Radical Critical Policy Studies: Situating Racialized Personhood within Decolonizing Policy, Knowledge Production, Self-Reflexivity & Positionality/Social-Location

Abstract

This article addresses weaknesses in critical policy studies (CPS), by proposing we move toward adopting radical critical policy studies (RCPS) theory and empirical methodological approaches. This moves away from the euro-centric colonized/colonizer dichotomy, decentering whiteness/white gaze and situates racialized personhood at the center of decolonizing knowledge production. RCPS’ intervention forces racialized academics/researchers to be cognizant of how although we navigate our own oppression/colonization within colonial institutions (academia, the state) we are not immune to reproducing this same system of harm we wish to dismantle by using Colonial Logics (the colonizers tool of whiteness, performative colonialism, systemic oppression and harmful practices) and engaging in Colonial by Proxy (see Diagram 5). We expand on RCPS with the concept of Decolonizing Self-Reflexivity and Positionality/Social-Location (Diagram 3, Decolonizing Self-Reflexivity and Positionality & Social-Location Checklist tool) with the aim to hold ourselves accountable to higher standards, to be more critically self-aware of the complex duality of our privileged social-location/positionality, while de-colonizing our self-reflexivity with an active duty to prevent the reproduction of systemic performative colonialism throughout policy-making (as policy-makers) or in academia.