Critical Perspectives on Decoloniality: Southern Epistemologies and Epistemologies of the Souths

by Dorothy Takyiakwaa (Editor), Sinfree Makoni (Editor), Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa (Editor), Alissa J. Hartig (Editor)

Overview

This book is both a deep dive into and a critique of foundational decolonial concepts and epistemologies, engaging both historical, theoretical analyses of social issues and conditions, and standpoints from activism. The chapters are situated within multiple, plural and shifting force fields within the academy, and present a pathway to critically engage political or academic practices within and outside the university. The authors specifically engage contestations and harmonies in approaches of decoloniality, epistemic injustices, Southern epistemologies and epistemologies of the Souths. Alongside the theoretical chapters sit interventions on self-liberation, healing, reconstitution of human life, embracing interdependence and defying boundaries. The book represents a critical intervention in the development of decolonial theories and methodologies, and will be of interest to scholars, students and activists within and outside of academia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781836680741
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	09/16/2025
Series:	Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	314
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dorothy Takyiakwaa is Assistant Teaching Professor of African Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Sinfree Makoni is Director of African Studies and Liberal Arts Professor of African Studies and Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Inviolata Vicky Khasandi-Telewa is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in African Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Alissa J. Hartig is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Portland State University, USA.

Sinfree Makoni is Director of African Studies, Liberal Arts Professor of African Studies and Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Alissa J. Hartig is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University, USA. Her research interests include English for Specific Purposes and second language writing.

Table of Contents

Contributors

Crain Soudien: Foreword

Sinfree Makoni, Dorothy Takyiakwaa, Vicky Khasandi-Telewa and Alissa J. Hartig: Introduction: Decoloniality and Southern Epistemologies as Alternatives

Part 1: Conceptions and Framings of Decoloniality: Contestations and Harmonies

Chapter 1. Lewis Gordon: Freedom, Justice and Decolonization

Chapter 2. Arturo Escobar: Beyond Monohumanism: An Emerging Narrative from Latin America              

Chapter 3. Mamphela Ramphele and Sinfree Makoni: In Conversation with Mamphela Ramphele

Chapter 4. Marit Tolo Østebø: Models as Viral Assemblages

Part 2: Epistemic (In)justices and Decolonization

Chapter 5. Sujata Patel: Colonialism and the Framing of Social Theory: A Hundred-Year History        

Chapter 6. Akosua Adomako Ampofo: Cross-Examining Epistemic Violence and Working Towards Epistemic Freedom

Chapter 7. Julia Suárez-Krabbe: Over Our Dead Bodies: The Death Project, Egoism and the Existential Dimensions of Decolonization

Part 3: Cases of Colonization and Approaches to Decolonization

Chapter 8. Murad Idris: A Conversation About ‘War for Peace’

Chapter 9. Frieda Ekotto: Reading Négritude Thinkers with Black Lives Matter

Chapter 10. Emiliano Treré: Key Challenges and Dangers in the Decolonization of Data (Studies)

Chapter 11. John Holmwood: Modern Capitalism as Colonialism

Chapter 12. Mary Louise Pratt: Planetarity and the Crisis of Knowledge: Dancing with the Trickster

Index

Editorial Reviews

At a dark time in our history, this volume offers a rare lifeline. Speaking from places long marginal to the centers of planetary power, the authors in conversation here grapple with the contradictions so disfiguring civilization and society in the Global North. In proposing alternative, more generative ‘Southern’ sites for collective thinking and learning, they give acute, tangible meaning to the often-elusive task of decolonizing the production of knowledge.

Jean Comaroff

A fly in the ointment to the coloniality and cartesianism of north-centric "universal" theory, this volume enacts, through strategies of un-booking, onto-epistemological collaborations that promote new coalitions of understanding such that both the proverbial fly and the ointment learn and unlearn from each other in previously unsuspected, non-predatory ways.

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza