How does one do decolonizing research work as part of an institution in need of decolonizing? – AFRIUNI: Vies Créatives des Universités Africaines

Beginning in the month of April 2023, we- the core members of the AFRIUNI team- began gathering in person to chart the way forward in the implementation stage of our study in to “the Creative Lives of African Universities”. One team member is yet to arrive however, largely due to the imperialist double standards that gate-keep migration. His absence is particularly felt during our weekly reading review sessions. At these sessions, we discuss relevant scholarship on the research variables and aspects. We began, of course, with the concept of decolonizing research; particularly the need for it when it comes to multilingual research. In reading group sessions, we appreciate and critique the authors’ perspectives and discuss applicability of their ideas.

That is what a great deal of research is, we note, discussing, critiquing, abstraction and theory. But what about practice? A very real question looms: How will we really do decolonizing research work when the time comes for data collection (a term itself which is less common in humanities disciplines, and whose extractive logic has been critiqued by decolonial thinkers)? As our discussions and readings have made clear, we are not ‘decolonial” researchers just because the majority of the research team is black African. We all exist within coloniality and perpetuate it even in the languages we speak in. We all have internalized coloniality and fixed ideas of what should be and how it should be.

So, what is decolonizing research in practice? How would ours be truly decolonizing – or, indeed, anti-colonial? Is it even possible that we can do decolonizing research as members of an institution that is in itself in need of decolonizing? As tools of “the Masters’ House”. Do we have the necessary power to do truly decolonizing research? Even the freedoms to communicate with each other, to be present in the same space are limited by colonial languages and imperial immigration restrictions.

These were the questions I had by the 3rd reading group session, and on that note our P.I suggested we make an attempt to ‘do’ decolonizing rather than continue to overthink and ruminate on it. Quoting Alison Phipps whose work (Decolonizing Multilingualism) was amongst those we had reviewed in our reading sessions, she said “the only way to decolonize is by doing”.

So, in place of our 3rd reading group session, we decided to take a historical tour of our institution and the city of Bristol that surrounds it rather than sit over scholarship discussing its applicability. Moving beyond the thinking on decolonizing to the practice of it beginning with reflecting on institution we are now a part of and will be doing the work from.

This tour began with viewing certain campus infrastructure. At the block that depicts the university’s logo– a combination of the emblems of some of the city’s most powerful families (Wills, Fry, Colston) – we discussed what it means that the founders memorialized in the logo are linked to the transatlantic slave trade or to plantations that were built with slave labor, and that the wealth which funded the founding of the institution can be linked to oppression of Black people. Looking for representations of Black Britons and considering how, if at all, diversity and inclusion are visible across the institution, we considered how buildings, such as the landmark Wills Memorial Building, are named. As a result of a feminist initiative, a wall in this building that formerly held portraits of just the institutions chancellors, now includes homage to more women and BIPOC relevant to Bristol’s history- an attempt to make what would have been a sea of white have more colour. We went on to view other monuments that speak of Bristol’s recurrent struggle with racism: Pero’s bridge (dedicated to the slave Pero Jones) and the now empty plinth of a statue that honored Bristol-born merchant and trans-Atlantic slave trader, Edward Colston but was torn down during the June 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. We ended our tour at the M-Shed Museum where I felt particularly moved by the comments of previous visitors which now make up the wordings on the wall of the display set up in acknowledgement of Bristol’s contribution to the transatlantic slave trade and the racism that that followed since. It was not lost on us that while so much around the campus and town- from names of buildings to streets and statues- honor the memories of the people who either participated in or benefited from the slave trade and oppression of Black people, there are only three actual public acknowledgements of the people who were enslaved and the oppression that made the building of the city possible. The first is Pero’s bridge that has somehow become a place for love padlocks given how the plaque that explains its significance is all but hidden away; the second is– a similarly small plaque at the side of the M-Shed Museum; and finally, the section inside the museum that is limited to exhibition of the transatlantic slave trade.

It was on the way to the museum that we noted how there seemed to be a notable event/revolutionary marker for every decade- as though when every generation comes of age they remember and fight for what they can and leave the rest for those to come. On the way back from the museum, the answer to the question of “how do we do decolonizing work from here?” came to me from that: We do it imperfectly, reiteratively, knowing it is a process and not an end itself.

Perhaps because it is born out of our criticism of the canonized and Eurocentric, decolonizing work is expected (in academic spaces at least) to be perfect. There is more talk than doing because the burden is often on the oppressed to explain their oppression and to defend the need for change. Perhaps that is why we feel anti-colonial epistemologies must be ‘just so’; that they must be as whole and thorough and operationalizable as the canonized theories they counter- theories which have been developed over centuries mind you. But I am reminded of Maldonado-Torres (2016, pp. 30-31) noting that, “decoloniality is never pure nor perfect… and asking for purity or for perfection, for a complete plan of action, or for a complete design of the new decolonized reality are forms of decadence and bad faith”. It is enough if every generation throws a rock against the walls of coloniality but fails to break it altogether. It is enough that there is thinking and deliberation on the need for decolonizing and brainstorming on the how.

This brings to mind, Zig Ziglar’s adaptation of G.K Chesterton’s renowned quote “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well.”, and that includes decolonizing.

Our process will not be perfect, but it will be deliberate. It will acknowledge the coloniality of the knowledge-creation process, the need for dismantling of the structures and conditioning – colonial, patriarchal, classist and more – which both we the researchers and the subjects we research are shaped by. It will be interactive and reiterative, a continuous interrogation of ourselves and the data in the course of research.

The “Decolonize UoB” logo depicted the fall of Colston’s statue

As I’ve noted elsewhere (Kwachou 2021), the master’s tools may not bring down his house, not in one go, not without recycling and re-shaping. But that doesn’t mean they are useless altogether. Like stones thrown at the wall of coloniality each decade by one generation after another, the tools can weaken the foundations of the house, can be used to ensure the need for dismantling is remembered by those to come. This too is decolonizing work. In this way, even imperfect attempts at decolonizing are necessary prep work for the eventual tumbling of coloniality.