So you want to decolonize higher education? Pt II: Questions for non-Indigenous people to consider

(You can find Pt 1. here)

What if…

• What if decolonization requires us to surrender our perceived entitlements to comfort, security, and control?
• What if colonization is the underlying condition of possibility for modern existence?
• What if decolonization would require the end of capitalism and the nation-state?
• What if colonization has made us forget our intrinsic worth and metabolic entanglement (and responsibilities)?
• What if decolonization requires us to laugh at ourselves with humility, rather than posture radically?
• What if colonization was/is the primary cause of climate change?
• What if decolonization requires that we learn from old mistakes, and will likely involve making new ones?
• What if colonization is often pleasurable, and many parts of us don’t actually want to give it up?
• What if decolonization has already been sausagized and sloganized by our field?
• What if colonization is not just a political, economic, and social structure, but also a habit of being?
• What if decolonization cannot be known or planned in advance of its doing?
• What if colonization mobilizes our fears and insecurities in deeply destructive ways?
• What if decolonization requires us to see ourselves both as part of the problem and part of the solution?
• What if colonization actually rewards us for critiquing colonization, in certain ways?
• What if decolonization is not about expanding inclusion, but asking: inclusion into what?
• What if colonization cannot be unraveled using the same tools that created it in the first place?
• What if decolonization would require the end of higher education as we know it?
• What if colonization is not something we can just think our way out of?
• What if decolonization is not about tearing down, but hospicing a mode of life?
• What if colonization organizes not only our ideas and institutions, but also our hopes and dreams?
• What if decolonization requires us to give up the illusion that we can transcend our complicity in harm?
• What if colonization has made us think that our existence is limited to the categories that it gives us?
• What if decolonization requires us to do a lot of work before we can even get started?
• What if colonization has numbed the very capacities that we need in order to live together differently?
• What if decolonization is often unpleasant, difficult, and sometimes even boring?
• What if colonization has produced a debt that we can never repay?
• What if decolonization requires not writing articles, but washing dishes and cleaning toilets?

…Are you still interested?