The Universal Undressing: Decolonial Reflections, Representations, and Postulations in the 2020s by Nicholas Pansegrouw - HTML preview

● JH ●

From Gratitude to Decoloniality

By James Hoets
(South Africa-Taiwan)

Editor's note:

James Hoets is a man of honor and integrity devoted to living and sustaining truth. Amongst a bevy of titles and adjectives used to describe him, he is professionally regarded as an educator of courage and skill and a master thrasher on the electric guitar.

I WANT TO THANK the editor for providing me with the opportunity to learn more about Decoloniality. My hope for this submission is to process Decoloniality's various concepts and themes through the filter of my own contextual experiences.

To provide photographic reference, here is one of my favorite pictures with my last group of Grade 12 Visual art learners, circa 2009. I feel immense gratitude for remaining in contact with many of these amazing people today.

Regarding Decoloniality, one specific element I am drawn to is the ontological aftermath of colonization. The matrix of power created by colonialization is an ongoing process (known as Coloniality) that we continue to see, feel, and recognize daily.

To synchronize this reality with my own experience, I need to provide examples of my personal experiences and how these informed my reading into Decoloniality. From this, understanding may be inferred about how I (and others) am generally informed and how we can un-learn much regarding our personal preconceptions. I believe that this process can affect a greater sense of awareness and empathy for all beings who share our world.

Being a white South African male born in Cape Town in the early 1980s, I now live and work in Taiwan as an English teacher. Via a systemic process condoned and proliferated through Coloniality's relative yet invisible ubiquity, I was initially educated and established within a context of privilege without even realizing it; in fact, I considered my family to be on the poorer side of the economic spectrum. The schools I attended were initially intended for white students only, set in the middle of 'white' suburbia under the economically-stratified shadow of Table Mountain. I later attended a university set under another spectral shadow: that of Cecil John Rhodes, that mastodon of colonial power and exploitation. After leaving university, I was offered a position as a high school teacher in Woodstock, Cape Town, where I began my personal reeducation. This new age of learning – amidst a context diametrically opposite to anything I'd ever know – is what I regard to be the greatest education of my life.

The majority of the students attending this high school grew up in disenfranchised circumstances. Whether they came from the Cape Colored community (i.e., the Cape Flats) or Black students from the townships (Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, and Langa), the sum of the student body was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. Through the period of my working tenure at this school, I came to learn both invaluable life lessons and intrinsic understandings that remain indispensably relevant today. I believe that my experience – as a white, privileged South African male – working with these students shone immeasurable light on my understanding of the world and hence made me a more valid and effective human being.

Some of that which I learned follows:

• I came from a background of extreme privilege, which was responsible for my limited awareness of how others in our country (and the rest of the world) lived their lives. It felt like an existential thunderbolt to annul my previous understanding that everyone grew up similarly to me, along with accordant cultural context and accessibility to resources I'd previously taken for granted (education, accommodation, and prospects).
• I was grossly unaware of different cultures (thus leading to a lack of cultural sensitivity) in my own country. This understanding has subsequently proved pivotal in allowing me to better integrate into Taiwanese culture, which is markedly different from anywhere else I've traveled to in the world.
• Being a first-language English speaker, I often lacked the forms of primary communication with my students – namely isiXhosa and Afrikaans. I have experienced similar issues in Taiwan, where most people are first-language Mandarin speakers. Thus, to effectively communicate linguistically and with authentic cultural sincerity, some effort must exist to develop language parity.
• My colleagues were, in all aspects, my greatest teachers. They accepted me and, through careful guidance, taught me to be a teacher of all people, regardless of varying contexts. This understanding – that of the essential relative worth of all people – has undoubtedly improved me as an individual and hence effective community member.

To conclude, life is a matter of constantly learning and relearning, and in doing so, remaining inherently humble and teachable. Decoloniality is an active movement that offers social momentum to being humble and staying teachable. Through it, we can relearn what knowledge has been pushed aside, forgotten, buried, or discredited by the forces of modernity, settler-colonialism, and racial capitalism.

Questions for Reflection:

James describes valuable life lessons he learned while working as a high school teacher in Cape Town, all of which focus on awareness of the community at large. Do you feel a noted connection with your community, whether that be in a work, social, or general cooperative capacity? Whichever way you answer, what scope remains for you to grow with your community in a mutually-beneficial way?