How can we develop a decolonial feminist pedagogy that is not rooted in supremacy over the non-human? In the book “We Belong to the Earth”, scholar Nadira Omarjee goes into these questions by also looking at the notion of interconnectedness and oneness of being. She does this by looking at concepts of Uhuru and Ubuntu that are prevalent philosophical notions from her home-country, South Africa. During this 28th decolonial learning session we will delve into the question; how can we decolonise the self and our different relationships to earth, each other and all living beings? The session will be an in depth interview with Nadira Omarjee about her book and followed by a Q&A.
For the audio recording, click here. ______________________________________________________________________________________
About the speaker:
Nadira is a decolonial feminist scholar, working internationally. Previously, she was a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute on the Africa Scholar Programme at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Identity, Diversity and Inclusion (IDI) Research Group in the Sociology Department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her previous book dealt with questions on decolonising academia by following the decolonial student movements in Cape Town and Amsterdam: Reimagining the Dream: Decolonising Academia by Putting the Last First (2018). Her current research interest focuses on decolonial feminist pedagogies with her latest book: We belong to the Earth: towards a decolonial feminist inquiry rooted in uhuru and ubuntu. This book deals specifically with the ways in which ‘conscientisation’ can lead towards justice and healing. It attempts to connect the classroom to the community by inserting lived experiences against epistemicides: the personal is political. She has experimented with flipping the classroom using Freirian (1970) concepts of learning through sharing; connecting ontology with epistemology by bridging art, activism and scholarship.
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Reading tips:
Grassroots network and organization for decolonization 