Decolonizing and re-theorizing radical democratic education: Toward a politics and practice of refusal

Abstract

The aim of this article is twofold: first, it seeks to discuss the relationship between democracy and colonization, and to examine the implications of this relationship for democratic education and, second, it turns to decolonial thinking as a resource for critiquing and reconstructing “radical democratic education.” A decolonial critique offers two crucial insights to radical democratic education that draws on Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy: first, it shows how Mouffe’s theory entails the risk of re-inscribing the hegemony of liberal democratic principles because this theory is insufficiently attentive to the harms caused by dispossessions of colonized peoples, especially the loss of their land and, second, a decolonial critique highlights the role of recent ethico-political movements such as “refusal” in resurrecting and rehabilitating the radical promise of democratic education. These insights have practical implications for those who are rethinking radical democratic education in terms of an expanded notion of democracy encompassing subaltern standpoints.

Introduction

A wide-ranging conversation on democracy and its paradoxes has been unfolding in the past two decades: while democracy experiences historically unparalleled global popularity, in practice, it has been troubled by many difficulties and crises (Eisenstadt, 2002; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Wendy Brown expressed this ambivalence a decade ago by wondering:

[W]hat are the specific difficulties for democracy in a world contoured by civilizational conflict, eroding nation-state sovereignty, settler colonialism by “democracies,” unprecedentedly large mergers of state and capital, ascending neoliberal rationality, and invasions and occupations conducted in the name of democratization? What possibilities are there, in theory and practice, for resurrecting or rehabilitating the radical promise and potential of democracy? Alternatively, given the disrepair and misuse into which it has fallen, ought democracy to be abandoned for other visions and practices of popular justice and shared power? (Brown, 2010a: n.p)

For some time now, I have been pondering about the relationship between colonialism and democracy (cf. Gordon, 2010)—an issue that for a long time has been considered a contradiction in terms among democratic theorists (Mann, 2005). Yet, growing discussions about this relationship in recent years (e.g., see Brooks et al., 2020; Güven, 2015; Singh, 2018) have raised provocative questions that approach democracy “cautiously, curiously, even skeptically, asking whether the constituent features and conceits of European modernity have ever permitted us to understand or practice it” (Brown, 2010a: n.p). In particular, Güven (2015) has gone as far as suggesting that “The discourse of democracy is the continuation of a (neo)colonial world order” (xi) in which colonization is employed as a strategy by democracies (and other regimes, of course) for geopolitical and economic purposes—namely, land and resources appropriation, dispossession and enslavement.

Democracy’s colonial logic, according to this line of argumentation, emerges from how democracy posits itself as the only option for the future: “democracy manifests itself in the form of colonization of the future,” or democracy is proposed “to be without alternatives,” points out Güven (2015: xiii). This colonial logic underscores, for example, “how democracy’s universalist and inclusionary claims are always bound up in colonial exclusionary practices that are implemented through the deployment of violence” (Gordon, 2010, n.p). Democracy has eventually become a dogma, argues Güven, and hence it is “tyrannical, in the sense that it expresses a desire for universality beyond its scope” (2015: 2). The result is a paradox: “democracy can only protect and has always protected itself undemocratically” (Güven, 2015: 13, original emphasis).

Concerns about the difficulties that trouble democracy inevitably trigger similar discussions about the meaning and future of democratic education in education scholarship and theory, as the links between democracy and education have always been present, implicitly or explicitly, in most historical and philosophical accounts of democracy (Sant, 2019, 2021). Over the past two decades, democratic education has seen considerable growth both as a field of study and as an area of social education that is concerned with the institutional structures, pedagogies, and curricular contents that are suitable for educating citizens in democratic societies (Gutmann & Ben-Porath, 2015). How democratic education is conceptualized is inevitably entangled with questions concerning how democracy is understood and actually practiced, as well as how democracy can be promoted in/through education. Sant’s (2019) recent review of literature in democratic education as well as her subsequent book on the meaning, purpose and practice of democratic political education, remind us “that whilst there is an apparent consensus that democracy is desirable and worth saving, what makes it desirable is less clear” (2021: 17). Just as there is skepticism about democracy and its future, there are similar warnings about democratic education and its crisis (Okoth & Anyango, 2014; Pennington, 2014; Zembylas, 2021a).

