This blog post presents decoloniality as education in being emancipated ontologically in sense and epistemological enlightenment.

Seeing and knowing beyond the locus of enunciation

What is the name that first comes to your mind when you think of the world’s highest mountain? What is the story (knowledge) behind this name? I suspect that your answer to my question would be Mount Everest. This commonly accepted name emerges from a British colonial geopolitical locus of enunciation (Grosfoguel, 2011). The United Kingdom’s Royal Geographic Society in 1865 gave the name ‘Mount Everest’ to the world’s highest mountain based on the recommendation of Major General Sir Andrew Waugh, Surveyor General of India. Sir George Everest was Waugh’s predecessor (see Arnette, 2020).

‘Mount Everest’ named as the world’s highest mountain through British colonial authority is an example of the sense in which the roots of our knowing and knowledge validation in our education about the world comes by the influence of British colonial legacies. As learners, we can either accept or reject this meaning and way of knowing. Seeing and knowing beyond this British colonial locus of enunciation disputes authority in the name ‘Mount Everest’ by dismantling the given story (one version of knowledge) through the discovery of unencountered stories (multiple versions of knowledge) in recognition of the world’s highest peak. Decoloniality as education in being emancipated ontologically in sense and epistemological enlightenment.

‘How “Mount Everest” came to be named is an example of the sense in which the roots of our knowing and knowledge validation in our education about the world comes by the influence of British colonial legacies.’

Mignolo and Walsh (2018, p. 381) view decoloniality as ‘a way of being in the world, interrogating the structures of knowledge and of knowing that have thrown us’. In considering this further, a critical moment of reflection for sharing was when I led an educational research field trip in 2018 with partners in Nepal. My Nepalese co-investigator colleague spoke about seeing many people from the UK using the capital city of Kathmandu as a starting point for their supervised treks to the Mount Everest base camp. I remember turning my head to hear this. I looked at him and said: ‘Mount Everest! What is the name given to that mountain by you and the people of Nepal?’ He paused. I sensed that he immediately knew and understood what I was getting to in asking him to step outside of his colonial habitus (Ayling, 2019). ‘Of course, it’s called Sagarmatha’, he replied with a smile. Hearing this name in discussion with my Nepalese colleague offered me a new curiosity for seeing and knowing beyond the innate locus of enunciation shaped by the culture of my dominant British socialisation and education. Sagarmatha translates in English to ‘Forehead of the Sky’ or ‘Goddess of the Sky’. There is a deeper story (knowledge) for sharing behind this name.

Cultural pluralism

Even with the Nepali government in 1952 arriving at the name ‘Sagarmatha’, the world’s highest peak has been named differently by other cultures over the years. In the 18th century the Tibetan name Chomolungma was applied translating as ‘Goddess Mother of the World’. In the 19th century, geographical surveyors in India named the peak ‘Gamma’. In the mid-20th century ‘Zhumulangma feng’ was being used by China as their authorised name of the mountain. This variety of cultural perspective towards the single phenomenon of world’s highest mountain provides a useful example of how seeing and knowing can be disputed in our naming and in our meaning-making, and thus the knowledge and knowing. Cultural pluralism is a key tenet of decoloniality, in recognition of the multiplicity of ways of being and seeing (the ontological) and in knowing (the epistemological) in advancing education.

The critical educator in the democratisation of knowledge

For the critical educator, seeing and knowing beyond the locus of enunciation is as an embodied decolonial thinker. One example in becoming this critical educator is in shifting from a traditional orientation in meaning-making of the past, present and future, to the critical orientation. The traditional orientation makes the past significant and relevant to present actuality and its future extension as a continuity of obligatory life patterns over time. In overtaking this, the critical orientation is open to epistemological enlightenment that ruptures, deconstructs and decodes inculcation of the traditional, so that it loses its power as a source for present-day and future orientation (see Rüsen, 2004). An example in this mode of critical education is where decoloniality demands inquiry into colonial narratives that produce abyssal thinking – that is, making certain groups of people and their perspectives of life non-existent and invisible, radically inferior and radically dangerous (de Sousa Santos, 2018). Therefore, decoloniality for seeing and knowing beyond the locus of enunciation in emancipating the education and learner must be applied, as Eriksen (2022, p. 111) suggests: ‘an analytic and praxis for humanisation, dignity, and democratisation of knowledge’.

References

Arnette, A. (2020, December 14). What’s in a name: Everest, Chomolungma, Sagarmatha? (Blog post). https://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2020/12/14/whats-in-a-name-everest-chomolungma-sagarmatha/

Ayling, P. (2019). Frantz Fanon: Whiteness, colonialism and the colonial habitus. In Distinction, exclusivity and whiteness. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5781-7_3

de Sousa Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press.

Eriksen, K. G. (2022). Coloniality and national exceptionalism in Norwegian citizenship education: Engaging the ontological baseline. In M. L. Moncrieffe (Ed.) Decolonising curriculum knowledge: International perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 101–111). Palgrave Macmillan.

Grosfoguel, R. (2011). Decolonizing post-colonial studies and paradigms of political-economy: Transmodernity, decolonial thinking, and global coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(1), 1–34. https://doi.org/10.5070/t411000004.

Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press.

Rüsen, J. (2004). Historical consciousness: Narrative structure, moral function, and ontogenetic development. In P. Seixas (Ed.) Theorizing historical consciousness (pp. 63–85). University of Toronto Press.