On Decolonial Debates in the Arab World: Reflections on One Year of Teaching in the Global South

While the Arab university holds potential as a transformative site for decolonization, it also encounters unique difficultiesand challenges in realizing this potential. These challenges highlight the need for a critical examination of how decolonial practices can be meaningfully integrated into the university setting, ensuring that efforts to decolonize do not merely replicate existing power dynamics but genuinely reflect the voices and experiences of those who have been marginalized. In this presentation, I reflect on a year of teaching in the Global South, at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies based in Qatar, having received my education and engaged in decoloniality debates in the Global North. I reflect on various observations and draw connections between different scenes and settings to explore how decoloniality is understood, challenged, and engaged with in this part of the Global South.

The discussions on decoloniality at different events and interactions highlight a curiosity and familiarity with the nuances of global decolonial debates, but they also reveal multilayered tensions, a sense of caution, and some hurdles with consistent and equitable engagement. These multifaceted discussions reflect an awareness of various decolonization debates coupled with skepticism about decoloniality in the Arab world suggesting that decoloniality is feared by some to serve as intellectual gymnastics that assert contemporary Western superiority without offering substantial benefits to the Global South. It also points at the potential negative consequences of engaging with a version of decoloniality that ignores regional histories and geopolitics which can lead to misinterpretation and misuse of decolonial tenets. These concerns must be taken seriously, and a project of decoloniality in the region must develop methods and pathways that do not fall into such reproductions of hegemonic power.