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Why is it important?
No doubt as psychologists we know that change is usually met with resistance and defense by those who benefit from the status quo. Given Western-oriented psychology’s comfortable position in the global marketplace, and South African psychology’s co-option into it, calls for decolonization may seem like futile attempts to crack through an impenetrable fortress. After all, “psychology” as we know it is embedded in private and public healthcare, academia, popular culture, and international consciousness. The question of decolonizing psychology seems a sub-section of the more depressing question of whether or not we can decolonize society. However, drawing on Holloway’s (2010) metaphor of “cracks” in a vulnerable, problematic system, Cornish et al. (2016) note that “[the] metaphor serves as signifier of small spaces and everyday acts of resistance . . . the small cracks that cumulatively produce the crumbling of seemingly impenetrable edifices of power” (p. 116). This is a pragmatic theory of change, relying on our willingness and ability to amplify short-term resistances and do things differently—widen the cracks—so that the fortress, held up by people, places, and practices, can no longer be sustained.
Perspectives
It is with a strange, perhaps awkward, ambivalence that I write this editorial. On the one hand, I am eager to put thoughts to paper to enhance a social justice orientation and critical psychological lens in how we approach our work. On the other hand, the term “decolonization” is both an evocative and provocative term that leads us into murky waters that very few psychologists authentically engage in. As such, my eagerness is tempered by trepidation, because this debate is a complex mix of historical, epistemological, methodological, theoretical, ideological, philosophical, pedagogical, discursive, ethical, and practical concerns; all of which are far too vast to engage seriously within a short editorial. As such, I have decided to frame my response as a brief reflection and review of recent noteworthy attempts to “crack the fortress” of psychology and start laying the foundation for a new enterprise altogether, one not complicit in varieties of violence. At best, this editorial is an attempt at practical agenda-setting; at worst, it swells the rhetoric.
Mr Suntosh R Pillay
King Dinuzulu Hospital Complex
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Cracking the fortress: can we really decolonize psychology?, South African Journal of Psychology, March 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0081246317698059.
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