Toward affective decolonization: Nurturing decolonizing solidarity in higher education

Abstract

This paper turns our attention to a rather neglected dimension of (de)colonization, namely, the affective elements of (de)colonization in the context of higher education. Affective decolonization highlights that decolonization has to also happen at the level of affective life. The notion of affective decolonization complements the work taking placing in the realm of “intellectual decolonization” in higher education, by exploring what it would mean to decolonize the deeply affective structures and sensibilities of coloniality entrenched in contemporary universities, especially in the Global North. The analysis traces the potentiality of a particular affect, namely, decolonizing solidarity, and illustrates how it might be possible to build deep decolonizing solidarities within and across higher education institutions. The paper proposes that the deployment of a “public pedagogy” of decolonizing solidarity pays explicit attention to affective decolonization and works to create teaching and learning environments in higher education that nurture affective practices of decolonizing solidarity.

Introduction

This paper emerges from a set of concerns that the recent surge of “intellectual decolonization” concerning university curricula, pedagogies, and knowledge production in the Global North is inadequate to address how coloniality continues to impact higher education institutions (Moosavi, 2020).¹ “Intellectual decolonization” is understood here as the efforts to challenge the legacy of colonialism within universities by dismantling the intellectual roots of academia, namely, what/how knowledge is produced, taught and legitimated. These efforts have been critiqued as inadequate because they are often tokenistic, according to Moosavi, in the sense that changing curricula, pedagogies, and knowledge production often gives the appearance of decolonization, whereas the colonial structures of universities remain intact (see also Stein, 2019, 2020). Decolonization, understood here in a rather expansive sense, refers to the ongoing and multifaceted process of undoing colonization in various realms of social, political, economic, and cultural life, including the sector of higher education.

Without under- or over-estimating the value of intellectual decolonization in dismantling the Master’s house and its tools (Lorde, 1984), this paper turns our attention to a rather neglected dimension of (de)colonization, namely, affective decolonization. Although thinkers like Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Anzaldúa wrote several decades ago about the power of engaging affect in feminist and decolonial struggles, the affective elements of higher education (de)colonization have not been explored much in the literature. In general, the affective elements of (de)colonization are the embodied experiences of anger, love, guilt, solidarity—to name a few examples—that characterize the complex affective contours of coloniality and decolonization (Khanna, 2020; Million, 2008, 2009). In this sense, affective decolonization is the idea that decolonization has to also happen at the level of affective life (Worsham, 1998). Hence, the notion of affective decolonization complements the decolonization work taking placing in other realms (e.g., intellectual decolonization), by exploring what it would mean to decolonize the deeply affective structures and sensibilities of coloniality—that is, “to undo the emotive lessons” (Khanna, 2020, p. 1) of coloniality. In the context of higher education institutions, these emotive lessons may be seen, for example, in the affective practices and habits emerging from and associated with western knowledge production, research and pedagogies.

In this paper, I suggest that the affective dimension of decolonization offers educators, researchers, students, and administrators in higher education institutions in the Global North “the potentiality of a radical affective reconstitution” (Khanna, 2020, p. 3), namely, the possibility of enriching attempts to decolonize the university by taking into account ways of undoing the emotional lessons of colonialism. The dominant imperial order of knowledge production is based on a matrix of hierarchies and exclusions embedded within colonial economies of affect (Agathangelou, 2019). For example, “the emotions of subordinated/colonized communities and subjects are routinely ignored or even do not register” (ibid., 2019, p. 205). Taking into account ways of undoing the emotional lessons of colonialism, then, challenges scholars in the Global North, and beyond, to interrogate the coloniality of affects, as this is manifested in the sector of higher education—its administrative structures, its teaching methods, its curricula, and so on (Mbembe, 2016)—indicating that much work remains to be done for decolonization at many levels.

As such, I, a White, male academic, who grew up and lives in a small Mediterranean country that used to be a British colony until 1960 (now a member of the European Union), yet who studied in North America and currently conducts research on higher education decolonization in South Africa, set out to explore ways that affective decolonization can be mobilized to ameliorate colonial and oppressive structures of the contemporary university in the Global North and the Global South. I recognize that I am privileged by Eurocentric traditions of knowledge and even implicated in their enduring structures of inequality by studying and using the Master’s tools, as I am conducting research and teaching at a Western-ized university in my country. Yet, at the same time, the lasting imprint of the British colonial structures on every realm of social, political, economic and cultural life in my country still stirs in me feelings of anger, sorrow, and disillusionment. I bring into my exploration, then, these ambivalent feelings when I consider the notions of intellectual and affective decolonization in higher education to trace the potentiality of a particular affect, namely, “decolonizing solidarity” (Boudreau Morris, 2017), and to illustrate how it might be possible to build deep decolonizing solidarities across multiple communities (e.g., Indigenous and non-Indigenous or settler peoples) and socio-political settings (e.g., Global North and Global South). Decolonizing solidarity is understood here as an affective praxis articulated through the strategic mobilization of affects that recognize the emotional lessons of colonial violence, repression and dispossession and facilitate forms of teaching and learning aimed at reworking the colonial “structures of feeling” (Williams, 1977) embedded in contemporary universities, especially in the Global North. Although I recognize the impossibility of decolonizing higher education institutions under the contemporary political-economic-affective structures, I aspire to lay the conceptual groundwork for “public pedagogy” (Giroux, 2003; Sandlin, Schultz & Burdick, 2010) interventions that nurture affective decolonization.

In seeking to achieve this goal, the paper is structured as follows. First, I discuss the notion of intellectual decolonization and outline some of its contributions as well as its limitations. Second, I consider the “coloniality of the affects” and explain how affective decolonization is a crucial dimension in the process of decolonization that enriches educational interventions at the level of intellectual decolonization. Third, I focus on the notion of “decolonizing solidarity” and discuss how the challenge of working in solidarity with others across multiple communities and socio-political settings entails possibilities that reframe the affective practices and habits emerging from and associated with western knowledge production, research and pedagogies. To show an example of this reframing at the level of pedagogy, the last part of the paper imagines how a public pedagogy of decolonizing solidarity might look like at a university in the Global North. I propose that the deployment of such a pedagogy pays explicit attention to affective decolonization and works to create teaching and learning environments in higher education that nurture affective practices of decolonizing solidarity.

Intellectual decolonization

Decolonial theories and decolonial thinking more generally consist of various critiques of colonialism and coloniality—the coloniality of power and knowledge, land appropriation, racial, gender and geo-political hierarchies, and claims of universality rooted in Eurocentric knowledge and values (e.g., Bhambra, 2007; Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Mignolo, 2011; Quijano, 2007; Wynter, 2003). Due to space limitations, my analysis cannot do justice to the diversity and complexity of decolonial thinking in various geo-political contexts (e.g., South America and Africa), so it will mainly highlight that decolonization is a contested term that entails several dimensions that are inevitably intertwined. For example, there is a territorial decolonization that is achieved by the dissolution of colonial relations when it comes to issues of land and governance; there is a structural decolonization that seeks to dismantle colonial power relations, values and norms that are present in various realms of social, political, economic and cultural life, including higher education institutions; there is also intellectual decolonization that focuses specifically on dismantling the western intellectual superiority that informs education at all levels (e.g., curricula and pedagogy), including research. Intellectual decolonization, then, emphasizes the dismantling of the intellectual legacies of empire, emerging from the hierarchies and exclusions embedded in Eurocentric forms of knowledge.

In recent years, “intellectual decolonization” has become so popular in the Global North that it has been referred to as a “decolonial bandwagon” (Moosavi, 2020) which drifts “everything from sexualities to cameras, from dieting to counselling, from disability to peacebuilding” (p. 333). The origins of this “decolonization hype” (Behari-Leak, 2019, p. 58) or “vogue” around decolonization in higher education (Izharuddin, 2019), according to Moosavi (2020), can be traced to two predominant student-led movements which appeared in 2014/2015—“Rhodes Must Fall” and “Why Is My Curriculum White?”—both of which challenged the legacies of colonialism within universities as those were manifested in statues, buildings, curricula, and knowledge production in general. This decolonization hype does not mean, of course, that there was no prior academic work on decolonization or that the new enthusiasm for decolonization has been universally endorsed by universities, especially in the Global North (Moosavi, 2020); it simply shows that there is growing attention to various dimensions of decolonization, which may be an opportunity for rethinking the strengths and weaknesses of what decolonization would look like when we are severing connections with colonizing infrastructures in higher education institutions.

On the one hand, then, intellectual decolonization has exposed how Northerncentric scholarship often ignores Southern scholarship (Moosavi, 2020), and how the legacies of colonialism can be found in many manifestations of university life from its teaching and learning practices to its admission and administration systems (Mbembe, 2016). On the other hand, despite these contributions there are also some limitations of intellectual decolonization (Moosavi, 2020) that need to be recognized so that they can be addressed more productively. It is crucial that efforts toward decolonization of higher education are not taken at face value, but rather they need to be scrutinized so that more nuanced readings of decolonization can be advanced. It is worthwhile, therefore, to briefly revisit some of the limitations of intellectual decolonization.

