Imagining 'another' education: re-humanising education with a critical decolonial horizon

Having completed an MRes project on decolonial philosophy and its relevance to educational research, I am currently interested in exploring alternative provisions of education, specifically in Latin America, which are potentially unsettling the de-humanising effects of education systems based on hegemonic Western epistemologies and knowledge production. This project builds upon my own critical decolonial horizon I sketched during that MRes guided by public critical intellectuals like Fanon (1952 & 1961), Wynter (1995; 2000; 2003), Grosfoguel (2012; 2013; 2016), Cusicanqui (2012), Santos (2010: 2018) and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021) and the key themes emerging from their insights. In line with these, the project align itself with a critical decolonisation horizon aimed at dismantling the key articulation between the dehumanising effects of colonialism and imperialism, knowledge production as well as the educational institutions and the Western epistemologies they uphold.

Inspired by Sylvia Wynter's theory of the human and her conception of historical discourse organised by a series of epistemic breaks (2000; 2003), this project aims to interrogate the validity of Western philosophical thought, humanism and knowledge as universal and investigate the implication of this in knowledge production, education institutions and the epistemologies they uphold. This intends to provide a deeper understanding of how the dehumanisation is perpetuated by educational processes and institutions.

In addition, in order to learn more about how it may be possible to unsettle such educational settings and processes which are still operating under dehumanising logics, this project will also have an action research approach by exploring existing alternative 'liminal' educational experiences (specifically in Latin America, but not necessarily limited to the region) that create 'alternative life-activity in their own right' (Bogues, 2006) and can potentially destabilise hegemonic conceptions of education, epistemic hegemonies and meanings of what it means to be human. Engaging with existing alternative educational experiences will encourage critical reflection on the conditions of possibility and constraints on radically re-humanising education provisions and how to potentially create collective spaces to imagine 'others' anew with the aim to liberate human from 'Man's hegemony (Fanon, 1961 Wynter, 2000; 2003; 2015).

For this purpose, going 'South' (Santos, 2010) is a conscious decision and a commitment to 'post-abyssal thinking' (Santos, 2018) and to centring those historically silenced epistemological accounts, their ontologically denied peoples and their knowledges. Thus, special attention will be given to how this project engages in 'a meaningful way' (Cusiquanqui, 2012) with the 'South' in order to avoid perpetuating old practices of 'epistemic extractivism' denounced within the critical decolonial debate on the twenty first century (Grosfoguel, 2016; Cusicanqui, 2012).

My argument is that although it is undeniable that education has had and continues to have a key role in the dehumanisation of humanity, I also believe that exactly because of the powerful nature of this, educational spaces also hold a huge potential in which teaching can be done to transgress (hooks, 1994) in order to unsettle the coloniality of knowledge and power (Wynter, 2003). This project is committed to imagining another type of education that is radically human (Fanon, 1961: Wynter, 2003; 2015) as well as to contributing to the wider critical academic debates surrounding critical decolonisation of the twenty first century, the geopolitics of knowledge and philosophies of education.