I. Introduction

1The controversial notion of decolonization dominates present-day media, and gives rise to various mobilizations in global contexts that are sometimes very different: Black Lives Matter protests, debates over the restitution of artefacts stolen during colonization, anti-racist and decolonization struggles of public space, “anti-French” sentiments in the Sahel, or the #RhodesMustFall campaign to remove the Cecil Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town. In the academy, decolonizing initiatives such as Why is My Curriculum White at University College London or, at Harvard, I, too, am Harvard, highlight the extent to which university curricula remain predominantly white, heteronormative, androcentric, and Eurocentric. Whether in the form of militant demands or scientific projects, the notion of decolonization has a political and normative content with a transformative purpose. It addresses an unresolved past that impacts the present. As Kessi et al. (2020) point out, decolonizing means, on the one hand, claiming forms of resistance, and intentionally undoing the practices, claims and institutions that reproduce asymmetrical power relations in society and within the academic world, and, on the other hand, political actions and projects that aim at building, in an alternative way, spaces and ways of producing knowledge. Yet debates in intellectual and activist circles suggest that “decolonizing” has not been unanimously accepted. By questioning privilege and discrimination, the notion stirs more or less violent controversies. Problematically, decolonial approaches tend to be dismissed as passing fads or novel buzzwords: this not only invalidates any form of radical critical ambition, but it also means the re-establishment of the boundaries that surround the «normative core of academic knowledge, even critical knowledge» (Murrey, 2018:63).

3In this issue, we adopt a pragmatic approach that (from the perspective of praxis) questions asymmetries and power relations in the academic world, as well as decolonial attempts to subvert them. (Deridder et al., 2021) The contributions in this special issue address empirical case studies situated in different colonial histories and scholarly traditions (anglophone and francophone), while maintaining a focus on the specific connections that exist between the Global North and the Global South. Our goal is to highlight the epistemic and structural inequalities, and processes of marginalization, that exist within the social sciences (Go, 2017). For us, while totalizing or dogmatic conceptions of the notions of Global North and Global South must be rejected, the latter notion is vital to highlight the common historical condition linking heterogeneous contexts whose concerns and agendas are different and disparate (potentially, highly disparate). Such differences are paralleled by a common condition born out of colonial domination and exploitation, heteronormative and racialized extractive capitalism (including its neoliberal form), political and economic servitude, exclusion, and emancipatory struggles, all of which provide a common ground for international solidarity (Mohanty, 2003; Prashad, 2013; Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018). This historical condition impacts the subjectivities and relationships existing between individuals and institutions from former colonial powers and former colonies: the relationship between those old powers and ex-colonies, and therefore between those individuals and institutions, still conforms to a model of centres and peripheries which remains relevant in the political economy of knowledge (Connell, 2007, 2018; Collyer et al., 2019). In this perspective, we follow Siba Grovogui, whose definition of the term Global South does not rely on an exact geographic designation, but refers, symbolically and politically, to «an idea and a set of practices, attitudes, and relationships», which are mobilized as «a disavowal of institutional and cultural practices associated with colonialism and imperialism», practices whose outcomes are multifaceted forms of violence (2011:177). From a non-substantialist approach, we agree with Go (2016) that the notions of Global South and Global North are strongly relational and refer to positions in the hierarchy of knowledge production.

5This introduction offers a theoretical contextualization of the critical approaches and debates in which the contributions in this special issue are situated. The first section of this introduction discusses some of the main debates in postcolonial studies and subaltern studies (these approaches share a common genealogy of decolonial approaches). The second section focuses specifically on the contributions of feminist and decolonial epistemologies: the point here is that epistemic hierarchies and violences are to be deconstructed in order to think of the world in a plural or “pluriversal” way. This is a necessity due to the concrete consequences that those hierarchies and violence continue to have across all spheres of existence. The naturalization of race and gender remain constitutive of global capitalistic structures, which the academic world is part of. The last section of the introduction offers a thematic discussion of the contributions, one which brings nuances and complexities to decolonial ambitions and aspirations. Finally, this issue is bilingual and its introduction is translated into French and English. In doing so, our purpose is to contribute to the breaking down of the barriers that separate the Francophone and Anglophone research traditions and debates.

II. Colonial heritage, subalternity and eurocentrism

6Intellectual projects with decolonial ambitions – that is, projects aimed at challenging and dismantling systemic asymmetries and power relations in the sphere of knowledge – are not new. They share a common genealogy, one marked by anti-slavery, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist struggles, as well as by the queer and feminist movements that have focused on the impacts of an unresolved colonial and patriarchal past. Following Murrey’s (2018) suggestion, rather than attempting a synthesis of these schools of thought (such an attempt would run the risk of fracturing and dividing their critical ambitions), we focus on what unites them. From this perspective, Abdelnour & Abu Moghli (2021:10) compellingly remind us that «postcolonial, feminist, and decolonial researchers have long understood that the production of knowledge is a political act that can serve powerful interests, objectify people, subjugate alternative ways of knowing, and legitimate violence».

