Justice Against the Epistemicide

Contrary to the nineteenth century in which, according to Marx and Engels (2012 [1848]) “a spectre [was] haunting [the Western civilization] – the spectre of communism [and that] all the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre - Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies,” at the end of the twentieth century beginning of the twenty first century, Western civilization is facing not just one a complex multiplicity of spectres. One of those is without a doubt the ‘return of the repressed.’ Although Eagleton (2011) and others are so right when they challenge the reductionist (and cheap) critic on Marx’s framework, the truth of the matter is that ‘the return of the repressed’ cannot be explain historically as just a ‘history of class struggles’ since it is not just a political phenomenon. The field of curriculum studies here in the US and elsewhere cannot ignore these well-established conundrums. Approaches, such as those of Mahbubani (2004), Sayyid (2015) or Haber (1970), testify to the importance of rethinking the way(s) internationalization debates have colonized the field – an issue that has caught the attention of many scholars in crucial settings, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies. Sayyid’s (2015) Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islam examines how modernity metamorphoses – anti, post, high, late, counter – sweats full blast European nihilism in addressing the complex problems that were created by modernity

2017

This essay discusses how social emancipation and the ecology of knowledges are concepts that seek recognition of the Global South intellectual traditions and epistemologies within a South-North, inter- and transnational curriculum studies dialogue. Focusing on the potential contributions of Santos and Paraskeva, this essay argues that notions of epistemicide, cognitive justice, ecology of knowledges, and itinerant curriculum theory make key contributions to such a dialogue. This essay concludes by noting Santos’ and, especially, Paraskeva’s relevance to the area of “curriculum and everyday school life studies” that has emerged in the Brazilian field of curriculum studies, with potentials to influence the intellectual work of Northern curriculum theorists. Overall, I present this paper with the expectation of further unfolding South-North dialogues and amplifying inter- and transnational recognitions in curriculum studies. Ines B. Oliveira holds a bachelor's degree in Pedagogy fr...

Brill Series

On (De)Coloniality: Curriculum Within and Beyond the West is a beacon in the struggle against epistemicide and the colonialities of being, power, and knowledge. It attempts to bring to the fore an analysis that focuses on non-Western/non-Eurocentric epistemological frameworks. In a world that still struggles to see its own overt epistemological diversity, On (De) Coloniality is an open space in which to challenge epistemological fascism. It encourages curriculum scholars to engage in dialogues about non-Western/ non-Eurocentric epistemologies within and beyond the Western Eurocentric platform. We invite ‘complicated conversations’ that dig into new avenues, such as those of Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT), and, in so doing, introduce a new language that will take us to alternative levels of articulation and re-articulation of meanings through endless and spaceless processes of coding, decoding, recoding, and ‘encoding

Asian Qualitative Inquiry Journal, 2022

Modern Western Eurocentric reason, science, and theory have proven to be insufficient to solve humanity's great challenges. The article examines the underlying reasons for this failure and denounces 'eugenics' as the original sin of the Cartesian matrix; it also highlights how particular counter-hegemonic epistemological Eurocentric veins in the field lost focus on the crucial battles and challenges facing humanity. While doing so, the paper argues how Eurocentrism is a divisive epistemological matrix that has obliterated historically other epistemological forms. The article examines how the Eurocentric epistemological matrix is the eugenic riverbed for the monumentality of a racialized reason, science, and theory. The paper explores the role of the curriculum field in producing, perpetuating, and legitimating such eugenic reason; in so doing, the paper denounces the curriculum field as epistemicidal and advances the itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as a non-derivative path to challenge the monumentality of a racialized Euricentric reason.

What is the role of critical theory in the field of Curriculum? What is the -relevance‖ of curricula in social transformation?

Curriculum Journal, 2025

The field of curriculum studies suffers from a glaring theoretical impasse. Much of this impasse has been rightly attributed to the triumphalism of the neoliberal wave that has massacred the educational hemisphere with policies and practices that reduce pedagogy to an instrumentalist praxis directly associated with the thirsty desires and needs of the market. However, another substantive part of this impasse – and not much explored in our scholarly affairs – relates to the apparent breakdown of many critical and post-critical approaches. The combination of these two axes – completely antagonistic – has contributed to the consolidation of the epistemicidal nature of the curriculum. At the core of this article is a clarion call for all the scholars in the field to counter such an impasse, deterritorializing their approaches and commit to an itinerant position to address the world's endlessly different and diverse epistemological traditions, disestablishing the eugenic nature of our field – its theory and development. The article also explores significant drawbacks faced by counter-hegemonic impulses in our field. In doing so, this article unveils the challenges of building a hegemonic critical pedagogical platform. It develops a laudatory eulogy for a collective engagement with an itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) as a just people's theory towards social and cognitive justice.

Qurriculum. Revista de Teoría,Investigación y Práctica educativa

This study interrogates the colonial and Western epistemology underlying mainstream curricula and proposes a decolonial approach that can build an epistemically insurgent curriculum that takes into account non-Western epistemologies. We begin with an analysis of coloniality in Western culture and knowledge systems, including in education. Then, building on the epistemological challenge proposed within decolonial literary works by Pablo Neruda, Eduardo Galeano, and Jos ıas L opez G omez, we describe how history and literature curricula can foreground nondominant saberes (ways of knowing) that call into question the monopoly on understanding claimed by Western modes of reason, and how they can participate in the ethical and analectical project of attending to the being and agency of those who have been marginalized. This approach can help teachers and students to participate in building a sophisticated global border thinking and can provide them with new conceptual tools to make sense of their own realities.

2015