The first limitation is that intellectual decolonization is not easy and perhaps not even possible (Moosavi, 2020). Given that coloniality is entrenched at all levels of higher education (Stein, 2019) the task of dismantling those mechanisms that perpetuate racist and colonial structures at western universities is daunting—from the systems of access and management in universities, the systems of authoritative control, standardization, classification, commodification, accountancy, and bureaucratization reflected in the organizational structures, the teaching methods and assessment mechanisms of students and faculty alike, the research practices and publishing norms, to the curricular content and design of courses (Mbembe, 2016). This means, then, that decolonization is not “a straightforward undertaking” (Moosavi, 2020, p. 341) that can be accomplished by simple tasks—such as critical reflexivity, namely, an academic, intellectual exercise of looking into one’s self (see Arday, 2018)—but rather there should be specific actions how decolonization can be practically realized. It is crucial, then, to recognize that decolonization is a complex and multifaceted process that includes many forms and manifestations, including intellectual decolonization. This is true specially in the context of higher education where “universities may be compromised institutions which remain complicit in ethnocentrism, elitism and exclusion to such an extent that perhaps they should be abandoned altogether, even if nobody is willing to take the first step in doing this” (Moosavi, 2020, p. 342). This is why Mbembe (2016) and others (e.g., Harney & Moten, 2013) suggest that a true commitment to decolonization necessitates a departure from higher education as we know it (Stein, 2019).

A second limitation discussed by Moosavi (2020) is that intellectual decolonization may often essentialize or appropriate the notion of “Global South.” This limitation highlights the tendency to incorporate marginalized perspectives or people within academia “in problematic ways, particularly in ways that reinscribe coloniality” (Moosavi, 2020, p. 343). For example, if the term “Global South” is treated as an essentialist category that fails to capture the multiplicity of ideas and cultures in different socio-political settings (e.g., Africa or Latin America), then it is likely that people and ideas from different parts of the Global South will be excluded. This essentialism also fails to include alternative Southern perspectives, especially non-elite ones (Mbembe, 2016). In this sense, the assumption that “Global South” has an innate essence that can be known and captured (Connell, 2007) reproduces a colonial generalization. The failure to acknowledge this complexity is also a failure to recognize the multiple ways that coloniality produces variable forms of exclusion (Moosavi, 2020).

A third limitation discussed by Moosavi (2020) is the tendency toward “nativist decolonization”, that is, the glorification of Southern scholarship just because it is from the Global South. As Moosavi explains, this glorification may manifest among those who see intellectual decolonization as an opportunity to promote identity politics (e.g., nationalism) rather than inclusion and the broadening of horizons. Hence, decolonial scholarship should “guard against an exaggerate romanticization or unwarranted flattery of that from the Global South” (ibid., p. 347). Once again, the issue is not whether the ideas or people ought to come from the Global South but rather it is about how specific ideas, regardless of where they are coming from, contribute to “active disruption of the colonial past and the assumptions it has generated” (ibid.). Nativist decolonization, then, argues Moosavi, gives the impression that decolonization is a trivial undertaking in the interest of fulfilling Southern insecurities. In addition, there is a danger of producing further distrust for anything that comes from the Global North, just because it is Northern.²

Finally, a fourth limitation comes from “tokenistic decolonization”, that is, how “intellectual decolonization could involve merely gesturing toward the exclusion of those from the Global South without going far enough in subverting the exclusion of Southern people and knowledge” (Moosavi, 2020, p. 348). Tokenistic decolonization makes little effort to undo coloniality and in some cases, argues Moosavi, may even reaffirm colonial structures because it fails to take radical action. An example of this is taking a minimalistic approach or a “soft-reform” in the decolonization of higher education, as Andreotti et al. (2015) call it, namely, making superficial changes (e.g., adding some resources in the curriculum to acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ contributions) rather than taking concrete actions at multiple levels of university life and structures to dismantle the persistent effects of colonial violence (e.g., to address the economic inequalities suffered by students from marginalized communities; to change exclusionary policies of access in universities; etc.).

All in all, intellectual decolonization is a necessary undertaking as part of the multifaceted process of decolonization, yet the limitations of intellectual decolonization invite scholars in higher education to consider other dimensions of decolonization that may enrich efforts at the intellectual level and evoke the importance of being action-oriented in the pursuit of a decolonial agenda (Moosavi, 2020). I would argue, then, that this agenda will be greatly enhanced by considering affect and the body as a fundamental site of challenging colonial subjugation and invoking emancipatory affective reconstitution. Importantly, an affective dimension of (de)colonization would provide a crucial boost to the productive possibilities of a decolonial praxis in higher education.