Against this backdrop, the entanglement of democracy and colonization raises challenging questions for democratic education: To what extent has democratic education recognized that the discourse of democracy has been appropriated for colonial purposes? How problematic, if at all, is for democratic education that particular values of modernity including liberal democracy have been imposed on others as universal and globally applicable designs? In what ways does a decolonizing democratic education unsettle the promise and potential of democracy in/through education, including its more critical or radical forms? What kind of challenge and task is that of a decolonizing democratic education today? In this paper, I will make an attempt to offer the beginnings of a response to these questions by drawing inspiration from decolonial thinking, and by illustrating the theoretical and pedagogical consequences of this thinking in the context of democratic education. My aim, then, is twofold: first, I seek to discuss the relationship between democracy and colonization, and examine the implications of this relationship for democratic education and, second, I turn to decolonial thinking as a resource for critiquing and reconstructing democratic education.

This turn to decolonizing democratic education is not without its limitations, of course. Invocations of “coloniality” and “coloniality of knowledge” in education sometimes tend to portray this impact as a uniform and unitary system of oppression and domination (Vickers, 2020). As Vickers argues, this is misleading and entails the dangers of ahistoricism and essentialism in critiques of the relationship between colonialism and education. Hence, it is important to avoid the tendency to critique and seek to reconstruct democratic education “through broad brushstroke portrayals” (Tucker, 2018: 216) that fail to recognize that there are multiple versions of democratic education (Sant, 2019) which do not fall under a homogeneous category. This not only risks essentializing all forms of democratic education into a single category, but also obfuscates the different complexities that contribute to the problems emerging from each different discourse—for example, neoliberalism, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, critical theory, multiculturalism, participatory democracy, and agonistic democracy (Sant, 2019). For the purposes of this essay, then, I will focus on agonistic democracy, and particularly Mouffe’s (1996, 2000a, 2000b, 2005, 2013) theory of radical democracy, as she is more attentive to the central themes of decolonial thought than are most Western democratic theorists (Singh, 2018).

The paper is divided into four parts. I begin, in the first section of the paper, by discussing the relationship between democracy and colonialism; this section aims to show democracy’s colonial roots and the paradoxes emerging from the coloniality of democracy. In the second section, I offer a decolonial reading of the coloniality of democracy, namely, I draw on ideas from decolonial thinking as a resource for critiquing liberal democracy and its entanglement with modernity/coloniality. This leads me, in the third section of the paper, to focus particularly on Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy and highlight a number of limitations, when it is viewed through a decolonial lens. In the final part of the paper, I build on this conversation by addressing the theoretical and practical implications for radical democratic education; this part advances an argument for a decolonizing democratic education that rehabilitates the radical potential of democratic education to inspire a politics and practice of “refusal” that challenges colonial power.

Democracy and colonialism

My point of departure in this paper is recognizing that colonialism has served as a crucial vehicle through which modern democracies were established and sustained (Mann, 2005). Drawing on Mann’s analysis of the dark side of democracy, Gordon (2010: n.p) explains that “colonialism has been deployed by democracy as a force that unifies, limits, and stabilizes the people […] by employing violent forms of exclusion.” Insofar as colonialism has deployed violence to appropriate land and resources and enslave Indigenous peoples, justifying such heinous acts under the premise of spreading democratic principles, then democracy’s universalist claims are inevitable bound up in colonial exclusionary practices (Gordon, 2010). For example, as it is shown in Elkins and Pederson’s (2005) edited collection (2005) of settler colonialism in the 20th century, the democratic principles of settler states (e.g., France and Britain) did not restraint settlers from subjugating and oppressing the Indigenous populations in any different ways from settlers originating from authoritarian regimes (e.g., Japan and Portugal).

The closely knit relationship between democracy and colonialism, argues Gordon (2010), raises provocative questions about the nature and future prospects of democracy:

At what stage, for example, does a democratic colonial project end up undoing democracy itself, rendering it, as it were, a non-democratic regime? Perhaps more pointedly, does the colonial presence within democracies call upon us to rethink our immediate and—what has become—intuitive perception that democracy is the best possible regime? (n.p)

As it is shown by these and other questions raised at the outset of this paper, there are theorists who interrogate and resist conventional assumptions about democracy, “especially its presumed conviviality with universality, inclusion, secularism, representation, liberalism and the market” (Brown, 2010a: n.p). In particular, Brown (2010b) wonders whether democracy is possible today, not only because of its historical entanglement with colonialism, but also in light of present forms of exclusion that are sustained by democracy. She mentions, for example, how corporate power, neoliberalism, and globalization have displaced basic principles of liberal democracy (e.g., equality, political and civil liberty, inclusion) and contributed to de-democratization. Furthermore, Güven (2015) argues that many of the concerns raised today about democracy are related to different global forms of post/neo-colonial projects; hence, “the globalization of democracy has to be theorized as a post/neo-colonial and post/neo-imperialist phenomenon” (xv).

