Western hegemony, colonization, imperial and neocolonial domination over the Third World has been sustained through knowledge production that has become hegemonic on a global scale since the rise of western modernity.
I argue that settler colonialism in Palestine took place and has been maintained through that structure. Formal independence of previously colonized countries has not led to real decolonization, not only because these countries continued to be economically and otherwise dependent on Western powers, but also importantly if not more so, due to dependency on knowledge produced in western academic institutions.
"to continue to make central western texts and knowledge in our academic institutions, helps only in maintaining western hegemony, and in re-enforcing a sense of inferiority among ourselves and our students"
For Palestine to be truly free from dependency in the future, academic institutions must rethink their goals from being neoliberal money making institutions to ones that aim at creating educated and free thinking subjects, rethink disciplines that are offered to students rather than blindly copy disciplines and their contents from western academic institutions, engage with decolonial thought that is produced locally, regionally, and globally because that knowledge reflects an experience that Palestinians have been going through, and rethink the current pedagogy that is based on lecturing and memorization because that only creates conformity and docility, and engage with comparative studies of other groups that were under colonial rule in the past, and those who are currently under settler colonial regimes in order to learn from one another’s histories.
It is only then, that decolonized subjects can emerge and a real decolonial future is possible. The arguments I present here are based on personal experience, local, regional, and global decolonial thought.
See full article here
