ABSTRACT
Postcolonial studies is a heterogeneous field that, rather than offering a cohesive theory as such, raises an important set of questions about the production of knowledge and its social and political effects, particularly in privileged spaces of knowledge production such as higher education. These questions complicate and complexify conversations about sustainable development by making visible the choices and silences inherent in conceptualisations and interventions related to sustainability (see for example Banerjee 2003; Munshi and Kurian 2005; Chakravartty and da Silva 2012), to international development (see for example Cooke and Kothari 2001; Baaz 2005; Bhambra 2007; Kapoor 2008; McEwan 2008; Biccum 2010) and to the geo-political politics of knowledge production in higher education (see for example Altbach 1977; Nandy 1988; Russell 2005; Hay 2008). Postcolonial studies focus on analyses of representations and engagements with the ‘Other’ ofWestern humanism: those who have been considered not fully human, capable or intelligent, whose culture and traditions have not been accorded the status of knowledge of worth, and who have been victims of continuous epistemic and material violence through exploitation, dispossession, destitution and genocide (Andreotti 2011). These
analyses illuminate precisely the relational construction of peoples in modern States in the ‘global North’1 (defined as exceptional people ‘heading humanity’) in relations to those in the ‘global South’ (defined as lacking, lagging behind, and ‘dragging’ human evolution). They outline implications for knowledge production in the ‘global North’, especially knowledge produced about ‘Others’ and about collective futures. This chapter starts with a brief introduction to key postcolonial analyses that outline the
problems of naming the world from a specific geo-political location, focusing on the works of Walter Mignolo, Gayatri C. Spivak and Ananya Roy. The second part outlines a differentiated praxis that recognises complicity while trying to subvert the imperialistic tendencies inherent in conservative and liberal institutions framed by Western modernity. The third part of the chapter explores implications of taking these analyses seriously when doing research related to sustainable development in higher education. The conclusion proposes the concept of social accountability in research as a form of self-reflexivity that keeps the politics, violences and implications of chosen stories of the past, the present and the future firmly in view.
