What practices might be observed in an academic field or discipline undergoing decolonisation?
#mirotīhau #thread

Let's begin with some conceptual analysis.

Colonisation is the "successful establishment of an invading species in a habitat". https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780191793158.001.0001

Habitat (v): "place/site where plant/animal normally/naturally lives/grows"; PIE etymon ghabh- ("to take, grab, seize"). | #able #debt #duty #endeavour #forgive #gift #malady #prohibit #toitekupu https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/lex/master/0605 

Further: colonisation is the imperial exploit of constituting a colony. http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macpt/colonization/0

"Based around widespread settlement by the colonizing power, rather than just resource extraction", (Un)settler colonisation is "often accompanied by the violent destruction and dispossession of existing indigenous societies". https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001

"Colonisation is an inherently brutal process and, in New Zealand, warfare .... was the raw acting out of a colonising will to dispossess — an unwarranted assault against innocents whose only offence was wanting to defend their homes." https://twitter.com/DrGraySharp/status/838952983182266368?s=20

By invading and establishing themselves in a habitat, colonisers became a society who unsettle the People of the Land.

NB:
Human animals do not normally grow in the Academy. Unlike Indigenous homelands, academic fields and disciplines are not habitats, so cannot be colonised.

Decolonisation is "a process which engages with imperialism and colonialism at multiple levels" (Smith 1999, 20), "a long-term process involving the bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial power" (98). | @tuhiwai5 https://www.google.co.nz/books/edition/Decolonizing_Methodologies/Nad7afStdr8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

(The concept may be differentiated from its root by its prefix. Though 'de-' may indicate a reversal [as in 'de-merit'] or intensification [as in 'de-fine'], I prefer to read the 'de-' in its Latin sense.)

De-: "the going out, departure, removal, or departing of an object from any fixed point.... It occupies a middle place between ab, away from, which denotes a mere external departure, and ex, out of, which signifies from the interior of a thing" (513). https://archive.org/details/LewisAndShortANewLatinDictionary

Accordingly, decolonisation is a departure from colonisation.

It accepts a starting point close to the violence; an intimate colonial encounter, but never absolute. It affirms a movement away from that encounter. Indeed, it may be as simple as that movement.

Decolonial practices in an academic field or discipline require a departure from Unsettler structural violence, including those founded in the myth of the autonomous will. https://twitter.com/DrGraySharp/status/858174538130927616?s=20

On Kantian autonomy. https://twitter.com/DrGraySharp/status/1380663667490877440?s=20

Academic practices that support such autonomy include the masking of peer reviewers' identities. Unlike a teacher giving feedback, a reviewer is freed from any responsibility to their audience for their words. While this may foster honesty, it does not guarantee it.

Moreover, the reviewer makes no departure towards a vulnerable engagement with their audience.

I think in an academic field or discipline undergoing decolonisation, one practice that would be observed is feedback as community-building. Blind peer review would not exist.