Against Decolonisation by Doug Stokes

Author:Doug Stokes [Stokes, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Eurocentric nature of decolonial history

This turns the decolonisation critique on its head. For example, a leading South African decolonisation advocate, Siyanda Makaula, argues that scientists’ appeal to universal applicability is problematic. Scientists ‘often hide behind their disciplines’ putative universality – that a cell is a cell, whether it belongs to an African or a European, or that the laws of physics apply to all – to avoid the need to question the way they do things’.11 Similarly, Prescod-Weinstein argues that what she calls white empiricism has come to ‘dominate empirical discourse in physics because whiteness powerfully shapes the predominant arbiters of who is a valid observer of physical and social phenomena’.12

We see similar claims in other science fields. For example, the Quality Assurance Agency provides guidance for all UK universities. In its 2022 maths guidance, it has argued that the UK-wide Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research (MSOR) ‘curriculum should present a multicultural and decolonised view’ that is ‘informed by the student voice’. Similarly, the values of ‘EDI should permeate the curriculum and every aspect of the learning experience to ensure the diverse nature of society in all its forms is evident’. Providers ‘should reflect on their curricula and processes to ensure that no group is disadvantaged or othered; for example, decolonising the curriculum can involve explicit reflection on the history of MSOR knowledge generation, as well as reflecting on how delivery or admission practices might adversely impact on certain subgroups within the student cohort. EDI aspects of student engagement and achievement should be monitored and actions formed to ensure equity.’13 This is a form of magical thinking whereby the beliefs (or rather the author’s identity) somehow transmogrify that which is being examined and is rooted in the social constructivism we discussed above.

The laws of physics or maths exist independently of the scientist’s identity. Our knowledge of those laws is fallible and relative but, given the mind independence of the phenomenon our knowledge gradually uncovers, we can rationally adjudicate between different interpretations to ascertain veracity and optimal explanations that are, in turn, superseded as learning progresses.

A key problem that Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò identifies is that this decolonial critique fully embraces ‘the racialisation of consciousness’, where modernity and science are seen as ‘white’ and therefore, in some intrinsic way anti-black.14 In this, Africans or, more broadly, the agency of non-European cultures are portrayed as either victims or resisters against modernity itself ‘rather than critical appropriators of it’.15 Táíwò argues that this ‘absolutisation of European colonialism’ turns Africans into ‘permanent subalterns in their history’. Instead, he says that we need to take African agency and the histories of non-European states and civilisations seriously, and not as mere objects of European perfidiousness without their own agency, interests and accounts. Through the castigation of modernity or the broader scientific Enlightenment as racially tainted, a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ is introduced, which undermines the capacity for democratic dialogue. Life becomes an endless struggle that pits people against one another based on identity.16

This also has implications for the nature of African governance today.

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