UNESCO Chair on Refugee Integration through Education, Language and Arts

*Reproduced from the Channel View Publications and Multilingual Matters blog published 6 Sept 2019*

Dear Colleagues, Readers and Accomplices in the work of Decolonising Multilingualism,

This blog post makes available the Manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism, which is taken from my book of that title. It’s available as a download/e-pamphlet but like any decolonising task, and any academic work, this was neither the work of one individual nor is it complete. As Francis Nyamanjoh says in his recent article (2019), ‘Decolonising the University in Africa’[1] the work ahead, as with its decolonising antecedents, requires

a convivial scholarship that dwells less on zero-sum games of absolute winners and losers, encourages a disposition of incompleteness and humility through the reality of the ubiquity of debt and indebtedness, and finds strength in themes of interconnections, interdependences, compositeness, and incompleteness […].

In this spirit we would like you to add to the manifesto as an activity for the commons, engaging in dialogue, disputing and creating additional ideas, stories and reflections which may benefit the hard common task of decolonising multilingualism, not least in our teaching and learning in universities.

Alison Phipps

You can freely access and download A Short Manifesto for Decolonising Multilingualism here. Please do feel free to use the comments section of the blog post to continue the conversation.

[1] Nyamanjoh, Francis ‘Decolonising the University in Africa’ in OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, Oxford University Press, 2019.

Image (c) Channel View Publications

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First published: 24 September 2019