Writing home/decolonizing text(s)

Abstract

The article draws on postcolonial and feminist theories, combined with critical reflection and autobiography, and argues for generating decolonizing texts as one way to write and reclaim home in a postcolonial world. Colonizers leave home to seek power and control elsewhere, and the colonized suffer loss of home as they know it. This dislocation from home is analyzed in terms of the material (outer), educational, and psychic (inner) reaches of colonization. Furthermore, under colonization, the self is split, alienated from itself, ‘home’ becomes rife with contradictions, and text(s) and education are shaped by Eurocentrism and ‘us–them’ binaries. Finally, implications for decolonization – including engaging and generating decolonizing text(s) – are discussed.

Keywords:

• postcolonialism
• colonization
• decolonization
• theory
• curriculum
• pedagogy