7Postcolonial and subaltern studies have a long tradition of research, published mainly in English-speaking academic circles, whose pioneers gained an audience on several continents, from Europe and the United States (Asad, 1973; Said, 1978) to India (Spivak, 1988; Bhabha, 1994; Chakrabarty, 2000). The formal dissolution of the imperial world between the 1940s and 1960s produced the notion of postcolonialism, and the critique of postcolonial thought. In that era, «dialogues between anti-colonial and anti-imperialist activists and nationalist movements in different colonies also contributed to the global disavowal of the imperial world order» (Davies/Boehmer, 2018:49), and they did so across various historical and geopolitical contexts. Postcolonial thinkers also seized the opportunity to reflect on the impact of the colonial legacy on knowledge production and examined the possibility of integrating so-called “subaltern” knowledge from formerly colonized and marginalized populations (Spivak, 1988), and ways of “decolonizing the mind”, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote in 1986. Postcolonial studies are indeed

historically and conceptually rooted in the theoretical work of intellecttuals committed to liberation struggles: activist writers such as Amílcar Cabral, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Ruth First and Frantz Fanon, and also creative writers such as Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Sembène Ousmane (Davies/Boehmer, 2018:50).

8Postcolonial studies have contributed to the questioning and deconstruction of the binary division between colonist and colonized (Bhabha, 1994). Postcolonial thinkers have questioned, nuanced, and complexified the paradigms of the West and the rest of the world. They have highlighted the problematic construction of a largely fantasized racialized otherness and its stereotypes, thereby deconstructing Eurocentric modes of thinking whose complicity in this imperial imaginary has had very concrete racist consequences (Said, 1978). They have also deconstructed the colonial legacy of scientific disciplines, and how their canons are constructed: the contents of colonial archives have not been spared either (Luckett, 2016:424).

9On the African continent, the coming of political independence epoch opened up a period of reflection on the constitution of a theory of know-ledge that would be specifically African, and that would detach itself from the dominant European epistemology (Hountondji, 1997). This postcolonial turn then developed into thinking of African identity as cosmopolitan and Afropolitan, manufactured by transnational movements, the origin of which is the transatlantic slave trade (Chielozona, 2014; Mbembe, 2006, 2010, 2013). This approach has flourished in the soil of a rich philosophical tradition, whose roots go back to the negritude movement (Césaire, 2004, 2005; Sharpley-Whiting, 2002; Boni, 2014), the wider movement of Pan-Africanism (Boukari-Yabara, 2014; Obenga, 2001; Dieng, 2005), the “black consciousness” theorized under apartheid by Steve Biko (Biko, 1977), and to the Afrocentricity of Molefi Kete Asante (Asante, 1980). These various approaches mark a break with the universalist ambition of the modernizing colonial project: they project a future in which colonial and neocolonial intellectual tutelage would be rendered provincial, and obsolete. In this vein, a major influence is that of authors such as Frantz Fanon (Fanon, 1952; Bouvier, 2010; Abu-Manneh, 2021) and Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000).

10The “reflexive turn” regarding knowledge hierarchies is thus developing both in the French and English-speaking academic worlds, particularly through scholarly works in history, literature and philosophy (see Appiah, 1993; Mudimbe, 1988). More generally, some authors focus on the intellecttual space granted to African scholars and universities in the production of knowledge (Diouf/Mamdani, 1994; Zeleza/Weare, 2003; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018, 2021a). Here, one must agree with Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021b:452) that

in reality, African scholars have been very active in knowledge production, in challenging Eurocentrism and in denouncing colonizing structures, but unequal power relations make their scientific interventions mostly invisible.

11Practices of silencing and invisibilization, which are discussed in the contributions, have helped maintain the subalternity attached to Global South researchers, thereby deepening inequalities.

12These postcolonial approaches have highlighted the imprint of the colonial encounter and its past and present consequences for both colonized and colonizing societies. With their concern for relations of domination and cultural diversity, they have quickly transcended disciplinary boundaries and spread throughout the social sciences. They have highlighted the processes of Othering that dehumanize, devalue, racialize and subjugate other people. By denying their agency and voice, othering logic legitimizes the production of knowledge about the other. Nevertheless, postcolonial studies have been criticized for two main reasons: their abstract and theoretical character and their location in institutions of the Global North, as knowledge from the Global South is introduced in order to critique, subvert, and resist their own imperial legacies (Davies/Boehmer, 2018:52; Murrey, 2018).

III. Decolonial and feminist praxis

14Scholars advocating feminist standpoint theory (Harding, 1986; Haraway, 1988; Smith, 1990; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012) started to challenge more than 500 years of Western knowledge-making that assumed a positivist, androcentric, and universalist point of view, which had been presented as neutral and objective. They argued that the Western scientific rationality emerging from the Enlightenment had, like the advent of Reason alongside it, magnified the myth of a knowing subject (Ego) that was not and is not situated, invisible, disembodied, abstract, and is erased from the analysis. This myth had provided the bedrock for the idea (a kind of absolute) of non-situated knowledge, universal in scope – and this allowed the hierarchization of knowledges, populations, cultures, and individuals.

15Feminist approaches share a critical attitude towards the possibility of a general theory of knowledge that ignores social contexts and the positionality of knowing subjects (Flores Espínola, 2012; Avanza et al., 2015). Knowledge, diverse feminist approaches contend, is always and inevitably partial, incomplete, and situated. As researchers, we occupy multiple, constructed, assigned and claimed positionalities and identities, and are thus speaking, always, from singular positions within entangled power structures and hierarchies. As Grosfoguel (2011:5) reminds us, «no one escapes class, sex, gender, spiritual, linguistic, geographic, and racial hierarchies». We are all situated in the “geopolitics of knowledge” (Mignolo, 2002).

16Subjectivity is, then, no longer seen as an obstacle to scientific know-ledge, but as a necessary resource for its production, a view which evades lapses into radical relativism (Flores Espínola, 2012:99). Abdelnour and Abu Moghli (2021:10) encourage researchers to go beyond conventional methodology regarding reflexivity, urging us to place «our reflexive selves within a broader critique of how power shapes knowledge». This type of “political reflexivity” invites us to consider the ethical and political challenges of our own research practice, and our relationship to the field and the context in which that practice is embedded. Questioning our various privileges as researchers may appear to be an uncomfortable position. Nevertheless, by mobilizing “political reflexivity” and care in research relationships, feminist epistemologies allow for the deconstruction of white androcentrism in scientific practice and the identification of structural power relations and mechanisms of domination and marginalization. Nor is this all: feminist epistemologies also entail the minimization of potential research-related harms and the decentring of the research “gaze” (see, for example, Harding, 1986; Haraway, 1988; Smith, 1990; Collins, 1990; Collins/Bilge, 2020; Abu-Lughod, 1990, 2016; Connell, 1997, 2007; Avanza et al., 2015; Abdelnour/Abu Moghli, 2021). Abdelnour and Abu Moghli (Ibid.) also emphasize a key ethical responsibility of researchers: the duty to refuse to publish narratives that reify and victimize their field interlocutors (or ethnographic refusal), especially if the circulation of these narratives risks harming the humanity and/or the agency of these individuals (see also Simpson, 2007; Tuck/Yang, 2014; Mazzocchetti, 2016). Processes, whereby the decolonization of knowledge is achieved, will thus be reinforced.

19Lugones, like other feminists of colour active in the wake of U.S. Black Feminism, points to the historical exclusion of non-white women from liberation struggles that were waged in the name of a supposedly universal, bourgeois, white feminism (see also Mohanty, 2003; Walsh, 2018), as well as the erasure of these women and their theoretical output from the decolonial struggles in which they took part (see also Vergès, 2019; Tamale, 2020). Decolonial feminist approaches emphasize the importance of thinking of feminist movements in the plural, «as spheres not of unification (or universalization) but of pluralism, plurality, and possible interrelation» (Walsh, 2018:39). These critical additions underscore the need to adopt a dual theoretical basis, both feminist and decolonial, in order to deconstruct the naturalization of relations of coloniality. As we will see in the various contributions that this special issue brings together, this deconstruction enables, among other things, a grasp of the multiple hierarchies and entangled power relations that persist in the academic world.

20A final major contribution of the decolonial turn concerns epistemic issues and the production of knowledge on a global scale. According to decolonial approaches, modern scientific rationality, originating from the Enlightenment and based on European Cartesian dualism, has been imposed on the whole colonized capitalist world as the only way of accessing knowledge and the only source of legitimate rationality. This has produced what de Sousa Santos (2007:12) calls an «epistemology of blindness»:

Such an epistemology is at the core of a form of knowing that reaches knowledge through a trajectory leading from a point of ignorance conceived as chaos to a point of knowledge conceived as order; this is what I call knowledge-as-regulation. Herein lies the epistemological foundation of the imperial order that the developed North imposes on the global South.

21This modality of knowledge production is related to the deployment of power technologies. It exhibits a high potential for violence both because of its capacity for ordering, hierarchizing and controlling the world, and because of its propensity to supplant, deny, disqualify or suppress other forms of knowledge. This is a process called “epistemicide” (Grosfoguel, 2013). The production of knowledge “about” subalterns participates in this historically situated intellectual and ideological project (Harrison, 2011).

22The process of naturalizing this way of knowing is Eurocentric because, although it has historical roots in the imperial expansion of Europe, it is no longer solely localized on the old continent. Following Grosfoguel (2007:213), the «epistemic location» is different from the «social location»: through its naturalization, the power of coloniality lies precisely in its ability to manufacture subjects who are «socially located on the oppressed side of the colonial difference», but who think epistemically like those in positions of privilege. As Grosfoguel (2011) points out, this allows us to avoid “epistemic populism” – namely, to consider that any knowledge produced “from below” should automatically be understood as subaltern epistemology.

23This hegemonic mode of knowledge production refers to Grosfoguel’s concept of “imperial epistemology” (2011), which echoes the notion of “imperial science” developed by Connell (2018) and Collyer et al. (2019). The latter notion acts to qualify the political economy of the contemporary knowledge fabric, permeated as it is by structural inequalities on a global scale and structured around an international division of scientific labour. In this division of labour, it is the Global North that concentrates the main sites of theorization, validation, teaching and circulation of scientific knowledge, while the peripheries of the Global South remain places of mere data extraction and applied science. In line with this, Hountondji (1995) describes the process of extraversion of knowledge, which constrains actors in the Global South to play along with the rules of the Global North and, in so doing, to participate in the reproduction of the academic “norm”. This process became hegemonic after political independence and structured the academic field in specific ways. Collyer et al. (2019:150-151) define the hegemony of the contemporary global economy of knowledge by three structural features: “the institutional centrality of the elites universities, research centres, journals, publishers and funding agencies of the global North; the global acceptance of a cultural framework for knowledge production, a fra-mework that emerged from the era of the European empires and is now sustained by the pattern of institutional centrality; and the active involvement of the intellectual workforces of the global South, creating potentials for extraversion, contestations and different agendas”.

24The ambition, therefore, of the decolonial project is to dismantle coloniality in the making of scientific knowledge and underline the “pluriversality” of the world. Only through this can social justice be achieved, and the potential transformation of the world be fostered. Decolonial approaches focus on the relational dimension of knowledge production. They aim at moving away from ways of producing knowledge “on” or “about” subaltern populations and move, instead, to work “with” those populations in the co-construction of knowledge. Ideally, this should take place during the whole research process, from the design of research agendas to the diffusion and circulation of knowledge. Without idealizing this approach, it is possible and desirable to encourage epistemological approaches that are born of non-destructive social relations. That highlights (and allows for) the coexistence of multiple ways of conceiving the world and of making knowledge, particularly those that do not lead to the forms of hierarchization described above, and which avoid the disqualification of other knowledge that does not correspond to the epistemological canon of so-called “modern” science (Murrey, 2018). There is much to be gained by developing a “prudent knowledge”, aware of its inability to grasp the totality of human experience and aiming towards emancipation (de Sousa Santos, 2007). Mignolo and Walsh (2018) thus encourage scholars to embrace “epistemic disobedience”, and to “delink” from the Eurocentric perspective prevalent in the academic world. This is also the essence of the project of “epistemic freedom” pursued by Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018).

25Beyond theoretical ambitions, the value of decolonial and feminist approaches lies in their potential for experimentation through praxis that contributes to cracking the hegemony in place. Drawing on Paolo Freire’s work, Walsh (2018:50) explains that this praxis refers simultaneously to “an analytic perspective, socio-political standpoint, and pedagogical-methodological stance” that involves a dialogical movement between knowledge and action. Walsh (2018:24) states that «decoloniality’s project and praxis take form in and contribute to the fissures of the dominant order, what [she has] called its decolonial cracks». Decolonial cracks exist on a global scale, while creatively fueling a decolonial emancipatory utopia from a multiplicity of the world’s subaltern perspectives.

IV. Situating asymmetries in academic fields

26In this special issue, we zoom in on various empirical experiences that call on decolonial praxis to understand how people navigate, mitigate, subvert and resist hierarchies in academia. We follow Walsh (2014), who defines decolonial cracks as «the place and space from which action, militancy, resistance, insurgence, and transgression are advanced, where alliances are built, and the otherwise is invented, created, and constructed». Those places can be within or outside institutions, in frontier or alternative spaces. This wide definition allows us to observe the various ways that actors use to tentatively subvert the power relations that are at work in numerous spaces, and whose purpose is the production, transmission and dissemination of knowledge. This last part of the introduction proposes a thematic discussion of the contributions, which are all situated in an empirical, critical and reflective perspective.

27Within the academic world, decolonial claims are making their way and resulting in contrasting processes in both the Global North and the Global South. Global North universities are described as being in crisis (With-aeckx, 2019) and are also becoming spaces of struggle. In Canada, Vanthuyne and Dussaut trace the process by which the state recognized its responsibility in the execution of educational policies that organized the forced assimilation and acculturation of indigenous populations. In the framework of reconciliation, policies of “indigenization” of higher education aimed at redressing past injustice. At the University of Ottawa, an “indigenous affirmation” was included in syllabi, as a way of reaffirming indigenous sovereignty on land, and dismantling the myth of the terra nullius that supported the expansion of settler colonialism and land dispossession (this issue). Two contributions discuss the dominance of Western epistemology in African institutions, in their academic disciplines, theoretical frames and curricula. These remain largely influenced by concepts, agendas and expectations, as well as by standards of knowledge production of the Global North (Collyer et al., 2019). In Tanzania, Kontinen et al. show that the emergence and consolidation of development studies as a discipline was closely connected to the construction of the postcolonial nation and the anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism of Julius Nyerere. Yet, as the political and economic perspectives changed in the 1980s and 1990s, Tanzanian development studies adopted much of the global framing and externally-produced model of development, thus paving the way for processes of “extraversion” (Hountondji, 1997). This type of epistemic violence, Mondain and Goudiaby show, becomes evident in the classroom, where pedagogical tools and curricula not only reflect dominant modes of thinking, but also the “colonial biases” of professors and instructors themselves. These are «induced by years of training and academic practice built on learning within “Western” frames of reference» (this issue). Their argument raises questions about the avenues that might exist for the effective decolonization of academia, as the modification of curricula and the diversification of academic profiles need to be supported by long-term institutional policies that promote epistemic change. Promotion of such change would entail the creation of a «pluriversal» space that «connects and brings together in relation […] local histories, subjectivities, knowledges, narratives and struggles against the modern/colonial order and for an otherwise» (Mignolo/Walsh, 2018:3, emphasis in original).

28Area studies are notoriously sites of tensions between the logic of decoloniality and the imperative of decolonization. The academic discipline and corpus of African studies, which some of the contributions presented here address, was built upon a legitimation of colonization and power relations that allowed for the extraction of knowledge by scholars from the Global North. As Hountondji (2009:2) observes, African studies bring together discourses «on Africa» rather than models «developed by Africans within Africa» (emphasis in original). As global structures allow Western scholars to set the intellectual agenda according to their own interests, many African authors have advocated, and still advocate, for African universities that would produce, teach and disseminate knowledge autonomously, and would be equally autonomous in the production and dissemination of appropriate research methodologies (Hountondji, 1997, 2009; Mbembe, 2016; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015). By contrast, other authors like Devish and Nyamnjoh (2011) have argued for the production of endogenous knowledge via the increased integration of, and collaborative work between, scholars, institutions, experts and communities.

29Today, funding and research bodies actively promote collaboration and partnership between institutions in the Global North and Global South. Partnership is thought of as bringing mutual benefits to the different partner institutions (Downes, 2013). Strategies of knowledge co-production are seen as providing the possibility of mitigating the extractive relations that exist between these two global zones. However, as such endeavours retain foundations in power asymmetries, they do not necessarily result in a more equitable way of producing knowledge. In this regard, critical development studies have shown that “partnership” has become a neoliberal buzzword (Cornwall/Eade, 2010) that obscures the asymmetrical relations between “partners” in the Global North and Global South.

30This duty to build partnerships has been asserted in a context of neo-liberalization of the academic world that exacerbates multiform precariousness and inequality, putting the sector under pressure. This represents a shift towards “academic capitalism” and a gradual integration of universities into an internationalized neoliberal competitive market that must adapt to the demands of a student “clientele” paying for a service (Ball, 2015; Blackmore, 2001). For more than two decades, private-sector management has increasingly set researchers and institutions in competition with each other on an international scale, based on the inflation of publications and the commodification of knowledge. Researchers are asked to excel in order to maintain rankings and to exist internationally; they are required to be flexible and develop their research in “collaboration” (Blackmore, 2001). Similarly, the celebration and glorification of a “diversity discourse” (via happy, racialized faces in university brochures) has become part of the “performance indicators” and a “brand of excellence” in academic marketing (Ahmed/Swan, 2006). Partnership, collaborations and the expansion of academic networks are also included within the indicators of this academic marketing, thus contributing to its depoliticization. These processes are part of a larger shift, where diversity and equality are becoming part of the performance and audit culture that has taken hold in the academic world (Power, 1994; Shore/Wright, 1999; Strathern, 2004; Ahmed/Swan, 2006).

31In this regard, decolonial claims do not escape academic marketing. The imperative of creating North-South partnerships in the Global North contributes to the reproduction of intellectual elites in multiple ways both in the Global North and the Global South. Knowledge and power are thus inextricably linked and reproduce themselves through academic practice, even if this process is often denied. Furthermore, the feasibility and outcomes of any partnership scheme largely depend on the historical, institutional and personal contexts in which it takes place. The contributions by Ouattara and Doquet in her interview both illustrate the difficulties of addressing asymmetries in partnerships between the French-based IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) and institutions in francophone Africa. The IRD, as Doquet describes in her interview, is an institution born «from the colonial enterprise and a critical element of diplomatic ties between France and its former colonies» (Deridder/Eyebiyi, this issue). In this context, the authors describe tensions and conflicts that result directly from the difficulties of addressing the power structures that characterize the legacy of French colonialism, including socioeconomic privilege and racism, in the framework of an institutional partnership (see also Ouattara/Ridde, 2013; Quashie, 2019).

32The authors of this special issue demonstrate another major factor shaping hierarchies between researchers from the Global North and the Global South. This is the pervasive existence of unequal access to the material resources that are indispensable for studying, researching and building research careers. Material realities in the broad sense, including sufficient and regular salaries, access to libraries, journals and other intellectual resources, fast and reliable internet, networks enabling publications, access to travel, participation in conferences, and, not the least, funding opportunities and financial means: these all contribute to the creation of de facto hierarchies between northern and southern researchers (Connell, 2018:401; Tuck/Yang, 2012; Collyer et al., 2019). Material structures of inequality constitute the basis upon which other inequalities can thrive. Unequal access to material resources has far-reaching consequences, as it translates, in academic terms, into a perceived lack of scientific competence on the part of those researchers and students who suffer its effects. It impairs, in short, those researchers’ and students’ ability to be considered «on an equal footing» by their peers (Grigo/Laely, this issue). As demonstrated in this issue (Grigo/Laely, Mondain/Goudiaby), students and academic partners with less access to material resources can find that doubt is cast upon their efficiency and reliability.

33In this regard, access to research funding and funding distribution constitute perhaps some of the most critical factors (re)producing «epistemic inequality and marginalization» (Go, 2017:194, italics in the original). Several texts in this special issue present striking evidence of the processes by which researchers from the Global South are positioned as “local” partners in an academic world still structured around labour division between the extraction of data in the peripheral Global South and the production of knowledge in the centre, the Global North. As Connell (2018:401) observes, «the periphery is as vital a source of raw materials for the knowledge economy as it is for the material economy». Power relations, partly based on access to funding and the allocation of positions of seniority, allows researchers from the Global North to devalue the input of epistemologies produced in the Global South while using data collected by academic colleagues labelled as “local” (see also Marchais, et al., 2020). As a result, the design and implementation of large funding schemes act as catalysts of those power relations. The bulk of the funding (principal investigator and other full-time positions) usually goes to researchers based in institutions of the Global North, while some of the “field” budget (if any) is allocated to their peers in the Global South. As a result, research interests and priorities are defined in the Global North, often without consideration of the needs identified by scholars working in their own context (Abu Moghli/Shuayb, Deridder/Eyebiyi, Kontinen et al., this issue). Anne Doquet, in her interview, explains how, in one instance, a Malian scholar’s vocal criticism of a project designed by French researchers resulted in a more respectful and equal collaboration. Yet, the mere fact that he needed to step up to call out inequalities demonstrates the extent to which power relations silently pervade even those collaborations whose aim is to produce more endogeneity in research methods and outputs.

34Asymmetries in research produce epistemic violence at multiple levels. They create institutionally sanctioned differentiations between “worthy” and “unworthy” forms of knowledge. Such differentiations have geographical and racial underpinnings. As senior academics working in Lebanon, Abu Moghli and Shuayb emphasize that their assigned positionality as “local” scholars often restricted their role as data collectors «unworthy of framing a theory» (this issue). In the context of development studies in Tanzania, Kontinen et al. show that Tanzanian scholars themselves tend to internalize epistemic hierarchies, as they deny their ability to theorize “from the margin”. The idea that theories must come from the Global North persists, despite the wish to «establish local theories» more in tune with Tanzanian realities (this issue). This example speaks to the dynamics of “extraversion” (Hountondji, 1997), by which academics from the Global South look to the outside for validation of their own ideas, publications and careers.

35Even in partnerships that appear relatively successful, like the cooperation between Swiss and Ugandan museums described by Grigo and Laely, partners in the Global South have only limited control over funding and tend to be, therefore, restricted in their decision-making power and contribution to knowledge (this issue). As such partnerships are often one of the main ways by which scholars of the Global South can access funding, publications and citations, the decision to enter into a partnership is itself one informed by power hierarchies. All too often, scholars thusly positioned find that those projects do not necessarily provide them with sufficient salaries or permanent jobs. They labour under a need to find additional sources of income, and this prevents them from dedicating as much time as their colleagues from the Global North to writing and publishing (Gubry, 2014:114-117): they remain a disposable staff. Thus, in many cases, the wish for “egalitarian” partnerships collides with wider academic structures based on the (re)production of power differentials and entrenched in the “academic capitalism”.

36At the same time, institutional partnerships arise out of the dynamics of mutual dependency, as collective and individual interests pervade their implementation. Ouattara and Ridde (2013:236), for instance, argue that partnerships rely on the “unsaid”, or tacit knowledge, held by both sides, as African colleagues adopt the role of «tokens» and European colleagues serve as «access points to resources». When power dynamics are shaped, it is these invisible and informal aspects of collaborations that are more critical than formal ones (e. g. the written project proposal). This includes the interpersonal communications that take place before, during and after projects. As expatriate researchers working for an institution of the Global North, Ouattara and Doquet describe the compulsory nature of establishing (and accepting) partnerships to lend credibility to their presence in African research units. This «injunction to partnership» (Deridder/Eyebiyi, this issue) has gained momentum in the context of shifting postcolonial political relationships, as governments in former colonies have been increasingly resisting “old” power relations and interference from European countries. Thus, for institutions in the Global North, collaborations aim at providing legitimacy to research conducted in the Global South, while also allowing scholars of the Global North to both produce knowledge about “Others” and retain an appearance of accountability.

37The deployment of collaborative projects points to a purpose that appears instrumental on both sides. In the framework of the partnership between Swiss and Ugandan museums, debates concerned «the legitimacy of ethnological museums and collections» (Grigo/Laely, this issue) in Europe itself. For the Swiss partner, Grigo and Laely emphasize, the project constituted an opportunity for the Swiss partner to position the museum in those debates. For the Ugandan partner, the project provided a means of strengthening their museum’s scientific impact and social relevance. While this project was rather successful in bringing “mutual benefit” to both parties, it also shows how institutional, political or individual interests can make complex the relationships that unfold between people before, during and after such projects. Ouattara’s contribution provides a striking example of those difficulties, as her (unwanted) presence in the African research unit was turned into a conflict of allegiance between institutions. She had been appointed unilaterally, and without her consent, as research coordinator by the Global South partner, who used her presence to lend credibility and dynamism to a declining research unit. This was a situation that, in the end, created mistrust between Ouattara and her employer in the Global North. This example shows that hierarchies can be played upon and manipulated at the expense of the researcher and that partnerships can be unwelcome by institutions in the Global South, particularly if they involve financial rewards that are meagre or non-existent. Partnerships, on both sides, are about seizing opportunities and “making the most” out of a specific collaborative configuration. Thus, relations of trust on which partnerships are based can easily be undermined by one-sided interests. Relations of trust then become instrumental relations, a change that results in researchers having to bear the emotional burden that comes with biased relationships: feelings of trust and mistrust, deception, uneasiness, or worse, fear.

38The contributions in this special issue thus demonstrate the relevance of interpersonal relations in shaping, strengthening or mitigating power relationships. As Vidal (2014:10) observes, many individual factors affect the implementation of partnerships – the researchers’ experience (especially in the country of research), the pre-existing relationships between the people involved, individual biases et cetera. Despite their abstract framing, partnerships are embodied and their implementation relies on people’s awareness and management of power relations in specific contexts. Three articles (Abu Moghli/Shuayb, Deridder/Eyebiyi, Ouattara) elaborate on the lived experiences of structural inequalities and issues of positionality, as the authors experienced them in joint projects and partnerships. Ouattara and Doquet both analyse their positionalities as expatriate researchers from the Global North in African research units of the Global South, and demonstrate the importance of considering gender and race as part of their experience (also see Quashie, 2019). Ouattara explains that her position as a black woman in an African country prevented her from being considered and treated as an “equal” partner in her interpersonal relationships with the African (male) research and university staff. By contrast, Doquet’s identity as a young white woman had the reverse effect and tended to mitigate hierarchies with her African colleagues. This contrast in similar contexts demonstrates the “white privilege” at work in research settings. White privilege comes in different guises: it can range from racist comments (Gubry, 2014; Ouattara/Ridde, 2019; Quashie, 2019), “incorporated inequality” (paternalistic utterances and behaviours, see Grigo/Laely, this issue), implicit hierarchies in the division of labour (Marchais et al., 2020; Nyenyezi et al., 2020), strategies of silencing (as Doquet describes how French researchers promote the success of their partnerships in West Africa while silencing the voice of the partners and the difficulties they may have encountered, this issue), to a privilege of white researchers enjoy, that of being able to avoid integrating into researched societies and learning the language of the field site (Abu Moghli/Shuayb: this issue; see also Gubry, 2014; Quashie, 2019).

39However, the mitigation of academic hierarchies cannot rely solely on scholars’ awareness of their context, and their abilities to develop a reflexive stance on it, as conventional methodology would call for. Abu Moghli and Shuayb, from their perspective as scholars of the Global South, also express the feeling of being used for the career advancement of academics in the Global North. However, they also observe that partnerships can be successful

when the scholars from the Global North are aware of their positionalities, privileges and most importantly the power dynamics that can determine the contributions and outcomes and respond to the needs and aspirations of both parties (this issue).

40Based on the work by Abdelnour and Abu Moghli (2021), Abu Moghli and Shuayb develop the concept of “political reflexivity” (see section III above). The imperative of decolonization requires a critical view of resear-chers’ positionality, (researcher and epistemic) privilege, and risks of causing harm and normalizing multiple forms of violence (Abdelnour/Abu Moghli, 2021). This approach calls, in other words, for a nuanced understanding of individual positions, recognizing that many scholars from the Global South also work in universities of the Global North, where they bring in various influences that reflect their institutional trajectories. Even though having an institutional base in the Global North provides access to a wider academic audience and scientific legitimacy, scholars’ positionality is always the result of a compromise between individual strategies, institutional contexts, and structural conditions. In this regard, we would like to stress that the reflexive process should not rely (solely) on researchers’ individual willingness to reflect on their positionality, but requires, also, a systematization of our collective approach to “political reflexivity” at institutional levels and their respective university frameworks. In other words, the reflexive process that should take place during the design, implementation and output phases of a research (or teaching) project should be organized in an open and collective way that gives appropriate weight to various knowledges and subjectivities.

41In this process, higher education and research institutions have a critical role to play in shifting perceptions on knowledge and challenging hegemo-nic power, because they are the locus for the reproduction of epistemic hierarchies. As Mbembe (2016:32) argues, academic institutions «are “Westernized” in the sense that they are local instantiations of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon». The #RhodesMustFall movement in South Africa in 2015, in particular, initiated profound debates in academic spaces worldwide about the substance of effective decolonization at universities: this included the decolonization of “buildings and spaces” (Mbembe, 2016), the decolonization of curricula, and the diversification of university staff (see Go, 2017; Jansen, 2019; Mamdani, 1998, 2016).

42The contributions in this special issue also analyse the benefits and pitfalls of the decolonization enterprise “from within”. Vanthuyne and Dussaut, for example, look at the ambivalence of the process of indigenization of Canadian higher education. In Canada, indigenization assumes various meanings, such as making academic spaces more inclusive (without challenging established structures), valorising indigenous knowledge and experiences within university life, and decolonising defined as a form of “co-sovereignty” in governance and decision-making. Yet, this latter aspect creates more resistance from established staff in dominant positions. The indigenous affirmation included on curricula at the University of Ottawa stirred critiques from professors who perceived it as an attack on academic freedom. Other authors, such as Tuck and Yang (2012), show that the path towards “reconciliation” favours the maintenance of old structures of power, whose members like to see decolonization as “a metaphor” that will not endanger their own position. In a world built on material and moral injustices, such measures from within can, thus, only alleviate “settler guilt” and no more. As Luckett (2016:5-6) points out in the African context, universities work towards the reproduction of «the elite citizenry» and, in the process, push other students to the margins: this reinforces «the massive structural inequalities created historically between “subjects” and “citizens” of colonial states» (see also Nyamnjoh, 2012). Citing Ahmed (2012), Vanthuyne and Dussaut remind us that new university norms based on reconciliation (and not decolonization per se) tend to «consolidate the whiteness of academia […] instead of unsettling it» (this issue), thus reproducing the conditions for white supremacy.

43In universities of the Global North, white supremacy permeates institutional structures at various levels. As Puwar (2004:8) argues, «social spaces are not blank and open for any body to occupy». While some bodies are seen as the “natural” and legitimate occupants of space, others are marked as intruders – “space invaders” who are out of place and do not conform to the somatic norm – who challenge «homogeneous notions of place, identity and knowledge» (Puwar, 2004:31). Analysing institutional practices in anthropology departments, Brodkin et al. demonstrate how academic spaces are «white-owned public spaces» (2011:554) defined by unequal hiring practices, racially divided labour and race-avoidant thinking. The authors remind us of the structural and reproductive dimension of the «white public space»:

Racial inequality remains deeply woven into the fabric of our social institutions, including the academy, so that today’s racism includes but is far more than merely the cumulative expression of individual prejudice and bias (Brodkin et al., 2011:547).

45In this regard, the issue of curricula is a central one. The #RhodesMustFall movement put it at the forefront of debates about intellectual decolonization (see Luckett, 2016; Jansen, 2019). Ndlovu-Gatsheni, looking at the history of African universities as European imports that alienated Africans from their language and culture, has summarized the essence of this movement. It represents, he argues, a demand for «the decolonization of the very idea of the university, its institutional culture, management style and epistemological foundations so as to attain cognitive justice» (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018:238). Prinsloo (2016:164) argues that the social sciences are «ideally placed» to rework intellectual debates regarding the legacies of colonial alienation and marginalization. Yet, many authors also stress that institutional structures limit the academic agenda for decolonizing knowledge.

46In South Africa, Lange (2019:86-87) emphasizes the difficulty inherent in challenging the «institutional curriculum», which encompasses the cultural, linguistic and social implicit behaviours in which students are socialized (and which sets apart those who do not possess these skills). She denounces the problematic use of colonial languages in the classroom, which sets the conditions for the exclusion and depreciation of the competence of black students (see also Luckett, 2016; Mbembe, 2016; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). In African Francophone spaces, apart from the unique historical positioning of CODESRIA in Senegal, the debates on decolonization remain limited, perhaps partly because of the weight of external funding and the lack of governmental investment in universities (a deficiency which reinforces clientelist practices and processes of extraversion, and places local researchers in more precarious positions). There are few (endogenous) collective claims, student movements or academic discussions/publications centred on decolonization, except for collaborative work initiated from the outside (see Doquet/Broca, 2019; Vidal, 2014).

47Mondain and Goudiaby’s contribution to this issue addresses the possibility of engaging in alternative pedagogies and creating reflexive spaces in the classroom. The initiative they describe concerns their engagement in the co-construction and co-teaching of an online course between universities in Canada and Senegal. Although the decolonizing approach was not initially at the heart of their methodology, the ad hoc experimentation of the course enabled the creation of a “safe space” in which intercultural differences, inequalities, stereotypes and privileges could be observed, named and discussed. This required flexibility and reflexivity from the professors themselves, who had to critically examine their «colonial “biases”» based on academic standards and epistemologies of the Global North (this issue). Similarly, Grigo and Laely argue that the design of the museal collaboration, in which partners held equal weight in decisions around the design, content and implementation of the project, opened a space that reduced hierarchies. It allowed for the partner institutions to engage as symmetrically as possible in knowledge production, despite the pitfalls of collaboration. Those endeavours may build further individual and collective awareness and help shift practices in the long run. However, the decolonizing of curricula also requires a systematic approach to the critique of knowledge. Mainstream curricula in the social sciences, Luckett argues (2016:425), need to engage with the history of disciplines, the critique of the «inherited curriculum» and canons, so as «to provide students with conceptual tools and methodologies that allow them to challenge, de-centre and deconstruct colonial canons and reread old texts in new ways». As much as alternative spaces may create a form of dialogue, we need to ask ourselves whether those processes reinforce structural dominant positions within academia and whether (and how) endogenous knowledge may emerge from them.

V. Conclusion

48The contributions of this special issue present a rich diversity of historical, geographical and institutional cases that have, nevertheless, meaningful commonalities. Taken together, they raise a critical interrogation of our own praxis as researchers – of what the aspiration to decolonization means, practically, in our everyday work. Scholars are aware that knowledge production in contemporary academia does not reflect the plurality of global histories, knowledges, and subjectivities. Effective linking of knowledge-production and praxis (Harrison, 2011:10), however, depends on each historical and institutional environment. As Connell (2018:399) observes, «there is no single blueprint for change; but there is enormous scope for invention and experiment, on the small scale and the large». Thus, we have wished here to emphasize the importance of decolonial and feminist approaches, which point to the praxis that becomes tangible in the cracks of global hegemony (Walsh, 2018:24). Those practices demonstrate the multiplicity of “subaltern” perspectives worldwide, the existence of Global Souths – and we use the plural advisedly – whose diverse character defines those perspectives’ relationships to (de)coloniality and decolonization.

49Yet, as much as “intellectual decolonization” may appear as the “last frontier” of the decolonizing process at a global level, it still faces important structural challenges. Perhaps, Moosavi (2020:342) states, the main danger is to believe that decolonization is «desirable, possible, effortless, unproblematic and uncontested». As coloniality remains entrenched in neoliberal academia, decolonization discourses and practices continue to be minimized and resisted, and this resistance builds on racialized and gendered relations and the hegemony of whiteness. Furthermore, the material asymmetry described at length by the authors of this special issue prevents any rapid shift in enabling access, visibility and legitimacy for scholars of the Global South. Another danger, Moosavi states (ibid.:345), would be to disregard the multifaceted nature of exclusion created by coloniality. Scholars’ experiences across the world are varied and depend on gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, language et cetera. This intersectional perspective calls for nuanced and balanced analyses of the practical effects of coloniality on researchers’ lives. In this regard, our task in this special issue – namely, gathering first-hand experiences of power relations in academia and knowledge production processes – was not a straightforward one. As Doquet mentions in her interview, there is a gap between what people say behind closed doors and what they feel capable and/or allowed to write about. Thus, we are very grateful for the rich descriptions and discussions that the authors have offered here.

50The structural dimension of power relations leads us to endorse Tuck and Yang’s argument (2012:348) that decolonization often appears as a (not so) naive academic exercise, a symbolic and superficial endeavour. Indeed, they are asking us «to consider how the pursuit of critical consciousness, the pursuit of social justice through a critical enlightenment», can also be movements of (re)colonization, i.e. diversions, distractions which, on the one hand, relieve researchers in positions of privilege from questioning the material dimensions of oppression and offer them the opportunity to relieve their consciousness of feelings of guilt or responsibility; and, on the other hand, conceal the need to give up land, power or privilege (Tuck/Yang, 2012:21). Their position on reconciliation coincides with Moosavi’s (2020:348) concept of «tokenistic decolonization», or a «minimalist approach» to undoing coloniality by paying lip service to critical voices. The authors of this special issue demonstrate that the demystification of hegemonic epistemology is a structural and material struggle and that we (collectively, as scholars) have to remain vigilant about the nature and outcomes of decolonization discourses and practices that are encouraged in specific institutional environments. Shifting the centre of authority and legitimacy is a task that can only be accomplished over time, and with long-term effort.

51By way of opening, although academia is a space of racial and gendered exclusion, it also holds an emancipatory and liberating potential that opens up spaces of opportunity, individual development, and collective resistance (Heinemann/Castro Varela, 2017; Withaeckx, 2019). Therefore, this special issue also intends to respond to Heinemann and Castro Varela’s (2017:270) call for «an abandonment of hopelessness» and the construction of «a learned hope» in relation to these issues in the making of knowledge in postcolonial contexts. We hope that this thematic issue will contribute to this.