Attempts to Disrupt Whiteness in the Academy: An Autoethnographic Exploration

There exists now an extensive literature that focuses on decolonisation and decoloniality in higher education, much of it emphasising the continuing and deeply embedded coloniality of institutions in both the global North and South. Engaging with the criticisms that the participation of white people in the critical analysis of decolonisation and decoloniality carries with it the danger of recolonising, I enter this complex morass with vigilance, accompanied, occasionally, by my trickster, Mrs Murphy. Drawing on a range of experiences that will be familiar to those in academic life, I illustrate how, over several years, I have striven to interrogate, autoethnographically, my whiteness. Framing the critical reflection loosely within the principles of Ubuntu, the African philosophy that foregrounds interconnectedness and mutuality, together with conceptualisations of internationalisation, decolonisation and decoloniality, I explore further the extent to which I continue to be implicated in colonial agendas and whether, as such, I am simply indulging white guilt rather than disrupting, actively, my whiteness and the whiteness that continues to pervade the academy. Wary of casting myself as a white heroine, I strive to remain watchful in the reflexive accounts, unable to offer any neat conclusions or recommendations.