Themes

Theme: Reflection, Disruption and the Realisation of Decolonial Futures: Unisa’s Decoloniality Summer School at Its Tenth-Year Anniversary (2014-2024)

The College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA), will be celebrating ten years since hosting its inaugural Decoloniality Summer School (DSS) in 2014 – the first of its kind on the African continent. Over the past decade, the Summer School has challenged the legacies of colonialism and apartheid, and confronted coloniality, which persists in various forms in Africa and the rest of the world.

Unisa’s tenth anniversary DSS will take place from 15th to 19th January 2024. This is a key moment to reflect on the successes, challenges, and limitations of the Summer School in achieving its ultimate objective of decolonising power, knowledge and being. As decoloniality becomes prevalent in Africa, key questions remain: Has sufficient practical expression been given to the modalities of decoloniality? Have we learned to unlearn in order to relearn? Have we promoted the principles of interculturality, pluriversality and border-thinking in knowledge production and dissemination? And, have we embraced a decolonial ethics that articulates the struggle(s) and the freedom(s) from coloniality through the viewpoints of the marginalized?  These questions will be interrogated by renowned scholars and practitioners of decoloniality, including Linda Martín Alcoff, Bagele Chilisa, Lewis R. Gordon, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, and others. The keynote address will be delivered by Prof Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

The 2024 DSS will explore a range of issues affecting the Global South, in particular Africa. These include:

• Confronting and disrupting coloniality which continues to shape our world.
• Decolonising the Curriculum in the pursuit of relevant and authentic educational transformation.
• Articulating a decolonial praxis to disentangle Africa from the colonial matrix of power.
• Exposing the unequal global power relations and inequalities in the discourse of Covid-19.
• Identifying the lessons that we can learn from dissenting views from within as well as outside the School of                      Decoloniality.
• Conceptualising decolonial love as a core virtue and decolonial ethics as the primary instrument for the   realisation of pluriversal futures.

Target group

The Summer School is targeted at graduate students and academics from South Africa, the rest of the African continent and other countries. Admission to the Summer School is on a first-come, first-served basis.