There is a fundamental paradox, then, between democracy and colonialism, which is derived from the fact that democracies had and continue to have colonial projects (Gordon, 2010). Consequently, to understand the democracy/colonial paradox requires an understanding of the relationship between democracy, modernity, capitalism, and the colonization of the globe. As Güven (2015) points out, “one can see that the same philosophical foundations that supported modern colonialism also support the spread of democracy. Hence, global democratization is not, as it first appears, the end of colonialism, but its new phase” (xv). This is why, according to him, global democratization has made democracy a dogma and a tyranny, “in the sense that it expresses a desire for universality” (Güven, 2015: 2).

In other words, a major problem of democracy today is that there is hardly any critique of democracy that understands its paradoxes like the democracy/colonial paradox or acknowledges the ethical and political problems emerging from its neo-colonial tendencies. The occasional critiques of democracy, explains Güven (2015), mostly focus on identifying the shortcomings and inadequacies of existing democratic regimes; however, these critiques already imply beforehand that democracy is the best regime; hence, the philosophical ideals of democracy are taken for granted. As Güven (2015) wonders: “why it is that democracy does not seem to have an alternative, both as a political system and as a discursive practice?” (2015: 3). Democracy is proposed as the only possible cure for racism, sexism, economic injustice, white supremacy, religious intolerance, and all other ills in societies. However, “one never imagines the possibility that these ills exist because of democracy and are never going to be eradicated by democracy,” suggests Güven (2015: 4, original emphasis). And he adds:

The possible alternative to democracy is certainly a complicated question. It might be that democracy is the only possible regime that is compatible with capitalism, racism, sexism, and religious intolerance. One cannot adequately speak of alternatives to democracy without understanding the relationship between democracy and structures of contemporary society. (2015: 4)

This is why it is argued that a radical questioning of democracy is necessary, “because democracy today functions as a global, political, and intellectual form of colonization” (Güven, 2015: 3, original emphasis). Unless there is recognition and critique of how democracy functions as a tool to colonize the future of thinking, the efforts to invent new forms of political imagination will hardly succeed. Güven, who draws on Foucault, further suggests that “Colonialism is neither a simple series of acts of domination, nor an unqualified exploration, but rather a process and discourse of disciplining, ordering, rendering visible, unveiling, and making comprehensible” (2015: 4). Similarly, democracy is also a power of disciplining, ordering and normalization, points out Güven, as citizens are educated and disciplined to think and act democratically in their lives. The demand for democracy, then, functions as a bio-disciplinary strategy within the (neo)colonial framework. It is these normalizing aspects in both colonialism and democratization that establish their connection.

For example, democracy is spread to the colonies with the promise to the colonized people that they will have rights and that racism and colonialism will be eliminated. Yet, if the development of racism in modern societies has been connected with bio-power and colonialism, according to Foucault (1979), then how can democratic societies justify the need to kill people and eliminate Indigenous populations, unless they use the themes of evolutionism and appeal to racism. As Güven (2015) concludes, then, “there are no pure democratic principles that can protect us from racism and colonialism. In fact, we need to recognize that modern democracy may not be an antidote to racism and colonialism, but rather their enabling condition” (Güven, 2015: 62, original emphasis). Even Derrida’s notion of “democracy-to-come,” which promises a democracy radically open to future possibilities, conceals a toxic colonial presupposition, argues Güven, as the future is structured monolithically and colonized in the name of democracy.

Drawing on scholars like Brown, Gordon, Güven, and others, I would argue that given the problems and paradoxes associated with modernity, capitalism, globalization, and democracy, it is crucial not to frame democracy as an either/or issue, as if the only options available are for us to be either for or against democracy. Surely, the emergence and flourishing of racism and colonialism in democratic societies is not a reason to completely abandon the idea of democracy. However, it is necessary to identify how certain forms of injustice and exclusion are manifested in democratic societies, and especially how democracy and colonialism are entangled in ways that not only prevent the renewal of democracy, but also inhibit other political imaginaries that might respond more effectively to justice and shared power. It is important, therefore, to explicitly resist the coloniality of democracy by rethinking democracy from a decolonial perspective.

