive, this is different to the process of diversifying collections or ensuring that multiple narratives are represented.” (Crilly, 2019, p.4).
In the conclusion, Crilly quotes Brian Rosenblum: ‘The academic library has a particular relationship to the university, as a site for the collection, production and consumption of knowledge, validating some narratives and excluding others. It can be characterised as both a site that replicates hegemonic power structures but also as a site of resistance and change, including in relation to decoloniality’. (Rosenblum, 2015).
This idea of the library as a site of resistance and change is inspiring, particularly as, by extension, this refers to the use of reading lists and references that we give to students in our teaching.
Glossary
Colonialisation
‘The action of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area’ (OED, 2019).
Decolonisation
‘Withdrawal from its former colonies of a colonial power: the acquisition of political or economic independence by such colonies’ (OED, 2019).
Epistemic totality
‘A characteristic of Eurocentric knowledge. Systems that presume to describe the whole of human knowledge, overriding existing knowledge and systems of belief. This occurred through the colonisation of non-European languages and oral traditions, relegating them to the status of primitive and irrelevant to modern life.’ (Crilly, 2019, p.3).
Pluriversity
An alternative to epistemic totality. Mignolo and Mbembe advocate the concept of epistemic pluriversity. This is the co-existence of different epistemic traditions and systems. Mbembe describes pluriversity as: ‘a process of knowledge production that is open to epistemic diversity. It is a process that does not necessarily abandon the notion of universal knowledge for humanity, but which embraces it via a horizontal strategy of openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions.’ (Mbembe, 2016, p.37, italics by Mbembe)
Bibliography
Crilly, J. (2019). ‘Decolonising the library: a theoretical exploration’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 4(1), pp.6-15
hooks, b. (1995). ‘Talking art as the spirit moves us’, in Art on my mind: visual politics. New York: The New Press
Maldono-Torres, N. (2007) ‘On the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept’, Cultural Studies, 21(2/3), pp.240–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548.
Mbembe, A.J. (2016) ‘Decolonizing the university: new directions’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 15(1), pp.29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474022215618513.
Oxford English Dictionary (2019) Cited by Kennedy, D. (2016) Decolonization: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.2.
Quijano, A. and Ennis, M. (2000) ‘Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from the South, 1(3), pp.533–580. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23906#info_wrap (Accessed: 20 March 2024).
Rosenblum, B. (2015) ‘Decolonizing libraries (extended abstract)’, Brian Rosenblum, 1 February. Available at: http://www.librarycamp.co.uk/2015/03/decolonizing-libraries-extended.html/ (Accessed: 20 March 2024).