The coloniality of affects and affective decolonization

One of the best-known and most widely cited examples of colonial affect is Fanon’s (1967) description of the encounter between the colonized Black body and a young white child on the train.

“Look, a Negro!” It was an external stimulus that flicked over me as I passed by. I made a tight smile.

“Look, a Negro!” It was true. It amused me.

“Look, a Negro!” The circle was drawing a bit tighter. I made no secret of my amusement.

“Mama, see the Negro! I’m frightened!” Frightened! Frightened! Now they were beginning to be afraid of me. I made up my mind to laugh myself to tears, but laughter had become impossible. (pp. 111 and 112)

In this remarkable example, Fanon shows the powerful impact of sociohistorical forces on bodily experiences, reinforcing not only how “we” feel but also what “we” are capable of feeling and with whom (Guilmette, 2019; Hantel, 2018; Wynter, 2003; Wynter & McKittrick, 2015). Affectivity is central to Fanon’s account of the Black colonized consciousness as well as his theories of decolonization (Khanna, 2020). Importantly, Fanon rejects the idea of human affects as a biological phenomenon, but rather argues that affectivity operates within histories of racism, colonialism and other fears of bodily difference (Guilmette, 2020).

Drawing on Fanon, Ahmed (2004, 2006) also argues that what bodies tend to do are the effects of history; there are no universal human affects and emotions, because affects and bodies are always situated in specific sociohistorical settings. Ahmed writes of the ways in which the circulation of affective value shapes bodies and worlds, demonstrating how affects and emotions construct racial recognition. In this sense, affects are inscribed within particular relations of power, that is, the violence of colonial power and difference. For example, the emotional expressions of those perceived as different from the white colonizer’s have historically been deemed as reactive, impulsive and exaggerated, often in racialized ways (Guilmette, 2019; Million, 2008, 2009; Palmer, 2017). Ngai’s (2005) landmark analysis of “animatedness” shows how racialized representations of emotional expression are rooted in normalized views and values of the society about Black bodies. Similarly, Schuller (2018), who extends Ngai’s analysis, shows that there is a racialized affective code that is laid upon Black bodies—a code that is already bound up in networks of colonial power, energizing or draining subjects with an affective dynamic vibrating between them that binds them. This is why making visible the coloniality of affects and its various manifestations is crucial in finding ways to interrupt their social and political reproduction.

In particular, Khanna (2020) argues that “The visceral offers a materialist analytic that recasts the scene of racialized affect through the energetic dynamic that vibrates between two bodies, animating and activating racialized repositories in automated response” (p. 7). It is within such racialized affective scenes that we need to reimagine the potentialities of decolonization, according to Khanna. However, as she rightly points out: “The visceral logics orchestrating this scene cannot, however, simply be disrupted or overturned by a psychic intervention, even as they are intimately linked with a condition of consciousness” (Khanna, 2020, p. 7). In other words, interventions that simply aim at a “change of heart” without accompanied by specific actions or structural changes will not take the process of decolonization very far. For example, adding in the curriculum sentimental narratives about the sufferings of racialized others, in response to the empathy-desiring norms of the hegemonic ethnoclass (e.g., the norms of white privilege), is not only inadequate to break up the racialized affective norms, but also provides the false illusion that it has an important effect; in this sense, this intervention is tokenistic, having all the limitations mentioned earlier (Zembylas, 2018a, 2018b, 2021a; Patel, 2021).

I argue, then, that a crucial move to enrich existing intellectual decolonization efforts is recognizing how embodied repositories of colonized and racialized experiences continue to be reproduced in everyday encounters (Khanna, 2020). What an affective dimension of decolonization adds to the intellectual work of decolonization is enabling us to ask two fundamental questions about how we may identify and interrupt the incessant reproduction of the coloniality of affects. In the context of higher education, for example, these questions may be formulated as follows: How do universities in the Global North (re)inscribe “structures of feeling” that reiterate normative processes of affective racialization and racial subjugation through their everyday mechanisms of teaching, learning, evaluation, and management (see Mbembe, 2016)? In which ways can contemporary universities engage in affective decolonization along these different mechanisms? These rather broad questions provide scholars in higher education a guide of working toward a decolonial praxis that recognizes the fundamental impact of affective (de)colonization. Attempts by researchers, educators, students and administrations in higher education institutions to address these questions will create openings for raising “difficult” issues such as how privileged academics and students may be incentivized to engage in decolonial dialogue and praxis or how it is possible for university administrators and leaders to disinvest affective energies in a toxic set of colonial infrastructures but rather build university systems that are equitable and decolonizing. I emphasize here that the move toward affective decolonization is not framed in binary or oppositional terms, but rather in ways that build on the existing work of decolonization, including intellectual decolonization.³

