In Pursuit of Epistemic Healing in South African Universities

Black Students’ Encounters with the Structural and Spiritual Violence of Coloniality in Higher Education

Wanelisa Xaba

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040445280
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Social Sciences

This book demonstrates the epistemic challenges in the South African education system and asks readers to think critically about the university's role in a decolonial future. Wanelisa Xaba reveals how Western colonial educational models severed indigenous ways of knowing and learning across the Global South and settler colonial contexts.

Presenting narratives capturing ongoing histories of violence, this book shows how Black South African students navigate intersecting identities of race, class, gender, and spirituality within university settings. It shows how racial discrimination from fellow students, academics, and staff, coupled with discriminatory language policies, financial exclusion, and violent colonial curricula, affects Black students' wellbeing on university campuses. Xaba argues that these intersecting colonial violences mirror spiritual violence, hinder their holistic citizenship in South African universities, and result in psycho-spiritual disease.

By centring Black students' voices, this book provides crucial insights for educators, policymakers, activists, healers, and institutions committed to creating affirming academic spaces and epistemic healing. It is an insightful read for scholars researching decoloniality in higher education, as well as students of feminist studies, decolonial theory, educational justice, and critical university studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Introduction: Iqhayiya nebhongo lam
• Prelude to Chapter 1: Ukuphambana
• 1 Myths – education and coloniality
• Prelude to Chapter 2: A prayer for ease in the bloodline
• 2 Current challenges in higher education
• Prelude to Chapter 3: A freedom chant
• 3 The decolonial difference
• Prelude to Chapter 4: An academia that breathes
• 4 A theory that offends and interrupts
• Prelude to Chapter 5: A cultural song
• 5 The social contexts and environments of Black students
• Prelude to Chapter 6: Silver faucets
• 6 Black students’ experiences in basic education
• Prelude to Chapter 7: Black Saints
• 7 Intersectional experiences of Black students in higher education
• Prelude to Chapter 8: White psychology, Black indecipherability, and iThongo
• 8 Examining spiritual violence and epistemic healing in universities
• Prelude to Chapter 9: A landscape in mourning for me
• 9 To burn or not to burn the colonial university
• References
• Index