The ħamalli’s (un-)education in a comparative political engagement

Abstract

This study concerns the exploration of the relationship between education and a set of people who are pushed outside its remit, in this case people who are constructed as ħamalli. It is a (mainly postcolonial) consideration of a dominant form of education which seeks to dominate, to marginalize and paralyze. Yet, it is also a consideration of spaces in which resistance to or actions against such knowledge can take place. In synch with the extension of de Sousa Santos’ metaphorical use of the ‘South’ as a re-occupation of spaces and a creative/pedagogical encounter, the ħamalli enter into our dominant field of vision, inviting us for an engagement, a dialectical relationship. Therefore, my aim is to recognise who these people being marginalised by the educational set-up are, read the present contexts in which such effacing is taking place and suggest ways in which education can regain its role as an emancipatory practice. In the different moments of this dissertation, I shall be contending with education from two quite different perspectives. One of my main aims, which will come together in the latter part of the dissertation, is to consider a pedagogy of engagement with the ‘ħamalli,’ making sense of what authors such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Gayatri Spivak call ‘Learning from the South’ and ‘Learning to Learn from the Others’ respectively. Such an engagement entails a lot of ethical considerations and judgements. On the other hand, throughout this dissertation I will also be looking at education as a site of struggle in which pedagogical forms of dominant epistemological impositions are met by different forms of resistance and re-narrations.