A decolonial reading of the coloniality of democracy

In general, decolonial thinking is comprised of various schools of thought (e.g., Latin American, African, Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies). In light of space limitations, I will highlight a number of key concepts found in this literature that help interrogate the coloniality of democracy, as outlined in the previous section of the paper. A good starting point is clarifying that the concept and task of decolonization is open to wide interpretation. For example, as Brooks et al. (2020) note, on one end of the spectrum, there are those who advocate the production of indigenous knowledge systems that are distinct from the colonizer’s influence; others advocate an approach that identifies the “coloniality of knowledge” (Quijano, 2000, 2007) and de-centers normative understandings of modernity and Eurocentrism as reflected in values such as civilization, development, and democracy (Dunford, 2017).

In this paper, I follow the latter approach, yet I also endorse Tuck and Yang’s (2012) assertion that, despite some similarities, decolonization is different from progressive and critical forms of theory and praxis. In this sense, a decolonial ethics and politics towards democracy not only interrogates the function of democratic regimes and their entanglement with modernity/coloniality, but also disrupts how democracy may be complicit to colonial forms of knowledge and normativity. As Maldonado-Torres (2006) writes, “decolonization refers to the task of building an alternative world to modernity …[and] the dismantling of racial, gender, and geo-political hierarchies that came into being or found new and more powerful forms of expression in the modern/colonial world” (117). Similarly, Mignolo (2011) argues that a decolonial politics requires “delinking from coloniality and not looking for alternative modernities but for alternatives to modernity” (xxviii). A decolonial ethics and politics, then, rejects the idea of normative thinking and universal salient values emerging from Western enlightenment thought.

In particular, the values of liberal democracy, development, or capitalism that have been imposed on others as universal and globally salient provide a model for the modern world that is challenged by decolonial thinking. The task of a decolonial ethics and politics is to expose the problems of universalism, Western modernity and global coloniality, and imagine a post-capitalist, post-liberal, and post-democracy future (Dunford, 2017; Singh, 2018). This does not mean that capitalism, liberalism, and state forms (should) cease to exist altogether (Escobar, 2007). As Escobar argues, the task of decolonization of modernity/coloniality in all of its forms, including liberal democracy, is to de-center and displace the political and ethical centrality of Western values so that the validity and credibility of other experiences and values are significantly enlarged.

For example, coloniality was constitutive of liberal-democratic political institutions and liberal rights such as rights to private property and land. Land in the Americas, however, was common because Indigenous peoples had different relations with the land rooted in different cosmovisions about its use. The liberal-democratic perspective approached the land as “empty” and the right to private property as universal, which led to the violent exploitation and appropriation of land from Indigenous peoples. Dunford (2017) explains how liberal perspectives about the use of land have been rooted in democratic principles:

This “empty” land was given to people leaving in search for a better life in the colonies and used to extract resources that would drive economic growth. In settler colonies, the appropriation of land from Indigenous peoples, combined with the widespread destruction of those peoples and their cosmovisions concerning the collective stewardship of territory, ensured a wide distribution of, and common interest in the protection of, individual property. It was only through this plunder and racialized redistribution that democratic principles could be combined with liberal rights. (385)

Decolonial scholars emphasize, in particular, the issue of land—a sensitive and controversial issue that remains at the heart of contemporary struggles for decolonization in many postcolonial settings (Singh, 2018). In their landmark critique of the usage of decolonization as a metaphor for any and all struggles for liberation, rights, and social justice, Tuck and Yang (2012) make an explicit connection between decolonization and the struggles of Indigenous peoples for their land:

Land is what is most valuable, contested, required [in settler colonialism]. This is both because the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also because the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence. […] In the process of settler colonialism, land is remade into property and human relationships to land are restricted to the relationship of the owner to his property. Epistemological, ontological, and cosmological relationships to land are interred, indeed made pre-modern and backward. Made savage. (5)

Settler colonialism, then, not only dispossesses Indigenous peoples of their land but in doing so—in the name of liberalism and liberal democracy—coloniality imposes an epistemological, ontological, and ethical system that destroys Indigenous relationships to land (Coulthard, 2014). As Coulthard explains, the consequences of this destruction are profound, because an important epistemological, ontological, and ethical system is lost about how to live our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondominating and nonexploitative ways. Similarly, Simpson (2014) argues how Indigenous peoples’ claims to sovereignty are “transformed” into liberal claims (e.g., identity and recognition) framed within liberalism and liberal democracy.

