[New24] What inspires a conversation about decolonized research? For some, it is an undertaking of overt engagement on the complexities of "re-imagining" the Global South, the myriad of experiences that shape peoples lives and the task of 're-thinking" our knowledge systems and how we relate to the world. For others, it is the challenge of exploring historically discarded knowledge and theory, and producing new and better ways of knowing.
It is not merely a counter-narrative to western ideas about the pursuit of knowledge. It is looking through the eyes of the colonised, not just to voice the voiceless, but to prevent the dying of a people, their culture and their ecosystems.
Simply put, the hegemonisation of knowledge which has occurred largely in sync with colonialisation, has entrenched notions of the developed Global North and the undeveloped Global South, which is still perpetuated today.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a Professor of Sociology, at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, conveys the violence inherent in this as, "epistemicide: the murder of knowledge. Unequal exchanges among cultures have always implied the death of the knowledge of the subordinated culture, hence the death of the social groups that possessed it." |