DECOLONIZING KNOWLEDGE AND POWER: POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES, DECOLONIAL HORIZONS BARCELONA
Summer school in Barcelona, Spain
The international Summer School, “Decolonizing Knowledge and Power,” is an undertaking that aims at enlarging the scope of the conversation (analysis and investigation) of the hidden agenda of modernity (that is, coloniality) in the sphere of knowledge and higher education. This course is offered through the Center of Study and Investigation for Decolonial Dialogues, in Barcelona, Spain. The seminar will be held at the UAB-Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Casa de la Convalescencia (Hospital de Sant Pau) .
About the Center
Center of Study and Investigation for Decolonial Dialogues is a non-profit and non-governmental organization promoting research, knowledge-making, education (through seminars, workshops, exhibits, round-tables discussions, publications and video-making) and public policy to invent and work towards non-competitive horizons of life, of socio-economic organization and international relations. Non-profit and non-governmental organizations emerge from within civil and political society to address issues that are not supported or attended to by government and corporations. Their function is crucial in building futures that are beyond the regulations of States or the needs of the Corporations. In order for civil and political society to become relevant actors in social transformation and pointing out the limits of corporate values and state regulation, it is necessary to create institutions of knowledge-making not at the service of the state or corporations, but to the benefit of the civil society.
Course Description
“Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons” is part of a larger intellectual and political initiative generally referred to as the “modernity/(de)coloniality research project.” A basic assumption of the project takes knowledge-making, since the European Renaissance, as a fundamental aspect of “coloniality” – the process of domination and exploitation of the Capitalist/Patriarchal/Imperial Western Metropolis over the rest of the world. “Decolonizing Knowledge and Power” becomes, then, a task and a process of liberation from assumed principles of knowledge and understanding of how the world is and should be, as well as from forms of organizing the economy and political authority.
Program Structure
Registered participants in the seminar will receive, at least a month in advance, the reading material for the seminar. Classes will be conducted five days a week, mornings and afternoon. The program is a lecture intensive seminar. Student participation is encouraged and faculty will have office hours to meet with students individually. Space and time for students’ self-organized workshops and discussions will be provided. These workshops will be organized along students’ interests.
We will explore the following issues and questions:
- The formation and transformation of Western principles of knowledge (epistemology) and understanding (hermeneutics). The role of the invention of the Americas for a creation of Christian-European identity and the relevance of Indians, Blacks, Moors and Jews in the invention of the modern/colonial racial matrix. The place of Muslims from the sixteenth century until today. From Christian Theology to Secular Philosophy and Sciences--how the idea of Man in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the idea of Man and Human in human rights, racism and patriarchy have controlled the material apparatus of enunciation and, therefore, knowledge.
- The diverse local histories and their decolonial responses/resistances/re-existence to Western colonial/imperial designs in world-historical perspective: Muslims, Indigenous Peoples, Black Peoples, etc. in different world-regions such as the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.
Who Should Apply
The seminar is open to advanced undergraduate, graduate students, post-doctoral candidates, junior faculty, professionals with MA, teachers, etc.
Preference will be given to students based on the following criteria:
- Undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline (social sciences and the humanities, professional schools (preferably law, bio-technology, business schools), interested in decolonizing knowledge and understanding in their own disciplines;
- Post-doctoral candidates already engaged or wanting to engage in decolonizing knowledge;
- Junior Faculty from all over the world;
- Activists committed to decoloniality;
- Professionals with MA degrees already working or interested in working in education, government institutions, NGOs, corporations;
- High school and university teachers.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www.dialogoglobal.com/barcelona/index.php