ABSTRACT
By the end of Chapter 13, you will be able to:
Distinguish and describe feminist decolonial pedagogy
Examine the importance of feminist decolonial pedagogy
Explain the notion of ubuntu
Consider ubuntu as feminist decolonial pedagogy
Apply understanding to case studies
In Chapter 13, we explore the epistemologies of the South and discuss ubuntu as feminist decolonial pedagogy. Feminist decolonial pedagogies decentre Eurocentric worldviews and centre Indigenous ones (Okech, 2020). This chapter starts with the theory-work of Brazilian educator and activist Paulo Freire (1921–1997). We discuss Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. Freire believed that education should be the practice of freedom. We consider the notion of conscientisation and critique the banking model of education. African American feminist-activist and educator bell hooks (1952–2021) comes next. Hooks was deeply influenced by Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. Her transgressive pedagogy, as outlined in Teaching to Transgress (1994) and Teaching Community: Pedagogy of Hope (2003), responds to black women’s marginalisation in the education system. We return to the epistemologies of the South with Portuguese academic and postcolonial thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1940–). The polyphonic university, the pluriversity and the subversity take our focus. We discuss university capitalism and university colonialism within this context.