Stoler (1995, 2002, 2010) reminds us that colonial violence in education operated on the colonized bodies through two fundamental ways, namely, the appropriation of affects and bodies and the construction of new structures of feelings, that is, new habits of heart and mind. Education in the British colonies, for example, which was rooted in Victorian values, molded cultural norms and sensibilities that were reflected on the bodies and affects of colonial subjects. Hence, colonial disciplinary regimes about sexual behavior or racial relations based on “hygiene” norms cultivated proper affects and emotions, and these structures of feeling functioned as mechanisms that consolidated and reproduced imperial power. Reflecting on Stoler’s work, Khanna explains that “the production of modern colonial subjects was carried out through both the management of physical bodies, sanctioned through racial grammars of difference, and the emotive conditioning and molding of the colonized subject” (2020, p. 12).

At the same time, it is important to emphasize that there are always possibilities for constructing new ways of feeling as a site of radical transformation that reimagines a different human collective, one that undermines normative affective ways of colonization and racialization (Khanna, 2020). This vision, writes Khanna, “could be a site of radical relearning. These emotive and embodied repositories of the body must be the sites of revolution precisely because empire has already monopolized them” (p. 13). For this reason, argues Indigenous scholar Dian Million, it is crucial to include in decolonization efforts the lived experiences of Indigenous peoples, “rich with emotional knowledges,” namely, “what pain and grief and hope meant or mean now in our pasts and future” (2009, p. 54). It is exactly this emotional knowledge, she points out, that fuels the real discursive, affective and eventually political shift around the painful histories and stories of Indigenous populations. To break the monopoly of the empire, then, there has to be significant work done at various levels, including the level of affective decolonization not only to recognize the ways in which affect serves as a “racializing technology” in everyday encounters (Ngai, 2005), but also to invent new affective practices through which the exploitation of colonized bodies can be disrupted. For example, in the context of higher education institutions this means investing in affective practices—e.g., in the context of teaching, learning, administration and management—that work toward a decolonial praxis and politics within the university such as practices of advocacy, accountability, and political commitment to Indigenous, Black and marginalized people’s struggles.

Consequently, the notion of affective decolonization invokes an attempt to think affect and decolonization in tandem, and to make visible the visceral logics of decolonization that undergird everyday encounters in the context of higher education. The point here, as Palmer (2017) points out, is not to bemoan the lack of recognition of Black affectivity, but rather to argue what it would mean to “feel new feelings”, to borrow Khanna’s (2020) expression, that create new affective relationalities, that is, relationships that undo the emotive lessons in the habits of mind and memory that continue to sustain the legacies of empire in various sites, including higher education. Affective decolonization “opens up a new pathway for thinking through the critical problematics of decolonization by exploring a dense and knotted set of relations between embodied experience and political feeling” (Khanna, 2020, p. 1); this is a set of new affective practices and relations that contributes to the dismantling of the enduring legacies of coloniality. In the next part of the paper, I discuss how an example of a particular affect, namely, “decolonizing solidarity,” can serve a number of strategic functions in the process of affective decolonization.

Affective solidary as decolonizing solidarity

Solidarity is generally a concept that expresses a “standing with” (TallBear, 2014) others based upon the recognition of a common experience: a common humanity, a common ideology, a common political agenda, a common moral vision, and so on (Markham, 2019). Hence, there are different kinds of solidarities: political (e.g., leftist solidarity), rights solidarity (e.g., focused on human rights violations), material solidarity (e.g., disaster aid), and global solidarity, which is defined as “a form of solidarity that emphasizes similarities between physically, socially and culturally distant people, while at the same time respecting and acknowledging local and national differences” (Olesen, 2004, p. 259). Solidarities also vary in their manifestations and motivations; they can be expressed at the macro-level (e.g., by voting for a political party that supports a leftist agenda) or they can be expressed at the micro-level by taking individual or group action in response to an injustice or oppression (Scholz, 2008). As Lynch and Kalaitzake (2020) clarify, then, solidarity “is simultaneously an object or goal of politics, a set of socio-political practices realizing such politics, and a disposition towards practice” (p. 242).

The concept of “affective solidarity” (Hemmings, 2012) is a manifestation of solidarity that has been initially grounded in feminist politics against neoliberalism’s attempts to individuate and isolate us (Vachhani & Pullen, 2019). As Hemmings (2012) argues, the basis for affective solidarity is “affective dissonance”, that is, a range of affects (e.g., anger, frustration, rage) that provide a productive grounding for a sustainable politics of transformation. In other words, affective solidary is “not based in a shared identity or on a presumption about how the other feels, but on feeling the desire for transformation out of the experience of discomfort, and against the odds” (ibid., p. 158). Hemmings suggests that affective dissonance can be processed in different ways; one may suppress the experience, whereas someone else might use it to demand change in interpersonal relationships or utilize it to justify political action. As Hemmings writes:

[I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently. Feeling that something is amiss in how one is recognized, feeling an ill fit in social descriptions, feeling undervalued, feeling that same sense in considering others; all these feelings can produce a politicized impetus to change that foregrounds the relationship between ontology and epistemology precisely because of the experience of their dissonance. (2012, p. 150, added emphasis)

Hemmings, then, positions embodied knowledge at the heart of affective solidarity. This has important political implications, “as the impetus for change comes from the affective response to something that is not right, such as a perceived injustice or a rights violation” (Johnson, 2020, p. 184). Although affective solidarity cannot change the world, as Vachhani and Pullen (2019) rightly point out, it demonstrates that a politically significant affective dissonance can generate solidarity through the recognition of shared emotions about oppression and injustice.

Building on these ideas, I explore here how reframing affective solidarity as decolonizing solidarity makes a contribution to the argument that I am making concerning affective decolonization in higher education. In particular, I am interested in examining ways that researchers, educators, students and administrators within and across universities in the Global North and Global South may nurture affective practices of decolonizing solidarity “even if their own experiences and relationships to various webs of power are widely divergent” (Johnson, 2020, p. 184). Decolonizing solidary is understood here as an affective practice involving the dismantling of the apparatuses of colonial violence as those are manifested in various mechanisms of the university—from teaching and learning practices to research production and administration systems. The task of decolonizing solidarity requires work along two trajectories: the re-centering of the settler as “a site of uncomfortable change” (Boudreau Morris, 2017, p. 469); and, an affective politics and praxis of advocacy, accountability, and political commitment to Indigenous, Black and marginalized people’s struggles against colonization. These two trajectories, which are clearly entangled, are discussed below.

Boudreau Morris (2017) conceptualizes decolonizing solidarity as a practice that includes nurturing a habit of discomfort “first with ourselves as a basis from which we can then engage in specific, contextualized, and contingent conversations with and listening to others” (p. 464). In this sense, decolonizing solidarity is not a superficial sentimental practice for white settlers to “feel good” about standing together with Indigenous peoples, but rather it requires constant and uncomfortable engagement with the persistent effects of coloniality “such as an active challenging of epistemicide, settler superiority, capitalism and the darker sides of modernity” (Kluttz et al., 2020, p. 55). In other words, this is not an abstract intellectual exercise for white settlers to do, but rather an everyday attitude and practice of challenging, resisting and refusing the legacies of colonialism (Grande, 2018; Tuck, 2018). In the context of higher education institutions, for example, this means that to make a contribution to the decolonization of their university, privileged white academics have to sever their affective attachments to the practices of epistemicide and western intellectual superiority manifested in university curricula, pedagogies, and knowledge production. In other words, settlers’ feelings of discomfort must be engaged with critically and productively as part of the difficult work of decolonization.

Along similar lines, Land (2015) suggests that there are two important elements in the hard work of decolonizing solidarity: first, solidarity must be directed toward decolonization; and, second, solidarity itself has to be decolonized. As Land writes: “Interrogating and reconstructing non-Indigenous people’s interests emerge as key to decolonizing solidarity” (ibid., p. 228). Therefore, working toward decolonization is a discomforting and unsettling process for everyone involved. As Kluttz et al. (2020) note, “It is work that unsettles the possibility of fully reconciling settler guilt and disallows the continuing denial and ignorance of complicity in colonization” (p. 55). This understanding of decolonizing solidarity highlights, in my view, that decolonizing solidarity has to be understood as an affective practice and politics that requires a process of advocacy, accountability, and political commitment to Indigenous people’s struggles against colonization. In other words, decolonizing solidarity is a deeply affective process that entails refocusing its goal on the affective practice of working against colonization, namely, on relationship-building between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, between former colonizer and colonized peoples, between privileged and marginalized communities. In this sense, decolonizing solidarity requires “a shift in mindset” (Simpson in Klein, 2013) that is also a shift in the affective practices and embodied knowledges of white settlers.

