Considering refusal in the study of international education and development

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the concept of refusal, this paper offers a cautionary story of international development within the context of black Africa. Entering through the author’s father’s stories of development and weaving together different forms of ‘data,’ the paper utilises critical storying to illuminate how international education and development remains stuck in colonising, antiblack, and racialising imaginaries. Through intellectual practices of refusal, the paper aims to disrupt iterations of black Africa as defined by the international education and development apparatus. In particular, the concept of refusal in method and pedagogical praxis emerges as a critical tool to rupture the white gaze blanketing the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Refusal
• black studies
• international education and development
• critical storying
• coloniality
• confessional

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the UnderCommons Constellation (UC2) whose praxis continue to inspire me to do the work. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback. I am also grateful to Benjamin Scherrer, Nicole LeRoux, Martina Amoth, and Christopher Nyakiti for their generous feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. I dedicate this piece to critical storytellers out there whose memories, like my father, shape our understanding of the international development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 There is something about NGO work and catchy acronyms that is disturbing. What does the acronym have to do with the project’s outcomes and who is it appealing to?

2 Information obtained from the project proposal booklet located at the author’s parents’ home.

3 Mzungu is Kiswahili for White person.

4 See https://www.umass.edu/education/stories/continuum-decolonization.

5 Indigenous scholar Max Liboiron in conversation with their CLEAR Lab member Edward Allen’s doctoral comprehensive exams. See Liboiron (2021), Pollution is Colonialism.

6 International education and the ‘field’ are used interchangeably throughout the paper.