JEP » Issues » Un/Doing Epistemic Violence » Pluriversity, Epistemic Selectivity and Social Ecological Transformation: The Example of Latin American Universities

Pluriversity, Epistemic Selectivity and Social Ecological Transformation: The Example of Latin American Universities

Autor*innen: Andreas Exner, Raphael Ferbas
https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-39-1-193
Volume XXXIX • Issue 1/2 • 2023
Pages 193-217
Keywords: crisis, epistemology, epistemic selectivities, ontology, pluriverse, pluriversity, university, social ecological transformation

Abstract

Modern educational systems in Latin America have marginalised the diversity of epistemologies and ontologies that had shaped Abya Yala before colonisation. By separating culture and nature, modernity is disassembling and thus destroying the webs of life. Reducing the onto-epistemological plurality to the ‘one world’ and ‘one university’ of modernity is the root of contemporary social ecological crises. The paper investigates how different violent epistemic selectivities perform this onto-epistemological reduction in the modern university. Three examples of educational and research practices within Latin American universities demonstrate how such selectivities can be overcome in favour of a pluriversity. In concluding, the paper outlines conditions that are required for such attempts to successfully promote social ecological transformation.

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