Predicaments of Knowledge: Decolonisation and Deracialisation in Universities - Softcover

Pillay, Suren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 177614905X ISBN 13: 9781776149056

Publisher: Wits University Press, 2024

Synopsis

Predicaments of Knowledge explores the difficult questions South African universities face after apartheid: Is there a difference between Africanising a university and decolonising a university? What about differences between deracialising and decolonising the curricula taught at universities across disciplines? Through a range of reflections on race, language, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial knowledge projects from Africa and Latin America, this book explores the pitfalls and possibilities that face a post-apartheid generation inventing the future of knowledge. The distinctions between Africanisation, decolonisation and deracialisation are often conflated in the political demands put to universities. Suren Pillay emphasises all three as important but distinct imperatives. If an intervention is undertaken with the aim of decolonising the university while actually addressing deracialisation, it can undermine the effort to decolonise. Similarly, if an initiative to Africanise the university does not address decolonisation, both processes can be undermined. Drawing on more than two and a half decades of the author’s participation in these debates, these essays aim to intervene in and elucidate questions and predicaments, rather than offering blue prints; they are dialogical in spirit even when polemical in tone. In conversation with existing continental African and Latin American experiences, they offer incisive reflections on current South African debates.

About this title

About the Author

Suren Pillay is the A C Jordan Chair and Director of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 177614905X
• ISBN 13: 9781776149056
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216