The taking of Western/Euro Mathematics as reappropriation/repair

Abstract

Reorienting ethnomathematics away from reclaiming or celebrating epistemologies lost to colonialization, we propose the need to position local knowledges as the authorities that re appropriate Western Mathematical traditions in the service of local cultures and concerns. Drawing from several post-colonial novels in which a divided world and clash of traditions is at the center of character, plot, politics, and the human condition (Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Nuruddin Farah’s North of Dawn) applying the work of Ligia (Lichio) Lopez, on the construction of indigeneity as a form of coloniality, we urge the application of a metaphor in order to understand and interpret mathematics education through the prism of ethnomathematics. Can one enjoy the privileges of western civilization and yet perceive resistance in this acculturation process as a positive action of affirmation? What are the corresponding costs for any choice? What about students — mostly out of mainstream — at school that very often are confronting a similar dilemma?