Dialogue with my selves: de/colonising knowledge and research methodologies

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Abstract

This paper aims to discuss conflicts I experience in being a decolonial researcher and a white female academic educated through and operating in a university in the Global North. Principally, the conflicts attend to the reproduction of epistemic injustices related to colonial legacies in western research traditions. The paper initially addresses apprehensions and tensions inherent in decolonising projects emerging within university knowledge production practices, particularly with regard to research methodologies, then considers issues around delinking from them. I work with Fricker’s (2007) theory of epistemic injustice, particularly hermeneutic injustice, interweaving scholarship from the global south to set out my understanding(s) about il/legitimacy of research methodologies, and consider the implications for educational research, and researchers, who embrace/struggle with decolonising knowledge. I draw on my own experiences of the tensions in adopting a decolonising research agenda and use the device of duo-ethnographic dialogue to illustrate each ‘side’ of my experience. This method makes visible some struggles I experience in trying to decolonise knowledge. It also demonstrates a method which deliberately tries to de-link from the colonial legacy of scientific methods that prize parsimonious consensus and which emerged from a Eurocentred, white, male tradition of scientific knowledge production.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationUnited Kingdom
PublisherDecKno Research Hub
Number of pages25
ISBN (Electronic)2753-684X
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2023

Keywords

  • Methodological decolonisation
  • Coloniality
  • Positionality
  • Education
  • Duo-ethnography
  • Epistemic justice
  • Struggles

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