On Decolonial Crackings and Sowings: I-We Reflections on/from Higher Education

Abstract

The university is one place, among many others, to sow and nurture decolonial thought, analysis, reflection, and action; analytical-actional thought, and thoughtful-reflective actionings, inside, outside, despite—and that both spite and crack—the institution of higher education. This article offers reflections from the author’s own lived experience of decolonial sowings and cracking during more than two decades at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Ecuador, an international graduate-level public university formed in the decade of the 90s as part of the Andean Community of Nations. Its specific focus is with the planting and cultivation of a doctoral program-project collectively postured from the outset as an otherwise of graduate study grounded in decolonial praxis in which coloniality/decoloniality were central and guiding conceptual and analytical tools. Through a recount of some of the collective processes and practices of decolonial sowings and cracking, the article offers an I-we narrative that works to undo critiques of coloniality/decoloniality as an abstract universal, bringing to the fore decoloniality’s actional character and embodied praxis.