In this sense, settler colonialism utilizes “liberal regimes of rights, recognition, and pluralist-democratic inclusion to assimilate, incorporate, and conscript Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations into the settler colonial society” (Singh, 2018: 342). What is deeply problematic about liberal democracy, according to Singh, is that the rights and recognitions that are struggled for and/or offered by the settler colonial state are predicated upon the epistemological, ontological, and ethical system that sustains the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Decolonial thought, then, urges a transformation of liberalism and liberal democracy as the dominant political ideologies and institutions aligned with a capitalist economy such as private property and land. Hence, decolonial scholars argue for thinking beyond liberalism and liberal democracy and inventing ethico-political alternatives to liberal democracy (Singh, 2018).

It is for this reason that democratic education needs to be decolonized too because it may be argued that each different discourse of democratic education—for example, neoliberalism, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, critical theory, multiculturalism, participatory democracy, and agonistic democracy—entails the risk of re-inscribing the colonial/democracy relationship and furthering contemporary colonial agendas that may be promoted through/in democratic education rather than challenging them. The remainder of the essay will focus on one of these discourses, namely, agonistic democracy, for two reasons: first, for practical reasons, a choice must be made that enables more in-depth analysis of a particular discourse in the space available here, rather than falling into the trap that Vickers (2020) and others warn us, namely, treating the field of either democratic education or (de)colonization as homogeneous; second, Mouffe’s (1996; 2000a; 2000b, 2005, 2013) theory of radical democracy is chosen, not only because it has been somewhat attentive to the central themes of decolonial thought (Singh, 2018), but also because it has received considerable attention in the field of education in recent years (e.g., see Biesta, 2011; Ruitenberg, 2009, 2015; Sant et al., 2020; Snir, 2017; Tryggvason, 2018, Zembylas, 2018), so it is crucial to rethink agonistic democracy through the lens of decolonial thought.

A decolonial critique of Mouffe’s radical democracy

To begin, it is crucial first to briefly outline Mouffe’s articulation of her approach on radical democracy. Her model is agonistic because it is rooted in a conception of the political as “the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human relations” (2000b: 15). Mouffe’s approach on radical democracy is premised on “the creation of a vibrant, “agonistic” public sphere of contestation, where different hegemonic political projects can be confronted” (2005: 3). In contrast with deliberative democracy, conflict is central to Mouffe’s approach, yet conflict is not a problem to overcome, but rather a productive force to be channeled into democratic commitments (Ruitenberg, 2009; Sant, 2019). “Antagonism,” in this sense, is re-framed into “agonism” that expresses the double commitment to pluralism and dissent; in Mouffe’s (2005) terms, opponents are “adversaries” rather than “enemies.” Democracy, in this approach, is about constructing a political logic as well as social practices that are open to dissent and therefore facilitate different ways of living democratically (Sant, 2021). What is radical about democracy, clarifies Sant, is the inherent commitment of radical democrats to examine the roots of their beliefs and explore different trajectories that strengthen pluralistic politics.

There are two important elements that characterize Mouffe’s approach on radical democracy, according to Sant et al. (2021; see also, Ruitenberg, 2009). The first is democratic hegemony. Mouffe (2005) claims that her agonistic approach is grounded in liberal democratic principles (liberty and equality), yet “these are not fixed or universal values but are themselves subject to contestation and hegemonization” (Sant et al., 2021: 4). The second is affect (see also, Tryggvason, 2018; Zembylas, 2018). For Mouffe (2005), passions and emotions play an important role in nourishing the ethico-political principles of liberty and equality on which democracies are based (Mihai, 2014). To sustain the political project of Mouffe’s (2005) democratic theory, then, “passions” (see also Mouffe, 2014) are fundamental elements that are mobilized for democratic commitments.

The educational implications of Mouffe’s approach on radical democracy have been explored by several scholars, especially in the field of philosophy of education (Sant, 2019). In general, radical democratic accounts in education have embraced philosophical ideas and pedagogies that educate for agonistic emotions and develop political literacy that values dissent and pluralism on the basis of liberal democratic principles (Biesta, 2011; Ruitenberg, 2009, 2015; Sant et al., 2020; Snir, 2017; Tryggvason, 2018; Zembylas, 2018). However, the “modernist” character of Mouffe’s approach on radical democracy has not been addressed in education, except from a criticism that universal antagonism is framed in Western binary logics (see Sant, 2019). Although not situated in education, Singh’s (2018) recent critique of Mouffe’s theory from a decolonial perspective is valuable for my attempt to engage in a similar decolonial critique in the context of democratic education.

