Introductory texts by Elizabeth Nzuki
Decolonising Philosophy: A Handbook, 2024
In 2023/24, SOAS University of London launched the third year of its Co-Creator Internships Proje... more In 2023/24, SOAS University of London launched the third year of its Co-Creator Internships Project (CCIP) scheme for undergraduates enrolled in the School. The purpose of these internships is to grow collaborative communities of practice, and to support developments in learning, teaching, and assessment. Appreciating the value of this attractive institutional opportunity, four members of the academic staff teaching on SOAS’s BA World Philosophies programme developed the UK’s first ever Decolonising Philosophy Curriculum Toolkit with four undergraduate students across the humanities and social sciences. The hope was that the toolkit would radically enhance ways in which philosophy is taught and learned at advanced secondary and tertiary education levels in the UK.
The Project’s output, as presented here, is in a handbook form rather than a short and concise guide to decolonising philosophy curricula. As the team’s work developed, we collectively realised that, beyond providing a practical manual (the toolkit), it was necessary to provide the theoretical underpinnings of what we have understood the work of decolonising philosophy to be. After all, doing needs to be accompanied by thinking. As such, in this document, you will find an overview of the historical, institutional, and political context in which we work and what moved staff towards developing the UK’s only ‘World Philosophies’ undergraduate degree programme; §1 an extended argument for why decolonising the philosophy curriculum is required; §2 a detailed guide to implementing critical
pedagogy in one’s practice; §3 an extended argument for decolonising assessment and formative activities in philosophy programmes; and §4 an example of how an epistemology module can be transformed to reflect decolonising principles as well as to provide students with a much richer account of the value and place of epistemological practices. Throughout the handbook, we have provided a list of references and additional sources to assist teachers and students in engaging with the recommendations we make.
The project is orientated around the following objectives:
▪ To face up honestly to and shed light on the ways in which Anglo-European racism, imperialism, and colonialism have adversely affected the organisation, learning content, classroom environment, formative learning activities, and summative assessment diet of philosophy curricula in the UK (and in the Anglo-European context more broadly). No one can reasonably deny that one of the multiple legacies of western imperial domination—especially the European colonisation of Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, North America, Central America, and South America8—has been (i) a racialised account of what counts as authoritative knowledge; (ii) a racialised account of whose knowledge matters; and (iii) a racialised account of what takes pride of place in what education institutions teach and how education institutions teach and assess that learning content.
▪ To offer constructive and implementable suggestions for expanding and transforming existing philosophy curricula at secondary and tertiary education levels, so that teachers and learners have richer, more in-depth, inclusive, and uplifting pedagogical experiences. This progressive discourse, as we will detail in subsequent sections, focuses on salient themes from critical
pedagogy.
▪ To provide teachers and learners with effective ways of, what we call, redirecting the flow of epistemic power away from the Anglo-European world that is ideologically positioned at the ‘centre’10 to a horizontal, comparative, and dialogical model in which no geolocation occupies a privileged position. In this way, thinking in terms of world philosophies is the sublation of philosophy itself, to the point that philosophy as the love of wisdom logically requires practicing deep thinking and reflection in a global, critical, and comparative manner.
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Introductory texts by Elizabeth Nzuki
The Project’s output, as presented here, is in a handbook form rather than a short and concise guide to decolonising philosophy curricula. As the team’s work developed, we collectively realised that, beyond providing a practical manual (the toolkit), it was necessary to provide the theoretical underpinnings of what we have understood the work of decolonising philosophy to be. After all, doing needs to be accompanied by thinking. As such, in this document, you will find an overview of the historical, institutional, and political context in which we work and what moved staff towards developing the UK’s only ‘World Philosophies’ undergraduate degree programme; §1 an extended argument for why decolonising the philosophy curriculum is required; §2 a detailed guide to implementing critical
pedagogy in one’s practice; §3 an extended argument for decolonising assessment and formative activities in philosophy programmes; and §4 an example of how an epistemology module can be transformed to reflect decolonising principles as well as to provide students with a much richer account of the value and place of epistemological practices. Throughout the handbook, we have provided a list of references and additional sources to assist teachers and students in engaging with the recommendations we make.
