Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:03:52.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Decolonizing the Literature Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2020

Abstract

What does it mean to decolonize the literature classroom? This short paper is intended as a personal reflection on teaching as an engagement with the social forces that bring neocolonial relations into the classroom, drawing on my experience teaching literature and literary theory in South Africa and Canada. I explore the idea of decolonizing the classroom as the production of an “outside” that provides meaning for the classroom’s “inside.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Noyes, John K., Herder: Aesthetics Against Imperialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Jansen, Jan and Osterhammel, Jürgen, Decolonization, A Short History, Trans. Jeremiah Riemer (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017), viii.Google Scholar

3 Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Nairobi, Kampala, Dar es Salaam: East African Publishers, 1986), 2.Google Scholar

4 Ngũgĩ, Decolonizing the Mind, 93.

5 Noyes, John K., “Difficult Humanity: Why European Culture is Studied in Democratic South Africa,” Pretexts 8.2 (1999): 207–20.Google Scholar

6 Herder, Johann Gottfired, “Auseinandersetzung mit Baumgartens Aesthetica. Plan zu einer Aesthetik,” in Werke. vol. 1, ed. Gaier, Ulrich (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1984): 659–76.Google Scholar

7 Krause, Monika, “The Production of Counter-Publics and the Counter-Publics of Production: An Interview with Oskar Negt,” European Journal of Social Theory 9.1 (2006): 119–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Horkheimer, Max, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Critical Theory. Selected Essays, trans. O’Connell, Matthew J. (New York: Seabury, 1972), 188243.Google Scholar

9 Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Philcox, Richard ([1963]; reprint, New York: Grove, 2004)Google Scholar: Biko, Steve, I Write What I Like: Steve Biko: A Selection of His Writings, ed. Stubbs, Aelred (Oxford: Heinemann, 1987)Google Scholar; Mbembe, Achille, Critique of Black Reason, trans. Dubois, Laurent ([2013]; reprint, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Alexander, Neville, Interviews with Neville Alexander: The Power of Languages Against the Language of Power (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Alexander, Neville, Thoughts on the New South Africa (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2013).Google Scholar

11 Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics, trans. Ashton, E. B. ([1966]; reprint New York and London: continuum, 2007).Google Scholar

12 Horn, Peter, “Hatte Kleist Rassenvorurteile?—Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Literatur zur ‘Verlobung in St. Domingo,’Monatshefte 67.2 (1975): 117–28.Google Scholar

13 Terreblanch, Sampie, Lost in Transformation. South Africa’s Search for a New Future since 1986 (Johnannesburg: KMM, 2012).Google Scholar

14 Higgins, John, Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa. Essays and Interviews on Higher Education and the Humanities (London: Bucknell, 2014).Google Scholar

15 Coetzee, J. M., “Foreword,” in Academic Freedom in a Democratic South Africa: Essays and Interviews on Higher Education and the Humanitie, ed. Higgins, John, (London: Bucknell, 2014): xixv, esp. xi.Google Scholar

16 Coetzee, “Foreword,” xii.