In particular, Singh (2018) points out that Mouffe repeatedly locates radical democracy within the history of democratic revolution in modernity (e.g., French Revolution) that has given rise to democracy and pluralism, especially with the new movements of the 1960s on civil rights and beyond. In stark contrast to the emphasis of decolonial thought on creating a different society that moves beyond modernity, Mouffe’s works, observes Singh, are grounded in liberal democratic principles. In her more recent work, Mouffe “becomes more explicitly anti-imperial and engages with a number of decolonial themes and thinkers” (Singh, 2018: 339). For example, she condemns the universalism of singular modernization narratives that are grounded in Western liberal democratic principles, arguing for taking into consideration non-Western traditions and stop privileging Eurocentric tenets of rationality and morality (Mouffe, 2005). In this sense, points out Singh (2018), Mouffe shifts her attention beyond Western liberal democracies and advocates a “pluriverse” (2005: 115), that is, a type of pluralism that values diverse traditions, thus challenging the claim that liberal democracy provides the universal model for all societies.

Despite these gestures toward decolonial themes and commitments, Singh (2018) argues that Mouffe’s theory still falls short of a decolonial direction and raises a number of concerns that are valuable to take into consideration. First, according to Singh, Mouffe limits the problems of democracy to the effective implementation of liberal democratic principles. In other words, liberal democratic values and their hegemony—or “tyranny” to use Güven’s (2015) term—are not really rejected, but their critique is meant to improve liberal democracy from within. The question that is still open here is whether there can be such a renewal of liberal democracy, when the basic premises are still Eurocentric. Second, despite Mouffe’s shift toward pluriversality, Singh (2018) argues that “it is far from clear to what extent, if at all, Mouffe has actually decentered liberal democracy in her theory” (341). In other words, the West is still maintained “as the referent and normative standard of comparison” (Singh, 2018: 340) when other political regimes are judged whether they satisfy certain conditions to be accepted as “good” regimes.

More importantly, perhaps, Singh (2018) emphasizes that Mouffe remains silent on the question of the land upon which radical democracy is to be built. Mouffe seems to take for granted the progressive extension of liberal democratic values and rights to more and more groups (Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups), rather than adopting a decolonial position of challenging the essence of liberal democratic principles and the role they played in sustaining coloniality. As Singh concludes:

Mouffe does not take seriously issues of land in settler colonial societies, including the various conflicting values and principles around legitimacy, lay, governance, and humans’ relationship to the land (and water) that arise in such settings. As such, it is likely that Mouffe an radical democracy would actually serve to consolidate, rather than challenge, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples by settler colonial states. (2018: 345)

Finally, Mouffe’s version of radical democracy is insufficiently attentive to ethico-political movements that are crucial to a decolonial ethics and politics such as “turning away” from or “refusing” liberal democratic practices (e.g., recognition and inclusion) that are embedded in liberal modernity (Singh, 2018). Although Mouffe rejects moral-universalistic approaches that place liberal democratic norms above contestation, she is far from adopting a decolonial ethico-politics that places emphasis on subalternity. Mouffe’s preoccupation with democratic hegemony would interpret a decolonial ethico-politics of “refusal” (Simpson, 2014) as a counter-hegemonic alternative that threatens the democratic values, principles and institutions upon which liberal democracy is founded (Singh, 2018). Refusing the principles of liberal democracy, then, might be seen as a hostile ethico-political movement by a framework that still remains rooted in Westerncentric perspectives (I come back to this in the last part of the essay). A truly radical re-imagination of democracy that seeks ways out of domination cannot sustain the pillars of settler colonialism (Simpson, 2017).

To sum up, if radical democracy does not go far enough, according to decolonial thinking, then it is important to acknowledge how liberal democratic principles are entangled with the still-present darker side of modernity. More importantly, it is crucial to explore how democratic education, through adopting agonistic pedagogies and radical democratic ideas, may unwittingly contribute to re-inscribing the hegemony of the modernity/colonial project. In the last part of the essay, I begin to sketch some ideas how decolonial reflections on, and responses to, the entanglement between radical democracy and coloniality may give rise to a different ethico-political trajectory for the discourse and practice of radical democratic education.

