Comparative and International Education: Reflecting on Extractivismo, Epistemic Genocide, and Theoretical Colonialism

This article argues that, if Comparative and International Education can be understood as the application of theories and methods in the social sciences and humanities to study education globally, how the field chooses to explain reality (theories) and to study reality (methods) is crucial and must be understood in the historical-social context of its existence. Therefore, a re-historicizing and decolonializing (that is, beyond decolonizing) of the field is indispensable yet presents a challenge that requires our reflection and reflexivity on what it means to re-historicize, decolonialize, and educate. The article discusses the place of Africa in the field; places modernity as the field's cosmological and theoretical inheritance; and argues for the need to reflect on the role of philosophy, theory, and methodology to abandon the practices of extractivismo, theoretical colonialism, and attempts at epistemological genocide. The article issues a call to action through the poem, Ode to My Academic Field.