Decolonizing Media

Decolonizing media studies is to engage media and mediation as being in need of decolonization. It takes the perspective of the global South, whether in that South or looking from the North. It follows the lead of South African students and activists in seeking to decolonize the curriculum. From this optic, the “object” of study… Continue reading Welcome to Decolonizing Media!

We’ll introduce ourselves, discuss facilitation and form a community agreement. Then let’s intersect seven ways to do visual activism with seven ways to decolonize the university How do the tools of visual activism intersect/diverge from the goals of decolonizing the university?

First, let’s define “colonialism” in its various forms using the schema of the journal Settler Colonial Studies. Here’s the introduction to Coloniality At Large, which provides useful distinctions between de/coloniality and post/colonialism.   Finally, here are ten theses by Nelson Maldonando Torres on coloniality and decoloniality. Review the theses: identify one you think we should discuss, intersect it… Continue reading Day Two: Defining De/Colonizing

Today, let’s look at how South African student activists have pushed the question of Decolonizing the Curriculum onto the inter/national agenda. The movement emerged from Rhodes Must Fall, a campaign against the statue of Cecil Rhodes at University of Cape Town, South Africa, covered here. That led to #FeesMustFall, a successful protest against raises in… Continue reading Day Three: Decolonize the Curriculum

In this workshop, we’ll take a careful read of Sylvia Wynter’s long and wide-ranging essay “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument.” The stakes are pretty high: the struggle of our new millennium will be one between the ongoing imperative of securing the well-being of our present ethnoclass (i.e.,… Continue reading Day Four: The Human, After Man

In the “Antifascist Neorealisms” chapter from Right to Look, I analyze ways of seeing from the South that are applied to fascism, colonialism and the resistance to them. In this workshop, we’ll map these terms and think them through in terms of The Battle of Algiers. We’ll be mindful of the figure of the “Algerian” in present-day French fascism… Continue reading Day Five: The View from the South

After the success of the Algerian Revolution (1954-61), Frantz Fanon studied the practice of decolonization in Les Damnés de la terre (usually mistranslated as The Wretched of the Earth). In this session, we’ll read the opening chapter line-by-line, old school style. Fanon’s writing is direct but the range of his implication(s) is immense. How do we… Continue reading Day Six: To See Les Damnés de la Terre

“Orientalism” and Islamophobia are key components of coloniality. In this workshop, we’ll consider how to countervisualize war zones and refugees via the exemplary question of the Palestinians, the most “invisible” people in the current world order. Background on migrants, see the catalog We Shout and We Shout But No-One Listens. Consider here: How To See Palestine. And… Continue reading Day Seven: How to See Palestine

Industrial modernity and coloniality present themselves as linear processes. Over the next four sessions, we’ll look at how the decolonial disrupts that linearity and provides alternative ways of seeing. Viveiros de Castro’s work on Amerindian perspectives–used in a very different sense than in Western art–requires us to think differently about the Americas and the Atlantic… Continue reading Day Eight: Indigenous Perspectives

While Western Marxism and the post-structural wave have become canonical in Western humanities programs, the Black radical tradition cuts across them both, centering on the experience of Africa and the African diaspora in shaping the (Atlantic) world. Cedric J. Robinson’s classic Black Marxism deserves to be read in full, slowly and carefully. For this session, I’m… Continue reading Day Nine: The Black Radical Tradition