A politics and practice of “refusal” in radical democratic education

There has been an influx of efforts in recent years to decolonize various school subjects and fields of study in education, ranging from global education (e.g., Subedi, 2013), citizenship education (e.g., Abdi et al., 2015), human rights education (e.g., Zembylas, 2017), to peace education (Hajir & Kester, 2020), to name but a few examples. The contributions to a decolonizing education that have emerged from these engagements have generally followed two broad directions. On the one hand, decolonial thinking has been used to critique colonial/modernity assumptions and knowledge forms embedded in each field of study (e.g., teaching methods, assessments, curricula, administration structures etc.); on the other hand, contributions have also highlighted the absence or erasure of alternative (e.g., Indigenous) knowledge systems, traditions and values and the reproduction of colonial ontologies, epistemologies and ethics. Across these two broad lines of engagement, education scholars have articulated visions for a decolonial education and suggested various curricular, pedagogical or policy strategies how to achieve this.

At the same time, these efforts have also highlighted some limitations of decolonial critiques. For example, one of these limitations is a broad brushstroke approach in which coloniality is invoked as a uniform and unitary system of oppression and domination across disciplines and sites in “the West” (Tucker, 2018). Hence, I would argue that it is crucial to pay attention to the unique disciplinary structures of knowledge and reasoning that reproduce coloniality within each different field of study or school subject, rather than throwing all forms of education into a uniformly colonialist Western modernity (Vickers, 2020). But there is an additional challenge in the case of democratic education. Decolonizing democratic education has received less attention (for a rare exception, see Abdi and Richardson, 2008), perhaps because of hesitations to interrogate democracy as a political regime, especially during these difficult times in which democracy is increasingly challenged, including threats from right-wing populism and extremism. However, as the account of radical democracy I have described earlier shows, it is important to examine how coloniality is entangled with a particular discourse or understanding of democracy and democratic education, rather than romanticizing democracy or taking the other extreme, namely, rejecting all forms of democracy as problematic. In the last part of this essay, then, I draw attention to rethinking radical democratic education so that it confronts the modernist/colonial roots of democracy; in particular, I advance an argument for a decolonizing democratic education that rehabilitates the radical potential of democratic education to inspire a politics and practice of “refusal” that challenges colonial power.

As Singh (2018) points out, a number of Indigenous scholars in recent years have theorized the assertion of Indigenous practices and traditions as a form of “resurgence,” which is seen as closely coupled with the “refusal” or “turning away” (Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, A. 2014; Simpson, L., 2017) from the liberal-democratic politics of recognition and inclusion. As Simpson asks:

What happens when we refuse what all the (presumably) “sensible” people perceive as good things? What does this refusal do to politics, to sense, to reason? When we add Indigenous peoples to this question, the assumptions and the histories that structure what is perceived to be “good” (and utilitarian goods themselves) shift and stand in stark relief. The positions assumed by people who refuse “gifts” may seem reasoned, sensible and in fact deeply correct. Indeed, from this perspective, we see that a good is not a good for everyone. (Simpson, 2014: 1)

The notion of “refusal,” then, marks an ethics and politics that denies, resists, and reframes colonial, liberal democratic and neoliberal logics, while asserting Indigenous practices, traditions, and lifeworlds (Wright, 2018). It does so, suggests Singh (2018), by using the micro-political practices of the self and of the community as a clear starting point, while working toward broader macro-political transformations. What this ethico-political movement suggests is a different prioritization in struggles against the coloniality of democracy.

Instead of focusing solely on making demands on the state or other hegemonic institutions for asserting liberal democratic rights such as representation, recognition, and inclusion, the priority is to enact a different way of life (e.g., in the classroom and beyond) “through concrete, embodied practices” that are “grounded in a wide variety of non-statist, non-juridical, and/or place-based subaltern normativities” (Singh, 2018: 346). For example, this would mean asserting practices such as regenerating alternative (e.g., Indigenous) political and intellectual traditions; articulating and living Indigenous legal traditions; language learning; creating and using Indigenous artistic and performance-based traditions (L. Simpson in Coulthard, 2014). In the context of K-12 or higher education, this means recognizing and using Indigenous traditions and practices as the first step in a long process of decolonizing education that enacts ways of living which practically challenge the racial and colonial formations of the past (Stein, 2019).

