Rethinking and Reinventing Intercultural Education in Post-Secondary Institutions: A Critical, Anti-Colonial Approach

Critical and anti-colonial scholarship helps us imagine how intercultural education might begin to address the power imbalances inherent to issues of culture and epistemology. This paper reflexively dialogues anti-colonial theory with my own experiments of practically implementing these theories within the Intercultural Program (IP), an extracurricular program at a Canadian postsecondary institution, to demonstrate possibilities for shaping intercultural education towards ethical ends. Through curriculum, programming, and community-building that is cocreated with students, the IP aspires to shape intercultural education towards social justice and equity, opening spaces for engagement with nondominant epistemologies, and promoting the critical thinking necessary for evaluating the historical, economic, political, social, and ethical implications of students’ own and others’ positions. At the same time, the IP provides a helpful site for exploring the challenges of doing critical work in an internationalizing institution, and the need, perhaps, to move intercultural education away from internationalization within higher education.

Post-Colonial Rome, and Beyond

Roman archaeology is one of the major subfields of archaeology in which post-colonial theory has flourished, and not just in relation to the role of the past in the present, but also as a means to approach the interpretation of the Roman world itself. The region of North Africa was a major focal point for some of the earliest post-colonial studies on the Roman Empire, and has remained an arena of investigation for scholars influenced by the Anglophone debate on post-colonial theory, which emerged in the 1980s and flourished in the 1990s, often with a focus on Roman Britain. Religion is both a key source of evidence and an obviously important theme in understanding cultural change, interaction and power, and thus it has likewise been of interest to scholars from within and beyond the region. Here, I give an overview of the work of some of the influential Roman archaeologists working within the post-colonial tradition. I also consider the complex intersections of ancient and modern, and of Britain and North Africa, found in this body of work, and evaluate the impact this tradition of thought continues to have on Roman archaeology going forwards.

Settler Simultaneity and Anti-Indigenous Racism at Land-Grant Universities

Moments of performative racial consciousness, however urgent and necessary, often fail to reckon with long-standing demands against injustice from communities of color. In the case of Indigenous Peoples in higher education, these demands frequently include an end to derogatory mascots and racialized campus violence. This article attends to those issues by merging and extending settler-colonial theory and racialized organization theory to examine how the logics of Indigenous elimination and dispossession permeate higher education. With a specific focus on land-grant universities, I argue that racialized organizations are embedded in institutional fields and that both operate within a broader settler-colonial project. I introduce the concept of settler simultaneity to further historicize the study of racialized organizations and uncover how they target persons, collectives, and ideas that pose obstacles to settler goals of subordination, extraction, and profiteering both locally and globally. I look to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a case study that illustrates how these logics work across time and conclude by considering how critical engagement with the logics of elimination can help us to better understand, and hold accountable, the policies and programs of racialized organizations in other areas of social life.

FLOATING IDENTITY REFLECTED IN ROBERT OLEN BUTLER’S SHORT STORY “CRICKET”

This research is aimed to analyze the floating identity from the main character, Ted, represented in Robert Olen Butler’s short story titled “Cricket”. Then, using post-colonialism approach, the identity of the main character, Ted, will be analyzed in relation to the occurrence of ambivalence and mimicry in the short story “Cricket.” The method used to analyze the short story is by using descriptive qualitative method. The author seeks, describes, and analyzes the data. The data is taken from the narration and dialogue of the short story which is related to the research. The theory used in this research is the post-colonial theory from the post-colonial theory expert, Homi K. Bhabha. The occurrence and phenomena of hybridity in form of ambivalence and mimicry in the short story used to determine the main character’s identity reflected in the story, based on Bhabha’s definition of mentioned term. The results of this study show the existence of identity crisis in which the main character, Ted, couldn’t sure which identity he belongs to. Ted has a “defective” identity where he accepted Western superiority but didn’t let go his Eastern roots, trapped in his own dilemma in achieving his identity.

Colonial Revolution and Liberatory War: from Communist to Post-Colonial Theory (Georgy Safarov, Mao Zedong and Frantz Fanon)

The article investigates the intellectual roots of the concept of colonial revolution, which goes back to the 2nd congress of the Communist International, examines its importance in shaping the Communist political thought and outlines its subsequent transformation in the wake of post-colonial theory. The author starts with analyzing the political ideas of Georgi Safarov—Comintern [the Communist International] theorist. He was among the most original thinkers who elaborated the concept of colonial revolution. Safarov, drawing from his own experience in Central Asia, insisted that global capitalism is “retreating to the positions of feudalism” while operating in colonies, treating them as collective “serfs” and lacking any proper social basis save for its own enormous military force. Such analogy led Safarov to envisage the colonial revolution as a “plebeian” revolt and liberatory war against the inhumane and stagnant colonial order, opening the way for a non-capitalist development with certain assistance from the Soviet Union. Similar ideas were independently formulated by Mao Zedong in the 1930s. He saw colonial revolution in China as a “protracted war” of liberation and listed the conditions under which victory was possible. However, the subsequent development of a former colony was seen by Mao as a transitory period of “democratic dictatorship”. Similar ideas of colonial revolution as a liberatory peasant war and “plebeian” movement were developed by Franz Fanon in the context of his own war experience in Algeria. Developing the idea of “plebeian”, peasant revolt and justifying the violence as the sole means of ending the rule of colonial power, Fanon at the same time differed from the tradition of the 2nd Comintern Congress (represented by Safarov, Mao and the others) while describing the independent existence of former colonies. For Fanon, the worst consequence of colonial rule is not permanent backwardness but psychological trauma, an inevitable result of a brutal conquest which requires therapy. The author concludes that such conceptual transformation was stimulated not merely by the disappointment in Soviet and Chinese economic strategies, but also in the geographical and cultural factor which made the reintegration with the former colonial powers preferable to the direct “escape” into the socialist camp.

Narrating the Territorial Foundations of Privilege: Racial Discourse and Indigenous Peoples

This article focuses on the cultural narratives underlying U.S. society’s racialized inequalities. Informed by settler colonial theory and Charles Tilly’s work on “durable inequality,” I outline a privilege narratives framework that centers the dual mechanisms of racial dispossession that construct white supremacy’s material foundations: (1) the exploitation of non-Indigenous bodies and (2) the opportunity hoarding of Indigenous resources. I argue that these complementary, yet divergent, mechanisms shape distinctive patterns in contemporary racial discourse. In contrast to color-blind racism’s ahistoric and spatially disembedded storylines, the hoarding of Indigenous resources requires narrations that historically legitimate the dominant culture’s territoriality. Thus, in comparison with other racialized groups, racial discourse surrounding Indigenous peoples remains rooted in the defense of the territorial foundations of white property. Empirical support for the theoretical framework is provided through a sample of purposive follow-up interviews of non-Indigenous bystanders with historical connections to the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) “Red Power” activism in the 1970s.

Representation of The Other in Ghanaian Literary Texts: A Reading of Some Selected Works

Ghanaian literary texts have been greatly influenced by post-colonial theory which tends to depict and (expose) the inaccuracy of the duality embedded in western imperialism manifested in the concepts of the self and the other. With post-colonial theory as background and specifically the theoretical formulations from Said’s Orientalism (1978), Bhabha’s The location of Culture (1994), and Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (2001), this paper examines how Ghanaian written literature re-inscribes the concept of the Other with intent of justifying the existence of the advantageous self which apparently denigrates the other. Using textual analysis of some representative texts, I argue that Ghanaian literary artists portray the concepts of the self and the other with different connotations and permutations which reflect the ideals of the society within the geo-political space of world Literatures.

Applying Post-colonial theory “Inferiority Complex” Concept on Film Production in Short Film “Luckiest Man on Earth” as a Social Phenomenon

Film is a medium that can be used to convey a message or story in audio and visual form. Film, which also functions as an art medium, can be used to communicate about a social phenomenon that occurs in society. This paper aims to examine social phenomena that occur in society and reflect on these things through the film "Luckiest Man on Earth" and how the inferiority complex affects the stories contained in this film. The fictional film "Luckiest Man on Earth" tells the story of a young man who works as an ojek at a tourism location in Indonesia and meets a woman of French descent. With Google Translate, they can communicate with one another, but this is used by the motorcycle taxi driver as material to show off to friends and relatives that he has a girlfriend of French descent. This film is produced based on the concept of an inferiority complex that is deeply embedded in Indonesian society.

Epistemologias para convivialidade ou Zumbificação

<p>Inspirado no pensamento de Frantz Fanon, este texto é um diagnóstico do tempo presente encenado como uma “reação psicótica”, cujo esperado efeito colateral é fazer avançar a noção de convivialidade como um espaço de experimentação analítica, onde desigualdade e diferença compartilham a condição de isonomia conceitual. O experimento específico aqui realizado tenta atingir esse objetivo fundindo diferentes registros escriturais e explorando o repertório vernacular da junção brasileira de um Atlântico afro-indígena. Sua aposta analítica, a ideia de zumbificação, é o esboço de uma posição epistemológica cujo trabalho consiste em uma cinética de (pelo menos) três movimentos: 1) a posicionalidade necessária para fazer exigências políticas; 2) o decentramento necessário para atenuar os efeitos prejudiciais tanto do essencialismo (mesmo estratégico) como da inevitável reprodução de padrões hegemônicos excludentes; 3) o voluntarismo necessário para amplificar abordagens epistemológicas subalternizadas de modo que elas possam se tornar mais pervasivas.</p><p> </p><p>Epistemologies for Conviviality or “Zumbification”</p><p>Inspired by Frantz Fanon’s thought, this paper is a diagnostic of the present time, enacted as a “psychotic reaction” that melts together different scriptural registers to advance the notion of conviviality as a space of analytical experimentation, where inequality and difference share the condition of conceptual isonomy. The experiment performed in this article tries to accomplish this goal by exploring the vernacular repertoire of the Brazilian junction of an afro-indigenous Atlantic. Its analytical idea, zumbification, is the sketch of an epistemological subject-position, whose labor consists in a kinesics of (at least) three movements: 1) the situatedness needed for making political demands; 2) the decenteredness necessary for attenuating the harmful effects of (even strategic) essentialism and the unavoidable reproduction of hegemonic exclusionary patterns; 3) the willfulness required for amplifying subalternized epistemological approaches, so that they may become more pervasive.</p><p>Capoeira | Conviviality | Epistemology | Post-colonial theory | Zumbi</p>