Decolonising the political theory curriculum

Date01 August 2021
DOI10.1177/0263395720957543
Published date01 August 2021
Subject MatterLearning and Teaching in Politics and International Studies
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720957543
Politics
2021, Vol. 41(3) 404 –420
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395720957543
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Decolonising the political
theory curriculum
Simon Choat
Kingston University, UK
Abstract
Recent calls to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ are especially pertinent to the teaching of political
theory, which has traditionally been dominated by a canon made up overwhelmingly of White (and
male) thinkers. This article explores why and how political theory curricula might be decolonised.
By mapping core political theory modules provided at UK universities, and examining associated
textbooks, the article shows that non-White thinkers and discussions of colonialism and race are
marginalised and neglected. It then argues that there are intellectual, political, and pedagogical
reasons why this neglect is problematic and should be reversed. Finally, the article reflects on
the experience of rewriting and delivering a core second-year undergraduate modern political
thought module at a post-92 London university, including assessing the impact of the changes on
the attainment gap between White students and Black and minority ethnic students.
Keywords
BME attainment gap, curriculum, decolonisation, pedagogy, political theory
Received: 19th July 2019; Revised version received: 13th March 2020; Accepted: 8th July 2020
Introduction
Over the past 5 years, student-led calls to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ at UK universities
have become increasingly widespread, vocal, and insistent. These calls are part of a
broader, global movement to ‘decolonise the university’, whose most prominent recent
iteration has been the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign in South Africa. In the United
Kingdom, high-profile campaigns at several institutions have demanded that the ways in
which university syllabi embody and perpetuate the legacies of colonialism be acknowl-
edged and addressed. Of all the sub-disciplines of the arts and social sciences, political
theory is ripe for decolonisation, given that it is dominated by a canon of White thinkers,
many of whom played significant roles in legitimating and promoting the colonial project
(Omar, 2016).
Corresponding author:
Simon Choat, Department of Politics, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Kingston University, Penrhyn
Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE, UK.
Email: s.choat@kingston.ac.uk
957543POL0010.1177/0263395720957543PoliticsChoat
research-article2020
Learning and Teaching in Politics
and International Studies
Choat 405
This article explores why and how political theory curricula might be decolonised: it
reflects on my own experiences in attempting to decolonise the curriculum at a post-92
London university and it argues that core political theory undergraduate teaching in UK
universities is too neglectful of colonialism and its legacies and that this neglect must be
confronted and addressed. The article begins by discussing the concept of decolonisation
and examining the arguments for why UK universities need to decolonise, noting that one
reason is to address forms of racialised inequalities that have their ultimate origins in
colonialism. In particular, it has been argued that changes to curricula can be one way to
address and remedy differences in attainment between Black and minority ethnic (BME)
and White students (Universities UK (UUK) and National Union of Students (NUS),
2019). In order to assess the extent to which existing political theory curricula in the
United Kingdom might be considered decolonised, I examined modules at 92 universities
across the country: my focus was on the kinds of module that are usually (but not always)
compulsory for second-year undergraduates and typically organised around key political
thinkers; these modules are important because they promise to introduce students to the
canon of ‘great thinkers’ who are said to have laid the foundations of our discipline.
Finding that such modules – and their associated textbooks – largely fail to include non-
White thinkers or address the topics of colonialism and race, I offer several arguments for
why this matters. I then outline the changes that I introduced into the syllabus of the core
political theory module at Kingston University and consider the impact of those changes
on student engagement and attainment.
Decolonising universities
‘Decolonisation’ is a contested concept that has been used in manifold ways. In a valuable
and much-cited article, Tuck and Yang (2012) insist that ‘decolonisation is not a meta-
phor’. They argue that ‘decolonisation’ must refer to the repatriation of indigenous life
and land and that phenomena like ‘decolonising the curriculum’ risk becoming what they
call ‘settler moves to innocence’: ways of domesticating decolonisation, relieving the
guilt and disavowing the complicity of settlers without challenging existing distributions
of power and land.
Yet to argue that decolonisation must refer solely to the repatriation of settled land is
to overlook other forms of colonialism (Bhambra et al., 2018: 5). It also risks implying
that there is less (or no) decolonising work to do in European states, which cannot straight-
forwardly be described as ‘settler colonial states’. As Tuck and Yang (2012: 21) them-
selves note, colonialism takes specific forms. But this implies that strategies of
decolonisation must also be particular. Decolonisation must address not only the theft and
continuing occupation of indigenous lands but also, for example, existing (neo-)colonial
relations between Global North and South and the oppression and discrimination that is
faced by people from former colonies and their descendants, both in the North and the
South. Thus, while the ultimate aims of decolonisation are radical and far-reaching, it can
nonetheless take different forms and involve different stages.
Moreover, the insistence that forms of knowledge, discourse, and culture have played
an essential role in colonial power structures and therefore must be challenged and dis-
mantled is a point that has been made by numerous thinkers and activists, beginning with
those active in the anti-colonial struggles of the mid-20th century such as Fanon (2001)
and Césaire (2000) and taken up by later scholars of postcolonialism (Said, 1995; Spivak,
2010) and decoloniality (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2000). What Anibal Quijano (2000:

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