Diasporic scholarship: racialization, coloniality and de‐territorializing knowledge

Abstract

In considering how knowledge reproduces the dynamics of coloniality in Geography, scholars have looked beyond the Global North and Global South as cartographical sites, instead seeing them as conceptual frameworks and epistemic positions. Building on this rich work, we draw attention to specific issues obscured within it. Whilst geographical scholarship has moved to recognizing how the Global North and South bleed into each other, it frequently continues to locate scholars themselves within specific territories, labelling them of the Global North or of the Global South, thereby re‐territorializing scholars and their work and reflecting and revealing processes of racialization within the academy.We ask how those who do not fit into neat geographical imaginations of North and South represent ways to understand and know the world? Specifically, how can we centre the idea of diaspora as part of wider geo‐ and body political projects that aim to decentre knowledge production? We bring diaspora back into debates on knowledge production to explore how their understanding of the world, rooted in hybrid and transnational ways, can enrich engagements around postcoloniality and decoloniality. We detail how such voices illuminate how racialization, coloniality and difference continue to mark how we know and teach the world. Our argument makes imperative the case for de‐territorializing scholars and scholarship.