For example, in the context of higher education institutions in the Global North, this understanding of decolonizing solidarity suggests that privileged white academics take specific actions along various forms of university life, where solidarity is premised on “working for, towards a vision of struggle with” (Koopman, 2008, p. 296) Indigenous, Black and other marginalized peoples. From this perspective the role of the privileged white academic is to engage in decolonizing solidarity, or the unmaking of their privilege in academia, by actively participating in Indigenous-led and Black-led struggles against racism and colonialism. The question, of course, is what would sensitize or incentivize privileged academics, researchers, students and administrators to engage in decolonizing solidarity? In the last part of the paper, I discuss how I envision a “public pedagogy” (Giroux, 2003; Sandlin, Schultz & Burdick, 2010) of decolonizing solidary that would create openings for such sensitization in the context of higher education institutions in the Global North.

Nurturing affective practices of decolonizing solidarity in higher education

Given that the concept of solidarity functions in the sociohistorical context of coloniality, there is always the danger that the concept reinscribes colonial logics to obscure complicity and continued colonization (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2012; Patel, 2021). At the same time, argues Gaztambide-Fernandez (2012), there is a possibility to articulate solidarity relations through which to construct new ways of entering into relations with others. In fact, as he explains, the failures of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism as responses to the problem of human difference point to decolonization as a process that provides new openings for solidarity relations. For this to happen though, it is important to theorize the concept of solidarity as decolonizing, that is, as a process that dismantles colonial logics.

As I have also pointed out earlier, the visceral logics of decolonization enrich the efforts to articulate a pedagogical engagement of solidarity as both a decolonizing and affective practice and process. In this last part of this paper, then, I will argue that it is possible to nurture a decolonizing solidarity that enriches ongoing efforts at the level of intellectual decolonization. My effort though is not to provide a “how to”/“to do” list for decolonizing solidarity in higher education, but rather to describe and analyze the conditions under which a public pedagogy of decolonizing solidarity, enacted by academics, researchers, students and administrators would take into account the complexities of affective decolonization. For this reason, it is impossible to know exactly what this process would look like besides the fact that it will be deeply unsettling and discomforting, as mentioned earlier (Zembylas, 2021b; Boudreau Morris, 2017; Grande, 2018; Kluttz et al., 2020).

Writing about a decolonizing pedagogy of solidarity, Gaztambide-Fernandez (2012) suggests that it shifts “the focus away from either explaining or enhancing existing social arrangements, seeking instead to challenge such arrangements and their implied colonial logic” (p. 49). Hence, I understand “public pedagogy” here as a form of politics and praxis, that is, as a social, affective, and political practice and intervention rather than a form of teaching methodology. If the pedagogical encounter in general is understood as a process through which those involved are transformed (Biesta, 2012; Todd, 2009), then a decolonizing pedagogy of decolonization is by definition a social, affective, and political process of transformation. In this sense, for instance, settler students or educators engaged in a public pedagogy of decolonizing solidarity—e.g., as part of a public event that requires them to do challenging emotional work that exposes their position of privilege—are essentially asked to negotiate new relationships and practices with marginalized colleagues that are not based on self-interest but rather on unsettled affective relations.

Gaztambide-Fernandez (2012) discusses three intertwined modes for a pedagogy of solidarity that is committed to decolonization: relational, transitive, and creative. Pedagogy of solidarity is relational because it makes a deliberate commitment to a relational stance. Pedagogy of solidarity is also transitive in the sense that the verb form of solidarity—to solidarize with—is a transitive verb; in other words, solidarity “points directly to an active orientation towards others that, in its transitivity, rejects a static position and embraces contingency” (ibid., p. 54), namely, it is a praxis. Finally, pedagogy of solidarity, according to Gaztambide-Fernandez, is creative in that it involves creative engagement with others in unexpected ways that might challenge and rearrange the colonial logic embedded in everyday encounters. The term “creative” involves engaging with others in ways that might rearrange and reinvent our relationships in the classroom—such as, for example, using art or poetry to rethink encounters with others as a family rather than as “strangers.”

In addition to these three modes for a pedagogy of solidarity, I would also like to highlight a consideration of the coloniality of affects and how affective decolonization can make a crucial contribution to reimagining a different human collective that nurtures decolonizing solidarity. As Boudreau Morris reminds us, “Solidarity work is emotionally fraught with challenges to and modification of one’s identity, particularly when engaging with difference, but it is the deployment of difference and the uncomfortable accompanying emotions that nurtures decolonizing solidarity relationships” (2017, p. 468). This means that privileged academics like myself visiting South Africa to do research on higher education decolonization have considerable emotional work to do to fully understand how to solidarize with my Black colleagues in academia. I can certainly empathize with some of their decolonial struggles, as my parents and ancestors have been colonized subjects with histories and roots of traumas and inequalities; yet, I should keep in mind that this emotional work is done at the moment from a position of privilege that cannot be compared to the historical and contemporary plights of my Black colleagues. Engaging in public pedagogies of decolonizing solidarities, then, means examining how this emotional work can practically lead to deep, authentic, decolonizing solidarities with my academic colleagues in the Global South—e.g., through engaging in practices of advocacy, accountability, and political commitment to Black colleagues’ struggles in the South African universities that I do research or teaching.

