Epistemological resistance towards diversality: teaching community psychology as a decolonial project

Abstract

In contexts of political instability and change, the value of disciplinary knowledges and the processes that constituted them is often questioned. Psychology is not exempt from this process. Little South African work has illustrated what teaching for decoloniality may mean in South African psychology. We draw on examples of curriculum design in community psychology from the Universities of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Stellenbosch, three large South African public universities, in an attempt to surface what we regard as the decolonial frameworks that underpin their development and delivery. Capacities for reflexivity and the ability to hold multiple epistemologies encourage economies of knowledge that may prevent abyssal thinking, while contributing to cognitive justice and minimising opportunities for epistemicide. Some challenges to our pedagogy involve the potential for romanticising decoloniality.