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 is not the dominant media forms of racial capitalism but decolonial action and organizing and their relationality.
There have been colonial and decolonial ways of seeing since 1492. Plantation slavery required permanent surveillance. Exogenous colonialism demands “you, work for me,” requiring permanent availability; while settler colonialism says “you, go away,” creating invisibility. Decolonizing visuality is to erase the pattern of classification, separation and aestheticization these systems rely on.
The workshop alternates study of racial capitalism and decolonial methodologies with specific actions. Its goal is, in short, to learn how to undo the mediation of settler (neo)colonialism, from Standing Rock to Palestine and South Africa.
It’s about shaping questions not prescribing answers; about making tools to do that work; always remembering that decolonizing is a material process not a metaphor.
Begin by getting a sense of the South African context from where Decolonize the Curriculum emerged: