SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter explores the notion of pedagogical responsiveness in two complex, politically intense, university teaching contexts: the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), South Africa, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, United Kingdom. It examines how a transformative political theory curriculum that transcends canonisation and eurocentrism, can enable a distinct form of pedagogical responsiveness at these contrasting but similar sites of higher education learning. At both Wits and SOAS, one of the urgent and pressing demands that university students made during protest movements was the call for a “decolonised” education. One common meaning derived from the term decolonisation is the implicit assumption that authoritative and legitimate knowledge is routinely viewed through the lens of a Western-dominated history and archive, which in effect limits and silences alternative epistemologies. This raises the question of whose knowledge is recognised, what do universities teach and how they teach it. Through a comparative analysis, this chapter explores how ideas, content and specific forms of curriculum design and teaching can be specifically used in teaching political theories to confront past injustices and render greater transformation, justice and inclusiveness. This chapter will fundamentally argue that teaching political theory through the notion of Mbembe’s “epistemic pluralism” of ideas greatly enhances pedagogic responsiveness in complex contexts.