The project is orientated around the following objectives:
▪ To face up honestly to and shed light on the ways in which Anglo-European racism, imperialism, and colonialism have adversely affected the organisation, learning content, classroom environment, formative learning activities, and summative assessment diet of philosophy curricula in the UK (and in the Anglo-European context more broadly). No one can reasonably deny that one of the multiple legacies of western imperial domination—especially the European colonisation of Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, North America, Central America, and South America8—has been (i) a racialised account of what counts as authoritative knowledge; (ii) a racialised account of whose knowledge matters; and (iii) a racialised account of what takes pride of place in what education institutions teach and how education institutions teach and assess that learning content.
▪ To offer constructive and implementable suggestions for expanding and transforming existing philosophy curricula at secondary and tertiary education levels, so that teachers and learners have richer, more in-depth, inclusive, and uplifting pedagogical experiences. This progressive discourse, as we will detail in subsequent sections, focuses on salient themes from critical
pedagogy.
▪ To provide teachers and learners with effective ways of, what we call, redirecting the flow of epistemic power away from the Anglo-European world that is ideologically positioned at the ‘centre’10 to a horizontal, comparative, and dialogical model in which no geolocation occupies a privileged position. In this way, thinking in terms of world philosophies is the sublation of philosophy itself, to the point that philosophy as the love of wisdom logically requires practicing deep thinking and reflection in a global, critical, and comparative manner.
The Project’s output, as presented here, is in a handbook form rather than a short and concise guide to decolonising philosophy curricula. As the team’s work developed, we collectively realised that, beyond providing a practical manual (the toolkit), it was necessary to provide the theoretical underpinnings of what we have understood the work of decolonising philosophy to be. After all, doing needs to be accompanied by thinking. As such, in this document, you will find an overview of the historical, institutional, and political context in which we work and what moved staff towards developing the UK’s only ‘World Philosophies’ undergraduate degree programme; §1 an extended argument for why decolonising the philosophy curriculum is required; §2 a detailed guide to implementing critical
pedagogy in one’s practice; §3 an extended argument for decolonising assessment and formative activities in philosophy programmes; and §4 an example of how an epistemology module can be transformed to reflect decolonising principles as well as to provide students with a much richer account of the value and place of epistemological practices. Throughout the handbook, we have provided a list of references and additional sources to assist teachers and students in engaging with the recommendations we make.
The project is orientated around the following objectives:
▪ To face up honestly to and shed light on the ways in which Anglo-European racism, imperialism, and colonialism have adversely affected the organisation, learning content, classroom environment, formative learning activities, and summative assessment diet of philosophy curricula in the UK (and in the Anglo-European context more broadly). No one can reasonably deny that one of the multiple legacies of western imperial domination—especially the European colonisation of Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, North America, Central America, and South America8—has been (i) a racialised account of what counts as authoritative knowledge; (ii) a racialised account of whose knowledge matters; and (iii) a racialised account of what takes pride of place in what education institutions teach and how education institutions teach and assess that learning content.
▪ To offer constructive and implementable suggestions for expanding and transforming existing philosophy curricula at secondary and tertiary education levels, so that teachers and learners have richer, more in-depth, inclusive, and uplifting pedagogical experiences. This progressive discourse, as we will detail in subsequent sections, focuses on salient themes from critical
pedagogy.
▪ To provide teachers and learners with effective ways of, what we call, redirecting the flow of epistemic power away from the Anglo-European world that is ideologically positioned at the ‘centre’10 to a horizontal, comparative, and dialogical model in which no geolocation occupies a privileged position. In this way, thinking in terms of world philosophies is the sublation of philosophy itself, to the point that philosophy as the love of wisdom logically requires practicing deep thinking and reflection in a global, critical, and comparative manner.