In Pursuit of Epistemic Healing in South African Universities
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- ISBN 9781032777443
- Weight: 430g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book demonstrates the epistemic challenges in the South African education system and asks readers to think critically about the university's role in a decolonial future. Wanelisa Xaba reveals how Western colonial educational models severed indigenous ways of knowing and learning across the Global South and settler colonial contexts.
Presenting narratives capturing ongoing histories of violence, this book shows how Black South African students navigate intersecting identities of race, class, gender, and spirituality within university settings. It shows how racial discrimination from fellow students, academics, and staff, coupled with discriminatory language policies, financial exclusion, and violent colonial curricula, affects Black students' wellbeing on university campuses. Xaba argues that these intersecting colonial violences mirror spiritual violence, hinder their holistic citizenship in South African universities, and result in psycho-spiritual disease.
By centring Black students' voices, this book provides crucial insights for educators, policymakers, activists, healers, and institutions committed to creating affirming academic spaces and epistemic healing. It is an insightful read for scholars researching decoloniality in higher education, as well as students of feminist studies, decolonial theory, educational justice, and critical university studies.
Wanelisa Xaba is a queer activist, decolonial feminist researcher and storyteller passionate about decolonial Black futures. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Over the past ten years, Dr. Xaba has combined teaching, research, and social activism to advance education justice, Black feminism, and LGBTIQ+ rights in South Africa. She has lectured in undergraduate and postgraduate studies on LGBTIQ+ rights, queer theories, African feminism, post-colonial theories, decolonial theories, and education. She is a fierce advocate for her ancestors.
