Anibal Quijano: (Dis)entangling the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum

Abstract

AbstractThis essay reviews and builds upon Aníbal Quijano's contribution to decolonial theory to sketch out what I refer to as the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, broadly understood as an imperial doctrine and a pedagogical mode of domination aimed at producing a modern/colonial subjectivity. It argues that the geopolitics and coloniality of the curriculum reveal the relationship between geopolitical designs, colonialism, and curriculum, thereby contributing to the interrogation of how dominant ways of knowing are propagated discursively and pedagogically. The article focuses on how the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum enable the reading, interpretation and unsettling of curricular discourses and pedagogical practices reproducing Euro‐Anglo‐American ways of being (ontological violence), individualist ways of knowing (epistemic violence) and racialised affective grammars. It concludes by gesturing towards ways to think, be, act, relate and do otherwise.