Decolonizing higher education in a global post-colonial era: #RhodesMustFall from Cape Town to Oxford

• Published in: The Review of education/pedagogy/cultural studies Vol. 45; no. 1; pp. 53 - 76
• Main Authors: Sunnemark, Ludvig, Thörn, Håkan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01-01-2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Activism; Blacks; Civil society; Colonialism; Decolonization; Discourse; Education & Educational Research; fall; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; global civil society; Globalization; Higher Education; History; Political Issues; Politics; post-colonialism; Postcolonialism; Race; Racism; rhodes; RhodesMustFall; Social Change; social movements; Sociologi; Sociology; south-africa; student movements; Subjectivity; university; World Problems; United Kingdom (England); South Africa
• ISSN: 1071-4413; 1556-3022
• DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2021.2009749

Considering globalization as part of a post-colonial conjuncture, the examination of the politics of decolonization is essential to understand key conflicts in global civil society. Recently, a global movement for the decolonization of higher education has played a key role in this context, with the #RhodesMustFall movement being particularly important. Starting at the University of Cape Town and spreading to Oxford University, the movement initially protested against the presence of statues of Cecil Rhodes at both sites. We argue that the #RhodesMustFall movement is part of what we call a global field of decolonial politics. We also demonstrate how movement discourse is necessarily rearticulated when shifting context: the primary characteristic of the UCT discourse is its constitution of "black" subjectivity, while the Oxford discourse is largely shaped by the diasporic situation of formerly colonized peoples within an ex-metropolis, constructing multiple plural subjectivities and recovering issues of race and coloniality from political margins.