1. Announcements
Next week’s PDC (4/4) will seek feedback on 1) the possibility of combining ENGL 101 and ENGL 105, and 2) the attendance policy
The following week’s PDC (4/11) will be the “Multimodal/Language, Knowledge, and Power Fair”

2. We acknowledge that we are gathered today on the traditional homelands of the Palus Band of Indians and the ceded lands of the Nez Perce Tribe. We further acknowledge their presence here since time immemorial and recognize their continuing connection to the land, to the water, and to their ancestors.

3. Tabitha Espina Velasco
The CLASP Graduate Assistant for the 2018 to 2019 Academic Year will be . . .
Tabitha Espina Velasco

4. Decolonial Pedagogies
CLASP PDC Session #6
Wednesday, March 28, 2018

5. Decolonization An Exercise in Thinking, Sensing, and Doing Otherwise

6. A Theory Worth Its Salt
"The only theory worth having is that which you have to fight off, not that which you speak with profound fluency."
-Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies”

7. The Three Faces of Western Modernity
“During the time span 1500 to 2000 three cumulative (and not successive) faces of modernity are discernible: the Iberian and Catholic face, led by Spain and Portugal ( , approximately); the "heart of Europe" (Hegel) face, led by England, France, and Germany ( ); and the U.S. American face, led by the United States ( ). Since then, a new global order has begun to unfold: a polycentric world interconnected by the same type of economy.”
-Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity : Global Futures, Decolonial Options

8. “The Colonial Matrix of Power”
“The Rhetoric of Modernity”
The promise of salvation by conversion, civilization, newness, innovation, progress, and development
“The Logic of Coloniality”
The darker side of Western modernity, in which violence, slavery, genocide, economic dependence, resource extraction, and epistemic upheaval are carried out in the name of modernity, thus legitimizing the dispensability (or expendability) of human life
-Aníbal Quijano and Michael Ennis, “The Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”

10. “Doing through thinking and thinking through doing”
“[M]y focus is the ‘unity’ of the colonial matrix of power, of which the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality are its two sides: one constantly named and celebrated (progress, development, growth) and the other silenced or named as problems to be solved by the former (poverty, misery, inequities, injustices, corruption, commodification, and dispensability of human life).”
-Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity : Global Futures, Decolonial Options

12. The “emerging political society” outside “the universal house of knowledge”
“[M]y argument is built on ‘options’ and not on ‘alternatives.’ If you look for alternatives you accept a point of reference instead of a set of existing options among which the decolonial enters claiming its legitimacy to sit at the table when global futures are being discussed. For that reason, the first decolonial step is delinking from coloniality and not looking for alternative modernities but for alternatives to modernity.”
-Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity : Global Futures, Decolonial Options

13. Translating Differences into Values and Hierarchies
“It was by means of the concept of time that cultural differences were classified according to their proximity to modernity or to tradition. The discourse on cultural differences hides the logic of coloniality that the discourse on the colonial and imperial differences displays The discourse of colonial and imperial differences is already a departure, a way of delinking, and a form of epistemic disobedience that opens a parallel road to knowing, sensing, believing, and living.”
-Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity : Global Futures, Decolonial Options

14. Beyond Cultures and Divides
“As a ‘necessary corrective,’ the first campaign of alphabetic composition was waged in the Western Hemisphere against a backdrop of territorial expansion, flows of capital and human flesh across national borders, massive cultural transformations, and new technologies.”
-Damián Baca, “Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later”

16. Language, Migration, and Culture
“What the current stage of globalization is enacting is (unconsciously) the uncoupling of the ‘natural link’ between languages and nations, languages and national memories, languages and national literature. Thus, it is creating the condition for and enacting the relocation of languages and the fracture of culture,”
-Walter D. Mignolo “Globalization/Mundializatión: Civilization Processes and the Relocation of Languages and Cultures”

17. Rhetorical Sovereignty
“[T]he pursuit of sovereignty is an attempt to revive not our past, but our possibilities. Rhetorical sovereignty is the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse.”
-Scott Richard Lyons, “Rhetorical Sovereignty : What do American Indians Want from Writing?”

18. Who are the “beneficiaries” or stakeholders in the process of decolonization?

19. Small Group Discussion
In small groups, please discuss the following question regarding the prospects of employing and integrating decolonial pedagogies:
What are the prospective obstacles in the way of integrating decolonial pedagogies in our classrooms?

20. A Critique of “Empowerment”
“[T]he discourse of critical pedagogy is based on rationalist assumptions that give rise to repressive myths”:
From Critical Rationalism to the Politics of Partial Narratives
Have We Got a Theory for You!
The Repressive Myth of the Silent Other
-Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy

21. Doings and Happenings
“Rhetoric and Composition is always already a product of asymmetrical exchanges of global and colonial power. Globalization is not something that is happening to Composition. Globalization is something that Composition is doing, and has been doing for quite some time.”
-Damián Baca, “Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later”

22. Small Group Activity Teachers Students
In small groups, please discuss the aforementioned obstacles in the way of integrating decolonial pedagogies in terms of who might be responsible for overcoming them (teachers, students, and/or programs). Write each of these obstacles (and any others your small group comes up with) on the color post-its provided to your group and place them accordingly on the venn diagram at the front of the room.
Programs

23. What can we (as instructors) do to navigate and overcome the obstacles in the way of integrating decolonial pedagogies in our classrooms?

24. Thank you for being my audience!
If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns regarding this presentation, please feel free to contact me at
Thank you for being my audience!