Philosophy of education in a new key: cultivating a living philosophy of education to overcome coloniality and violence in African universities

Abstract

In this conversational article, we consider cultivating decoloniality in university education by drawing upon Jacques Ranci ere’s (2010) notion of a living philosophy. Ranci ere’s (2010) living philosophy holds the possibility of both a medium and a space for a re-thinking and a re-contemplation of what life is in relation to what it might be. Through engaging and sharing real human experiences from and within African societies and universities, we (re)imagine decoloniality as a fiction brought to life through a living philosophy of education. In this regard, we proffer eight points of departure and reflection. In the first instance, we turn to Plato’s allegory of the cave as an illustration of the darkness and insularity that can occur when a university community is chained and constrained by its own injustices. Maintaining Plato’s dialogical setting in the cave, we continue by arguing that listening with others is a pedagogical act of becoming non-violent whereby teachers and students assume a deliberative and compassionate responsibility for their actions. This leads us into our third contention of decoloniality as couched as a fusion of epistemologies that can provide a living philosophy of education to stimulate fictitious imaginaries of a society in which people engage in iterations and the free exchange of provocative ideas. Fourth, following our consideration of decoloniality as an interchange of stimulating yet confrontational ideas, we assert that decoloniality can be advanced through deliberation as an act of transformation in and about the hegemony of coloniality and violence. We entrench this argument in a Freirean stance that structures of domination such as coloniality cannot be rooted out by an education ‘forged for the oppressed’ but rather by an education ‘forged with the oppressed’ as products of a wider public order hosting and shaping the university. As our sixth point, therefore, and in establishing the foundational paradigms for decoloniality, we show a commensurability between the notion of Afrofuturism and Ranci ere’s (2010) living philosophy. Both, we maintain, function as an artistic aesthetic, and a framework for critical theory by combining elements of Afrocentricity, fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction, and magic realism with non-Western beliefs. Consequently, Afrofuturism aims to establish a critically Africanist narrative in its own right and may be necessary for producing a decolonial mindset among students in university settings. As we bring this conversational circle to a temporary pause, we contend if higher education in South Africa is to unshackle itself from its historical injustices, it has to show a preparedness to disrupt discriminatory hegemonies, while simultaneously adopting more humane policy approaches. By so doing, we re-imagine a living philosophy of (higher) education as a manifestation of epistemic justice. Likewise, if higher education in the country were to become more disruptive, deliberative pedagogical actions can emerge that would accentuate students as equal speaking beings with teachers. In this way, a living philosophy of education could enhance equal pedagogical actions and undermine exclusionary or violent pedagogical actions that continue to be present in indefensible forms of university education