Ngũgĩ and the ambiguities of colonial education

null, Bryan Mukandi

Abstract: The Kenyan writer and scholar, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, might be best known today in academic circles for his collection of essays, Decolonising the Mind. Given its critique of epistemic injustice and its focus on formal education as a key locus of the cultural state apparatus, Decolonising the Mind is a precursor to and influence on campaigns for education reform, like the #RhodesMustFall movement. In this talk, however, I want to take a broader view of what Ngũgĩ has to offer to the philosophy of education. Drawing on his critical, literary and autobiographical works, I plan to show how he grapples with the question of orientation - the orientation of student, of teacher and of the learning enterprise. Beyond introducing audience members to a current within Africana philosophy, my chief aim is to engage colleagues in the question of what it is we do as academics, what we might do, and what that might look like.

And email the organizer for a link to the online version of the talk.