Ciera Smith writes, "Decolonizing a reading list isn't necessarily about removing works by seminal figures in a discipline. Rather it's a highly intellectual exercise requiring consideration of whose knowledge is privileged and whose voice is excluded. It's also a matter of considering how power is constructed within a discipline." It's not just a matter of achieving geographical diversity but also a matter of trying to find alternative perspectives - not just from the points of view of different epistemic traditions but also of finding people who are simply objects of research but who are contributing to its output. That doesn't mean just agreeing with or endorsing everything everyone has to say, it means being open enough to listen to it and take it seriously. This article focuses on how we manage our reading lists for others, but I think the first responsibility is to be open to these voices ourselves. That's not the easiest thing; there's a lot tradition in media and scholarship of gravitation toward the most well-articulated and funded sources. 'Press-release' journalism and 'book-centered' academia. Via Apostolos K.
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