Browsing by Author "Davids, Nuraan"

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    Decolonization in South African universities: storytelling as subversion and reclamation
    (Oxford University Press, 2024-06) Davids, Nuraan
    Underscoring recurrent calls for the decolonization of university curricula in South Africa are underexplored presumptions that by only disrupting theoretical content, universities might release themselves from a colonialist grasp, that continues to dominate and distort higher education discourse. While it might be the case that certain theories hold enormous authoritative, ‘truthful’ sway, as propagated through Western interpretations and norms, there are inherent problems in exclusively approaching the decolonization project as a content-based hurdle, removed from the subjectivities of students’ social, lived, and learning realities. The argument advanced in this article is that until the epistemic harm of colonialism and apartheid are afforded careful recognition and attention—as in focusing on the lived experiences, realities, and stories of individuals—the hard work of delegitimizing coloniality, and its implicit structures of hegemonies and binaries cannot unfold. In addressing these harms, I commence by describing some of the contexts of epistemic harm, promulgated through colonialism and apartheid. This is followed by a consideration of decolonization, both as theory and practice-within-context. Here, I also foreground the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, as a particular moment of painful clarity about why decolonization, as well as transformation, has faltered in higher education in South Africa. In the second half, I focus on the necessity of prioritizing storytelling as a deep manifestation of decolonization. Stories, I maintain, provide access into unknown lives, and can subvert the invisible, normative framings, which dictate how we live in this world. As a manifestation of decolonization, students’ stories hold profound implications for the recognition and affirmation of pluralist identities, histories, knowledge, values, and world-views.
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    Schools as restorative spaces for democratic citizenship education
    (University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2019) Davids, Nuraan
    The inception of desegregated schools has persistently been accompanied by sophisticated, exclusionary policies and practices, often masked by excuses of language, residential area, and fees. That a number of schools continue to employ dubious learner selection practices, is a concern that extends beyond the confines of school halls, and holds particularly worrisome implications for conceptions of democratic citizenship. On the one hand, is the obvious tension and seeming juxtaposition between school choice and learner selection. On the other hand, is the reduction of learner selection to racial discrimination. This article has a twofold interest: what is necessary for schools to shift their policies and practices of learner selection, so that they make a foundational contribution to democratic citizenship education, rather than undermining it? How might schools better position themselves as the custodians of democratic citizenship education, so that they play a restorative role?
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    Teaching as Epistemic Mistrust
    (Springer Nature, 2024-08-19) Davids, Nuraan
    Long portrayed as a virtuous profession, teaching has always been embedded in notions of trust and trustworthiness. Alongside expectations of epistemic cultivation and development, is an implicit handing over of discretionary powers to ‘the trusted teacher’. At the height of #blacklivesmatter protests in 2020, however, high school learners all over South Africa took to social media—@yousilenceweamplify—to express their hurt and anger at their dehumanising experiences at some of the country’s leading schools. Their accounts not only exposed some schools as intense sites of racial, religious, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic tension and conflict, but shattered presumptions about ‘the trusted teacher’. Following a consideration of what trust infers, and the potential harms that arise from epistemic mistrust, the paper considers what might be gained from philosophical engagements in the espousal of teaching as a relationship of epistemic trust, and which ensures the flourishing of both learner and teacher? How might philosophy of education assist teacher education programmes in attuning students to an understanding that being trustworthy as teachers resides in self-knowledge as well as knowledge of the differences of, and among others?