‘What Part of Me Do I Leave Out?’: In Pursuit of Decolonising Practice

Abstract

This article seeks to foreground the realities and lived experiences of academics who choose to work in non-traditional settings and in non-traditional ways. In doing so, the authors provide narratives to illuminate how centre/periphery encounters are played out as a politics of recognition. The authors provide a critical account of how working on the University of Sheffield's Caribbean Programme has confronted them as subaltern yet organic intellectuals with the complexities and pervasiveness of history, politics and culture where centre/periphery relations require interrogation. Through their narratives the authors seek to privilege (a) the creative, dialogic and discursive spaces in which they work; (b) the centrality of the philosophical, methodological and pedagogical opportunities these spaces provide; and (c) the strategic intervention of critical intellectuals in their work within the academy. The authors highlight sites of contestation in implementing the university's civic mission in respect of international communities. Finally, the authors offer in their interpretations of these transnational experiences an understanding of how research practice can embrace a decolonising agenda.