UCT student hub focus on decolonisation
STUDENT movements at UCT calling for decolonisation have sparked a hub for decolonial feminist psychologies.
The Hub was established to create an intellectual space that embraces a decolonial and feminist agenda for psychological research in South Africa, Africa and the diaspora.
Head of the Hub, Dr Shose Kessi, said student movements over the past few years were an important catalyst in its creation.
She said student participation and ownership would be central to the Hub, and postgraduate students had already started taking ownership of the stage by leading and initiating some of the dialogues.
Kessi is joined in leading The Hub by her colleague from the Psychology Department, Associate Professor Floretta Boonzaier.
“Using a decolonial, feminist psychological lens into social movements, leadership and activism can contribute to new understandings of political behaviour beyond conservative/traditional psychological research on conformity, minority, influence and crowd behaviour,” explained Kessi.
She added that transgenerational trauma as an area of research was particularly important for the country.
“The issue of transgenerational trauma is central to thinking through the high levels of violence in South Africa and the impact of the epistemic violences enacted on generations of people.
“We will interrogate what the implications of these traumatic histories mean for understanding contemporary identities and conditions – especially for understanding high levels of gendered and other forms of violence.”
The Hub will also interrogate whether reconciliation and/or reparations can address the psychological wounds of apartheid and slavery.
Boonzaier said the hub would offer a space that opens up “conversations about, and research on the intersections between race, class and gender as they manifest in areas such as gendered and sexual violence against women; men and masculinities; racialised violence at schools” and its relation to homophobia, disability and migration.