Intercultural philosophy and internationalisation of higher education: epistemologies of the South, geopolitics of knowledge and epistemological polylogue

Abstract

The enduring colonial-like relations among Northern and Southern spaces continue to influence knowledge production and dissemination. Critical scholarship on epistemic diversity in higher education has argued that knowledge circulation is often unilateral considering how global partnerships among universities and higher education models are still unidirectional. While Northern ways of knowing dominate what is taught and researched in higher education institutions, indigenous knowledges are not always represented in their local universities due to skewed geopolitics of knowledges. That is why emerging forms of resistance such as the calls for decolonising the curriculum have emphasised the need to deconstruct the ideological systems of exclusion in contemporary higher education. This article discusses how the internationalisation of higher education may be running the risk of reproducing epistemic injustice and uneven geopolitics of knowledge. With the West-led internationalisation discourse and the ascendancy of neoliberal tendencies, universities in the Global South might be experiencing deeper epistemic dependency. To undermine the dominance of western epistemologies, less popular ways of knowing are expected to assume a central position in the global geopolitics of knowledge. This article makes a case for embracing intercultural philosophy as an emancipating framework that offers the possibility of reconciling the world’s epistemologies by promoting inter-epistemic dialogue. The nuance of intercultural philosophy and its analysis of the epistemic relationships at play granted by epistemological polylogue can encourage pluri-epistemologies in higher education.