Decolonial thinking and dialogue: rehumanizing educational practices in the social sciences

Decolonial thinking coupled with imagination can help inspire educators that might help rehumanize students and educators alike. It can help to counter neoliberalism which enacts a globalization that ‘economizes’ all human and non-human activities (Brown, 2015; Mbembe, 2016, Raworth, 2017) through the lens of homo oeconomicus which simultaneously maintains zones of being/nonbeing (Fanon, 1967) or rationality/irrationality. Decolonial thinking can also offer a different critique of neoliberal logic with respect to education while providing a framework for imagining different futures for education. One preferable alternative future can draw upon decolonial thinking to achieve recognition beyond the mere value of what is produced while rehumanizing students and educators alike by taking a holistic view pluralistic in nature that teaches the whole human through dialogue rather than solely focusing on individual intellectual objectivity, as it is framed within contemporary Western epistemology.