Decolonizing English Literature Departments At Arab Universities

Education in the Arab world is need of a revolution, and this revolutionary transformation inevitably intricately linked to production, ordering, dissemination revolutionary, anti-colonial knowledge. This article emphasizes urgency for decolonizing education, specifically English literature departments at universities. Many thinkers have documented connection between literature, culture, imperialism on one hand (Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks Conquest , 1989 Edward Said’s Culture Imperialism 1993) resistance other (Fanon, Kanafani, Cabral, Said, others who wrote about zero point epistemology). While there been some decolonization efforts different parts world, even Ivy League institutions (Cornell University, example), universities ironically maintain very rigid, government accredited American literary curriculum with no attempt or intention these colonial era curricula. interrogates aims behind maintaining purely (and American) curricula, especially as region continues undergo most violent aggressive forms Western intervention, which has led massive destruction state infrastructures, loss Palestine 1948, dissolution social fabric societies thousands deaths past two decades. Against destructive agenda, constructive, awareness raising impulse embedded literature/culture order. It high time that decolonize their departments, necessary entails, quote title an essay by Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought Decolonial Freedom” (2009).