Returning to the discourse of radical democracy in education, the notion of “refusal” would take the form of “disinvestment” (Bhungalia, 2020) from liberal rules, norms and relations as the only available ethical and political framework of democracy and an “affirmative investment” (Weiss, 2016: 352) to alternative practices such as the ones suggested above. In pedagogical terms, this would mean moving beyond “pedagogies of agonistic democracy” (Sant et al., 2020) that reiterate liberal democratic principles toward “pedagogies of refusal” (Tuck and Yang 2014; Rodríguez 2019; Zembylas, 2021b) that refuse the hegemonic power structures of liberal democracy. While pedagogies of agonistic democracy fail to recognize and challenge coloniality, pedagogies of refusal empower students to not only recognize the limitations of liberal democracy emerging from its colonial roots, but also disrupt, refuse, and displace liberal democratic principles with alternative practices that affirm decolonizing imaginaries. Practically this means, for example, engaging students in community projects that provide them with opportunities to “see” in practice some of the challenges of liberal democracy and how Indigenous traditions may provide viable “solutions.”

As Singh (2018), suggests, this move toward refusal does not mean that it denies the necessity of, at various times, to engage with or appeal to liberal democratic principles; besides, it is unrealistic to ignore hegemonic institutions such as democracy. However, what this means for radical democratic education projects is to create pedagogical spaces to confront, negotiate with, or make alternative claims on these liberal democratic principles in ways that resist hegemonic power structures. The pedagogical move of “turning away” is a crucial aspect of challenging settler colonial violence, as it is manifested in liberal democratic institutions. This conjoining of refusal and simultaneously strategic engagement, points out Singh (2018), resonates with calls within the Black radical tradition for fugitive study, planning and struggle from the undercommons, that is, a subversive way of being in but not of a colonial institution such as the university (Harney & Moten, 2013).

For example, a point of departure for pedagogies of refusal in radical democratic education is for educators in high school or higher education to mobilize Indigenous and non-Indigenous students toward the issue of land dispossession and explore under which circumstances there can be an antidote to the ideology of colonial relations and practices in everyday school/university life (see also Zembylas, 2021a). A key set of questions, then, for K-12 or higher education educators who are rethinking radical democratic education is the following: What awareness is required in conversations of radical democratic education that remain hostile or exclusionary to subalternized standpoints? What obligations do educators have in attending to the tensions and varying conceptions of agonistic or radical democracy, especially those that challenge the nature of radical democracy itself? How and with which intellectual, cultural or other resources can educators and their students in the agonistic classroom first identify the forms of damage and harm that are reproduced by colonial relations micropolitically, and then explore different manifestations of decolonial action that would bring the desired transformations within or beyond educational institutions?

Ultimately, the goal of a politics and practice of refusal in radical democratic education is to retrain ethical and political sensibilities so as to create a new moral order that challenges the politics of liberal democratic modernity (cf. Mahmood, 2005). This means promoting a decolonial ethico-politics in radical democratic education, that is, an ethics and politics that permeates all social relations and orients students toward alternative principles and logics beyond that of democratic hegemony. These include, for example, “principles of solidarity, hospitality, relationality, intersectionality, interdependence, or simply the common opposition to mutually threatening forces and systems” (Singh, 2018: 351). As De Lissovoy (2018) also suggests, a decolonial pedagogy of democracy would invite students to additional and riskier encounters with others, in which not merely their habits of mind are challenged, but also their affective worlds are unsettled. In this sense, radical democratic education has to reconsider the affective engagements that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have with each other and the world, and engage in decolonizing the deeply affective sensibilities of the coloniality of democracy, as manifested in educational institutions.

Conclusion

This article makes a contribution to re-theorizing radical democratic education through the lens of decolonial thinking. A decolonial critique of radical democratic education reveals that despite its potential in developing political literacy, radical democratic education is also complicit to modernity/coloniality. I have argued, in particular, that a decolonial critique offers two crucial insights to radical democratic education: first, it shows how Mouffe’s version of radical democracy informing democratic education entails the risk of re-inscribing the hegemony of liberal democratic principles that are insufficiently attentive to the harms caused by dispossessions of colonized peoples, especially the loss of land; and, second, it emphasizes the role of ethico-political movements such as refusal in “resurrecting” and “rehabilitating” (Brown, 2010a) the radical promise of democratic education.

Needless to say, different socio-political settings will take on and enact these insights in different ways. In this sense, rethinking radical democratic education through a decolonial lens requires a process of re-imagining how radical democracy takes place contextually, not merely within a framework of Western epistemology, ontology and ethics, but also as Mignolo (2011) advocates, “in the borders of local histories confronting global designs” (277). I repeat that this does not imply the rejection of existing democratic theory or, in this case, the discourse of radical democracy in education; rather, it means struggling for a vision of a more just and equitable society underpinned by re-imagined democratic values that pay attention to decolonial critiques. A decolonized and re-theorized radical democratic education should account for an expanded notion of democracy encompassing subaltern standpoints.