A public pedagogy of decolonizing solidarity in higher education, then, requires emotional experiences and embodied learning through specific affective dissonance, action and change that create new ethical and affective relationships with others. To do this work, privileged academics and students must listen to the stories and especially the demands of Indigenous, Black, and marginalized colleagues, namely, we “must learn to balance waiting around for direction in social action, while taking action consistent with Indigenous leadership” (Kluttz et al., 2020, p. 63). Critical reflection and dialogue are valuable tools, yet they are not enough to challenge the coloniality of affects. Doing the emotional labor of affective decolonization in higher education means learning to challenge colonial structures of feeling to not only “see” how coloniality becomes naturalized in everyday privileges, but also take action that challenges one’s privileged positionality and affectivity on a constant basis. Needless to say, it cannot be determined a priori what kinds of actions might be effective at a given moment to undo the emotive lessons of coloniality, because this depends on the particularities and complexities of local desires and needs (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2012). However, in whatever form a pedagogy of decolonizing solidarity takes, working with Indigenous, Black and marginalized people’s and their struggles means taking responsibility and commitment for reinventing our relationships and affective practices in the university classroom and beyond to become witnesses of affective decolonization.

Importantly, learning to be in a space that is discomforting and affectively “difficult” depends on motivation, note Kluttz et al. (2020), reminding us once again the significance of paying attention to the affective aspects of solidarity in higher education settings: “[I]f one is working toward a decolonizing solidarity based on a mutual interest in deconstructing a system of oppression that is doing irreparable damage to the Earth and all of its creatures” (ibid., p. 63), then it becomes easier to unite settler and Indigenous peoples across their differences in solidarity struggles (Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2012). In other words, the strategic goal is to cultivate a commitment in privileged academic and students so that they realize the common interest of decolonization, that is, how deconstructing a system that oppresses most/all of us and is doing irreparable damage to the Earth is beneficial to all, not only to Indigenous people (Kluttz et al., 2020). The process of coming to this understanding as a process of reconstructing self-interest is, of course, not easy, emotionally and politically (Land, 2015). Yet, as noted earlier, it is a process that forces us to reconnect with each other and the Earth on a daily basis (Walia, 2012).

Concluding remarks

This article has argued that given the different forms of decolonization in higher education, it is crucial to consider how the affective dimension of decolonization may complement the work taking place at the level of intellectual decolonization. Furthermore, this article has sought to provide some recommendations that would support affective decolonization in higher education. These are summarized as follows: (1) to recognize the complex and “difficult” emotional histories of colonization in higher education institutions in the Global North and explore how they impact a variety of mechanisms at universities; (2) to nurture affective practices of decolonizing solidarity in higher education institutions in the Global North and Global South that bring together Indigenous with settler educators, researchers, students and administrators in renewed encounters; and (3) to inspire actions in everyday encounters that create new affective conditions which challenge the coloniality of affects. The decolonizing solidarity that can emerge from public pedagogies in which privileged academics and students come together with less privileged ones and become witnesses of affective decolonization is a promising practice and strategy. Future empirical research and activism in higher education institutions across different communities and socio-political settings will provide further clarifications about the effectiveness of particular affective practices toward affective decolonization and the specific contribution of decolonizing solidary to higher education teaching, learning, research, and administration.

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1 The terms “Global North” and “Global South” are used to describe countries on the basis of socio-economic and political characteristics, implying that richer countries are often located in the so-called Global North, whereas poorer countries are located in the Global South. Although these terms have been heavily criticized in the literature (e.g., as being overly simplistic), they are used here to highlight that the entrenched inequalities, exclusions, and essentialized Eurocentric epistemologies that are dominant in western universities (the North is mostly correlated with the West) are part of the legacy of colonialism (more on this later in the paper).

2 An example of this challenge is the ongoing debates about “African epistemology” and “Afrocentric knowledge” that, according to Moosavi (2020), entail the risk of simply rejecting whatever comes from the Global North and valorizing Southern perspectives in such a nativist manner that it overlooks how each piece of work actually contributes to struggles against coloniality and its structures.

3 I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for encouraging me to clarify this point.