Decolonizing the Curriculum and the University: A Panel Discussion with Rolando Vasquez, Layal Ftouni and Toni Pape, 31 March 2021

Abstract

This panel was made possible by the collaborative efforts of editors of Junctions and an intern from Transmission in Motion, both spaces being initiatives by Utrecht University. While emerging from independent curiosities around decolonial thought and practice, specifically related to the movement in the educational sector (more commonly recognised as Decolonizing the Curriculum, a subset of Decolonizing the University movement) this collaborative panel aims to have as starting point the ideology, better articulated Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, as a relational practise which requires the recognition of one’s position as their entry point. In their words (2018), decolonial thinking and practice embodies (or should embody) situatedness, “…the ways that different local histories and embodied conceptions and practices of decoloniality, including our own, can enter into conversations and build understandings that both cross geopolitical locations and colonial differences and contest the totalizing claims and political-epistemic violence of modernity” (Walsh and Mignolo 2018, 1). We understand this as a way to contextualise decolonial theory and practice within educational spaces in the Netherlands, so as not to risk transforming it into an empty metaphor. To contextualise theory and practice also requires an understanding of how Decolonial Work is spoken about and practised in specific institutional spaces. With that in mind, we invited Layal Ftouni, Toni Pape and Rolando Vazquez Melken to discuss the limits of what we allow ourselves to think, talk, imagine, make and do in relation to the discourse of decolonization.