TY - JOUR
T1 - Decolonising the Discourse on Resilience
AU - Amo-Agyemang, Charles
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Unisa Press.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This article presents a discursive critique of the Eurocentric paradigms of knowledge production that characterise much of the underlying logics in the age of neoliberal discourses on resilience, pointing out important areas not given sufficient attention. In particular, it highlights the limits of the modernist ontology of resilience, whereby extremely “vulnerable” African communities are encouraged “to become resilient” to climatic disruption and environmental catastrophe and to “bounce back” as rapidly as possible. The article moves the discussion forward, drawing from critical decolonial approaches, in alignment with Indigenous knowledges, to question and rethink meaningful alternative ontologies, ways of knowing and being, in adaptive governance. I argue that the recognition of the plurality of many worlds, rather than one world, highlighted through critical decolonial understandings of epistemic forms with Indigenous knowledges, can be counterposed to Western universality as an innovative ontology to decentre the world order in the problematic dominant development of resilience thinking.
AB - This article presents a discursive critique of the Eurocentric paradigms of knowledge production that characterise much of the underlying logics in the age of neoliberal discourses on resilience, pointing out important areas not given sufficient attention. In particular, it highlights the limits of the modernist ontology of resilience, whereby extremely “vulnerable” African communities are encouraged “to become resilient” to climatic disruption and environmental catastrophe and to “bounce back” as rapidly as possible. The article moves the discussion forward, drawing from critical decolonial approaches, in alignment with Indigenous knowledges, to question and rethink meaningful alternative ontologies, ways of knowing and being, in adaptive governance. I argue that the recognition of the plurality of many worlds, rather than one world, highlighted through critical decolonial understandings of epistemic forms with Indigenous knowledges, can be counterposed to Western universality as an innovative ontology to decentre the world order in the problematic dominant development of resilience thinking.
KW - Africa
KW - Indigeneity
KW - decolonisation
KW - epistemology
KW - pluriverse
KW - resilience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112572077&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/18186874.2021.1962725
DO - 10.1080/18186874.2021.1962725
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112572077
SN - 1818-6874
VL - 16
SP - 4
EP - 30
JO - International Journal of African Renaissance Studies
JF - International Journal of African Renaissance Studies
IS - 1
ER -