Decolonizing Education and Research by Countering the Myths We Live By

Countermythologization and Collective Action

This essay argues for a revision of both research and teaching practice within the fields of media studies and the communication sciences, and adopts Barthean semiotic myth theory as a means to demonstrate how such revision could be envisaged as countermythologization within the current climate of decolonization. First, a brief discussion broadly contextualizes the decolonization debate. This is followed by two examples of how this overarching environment can be responded to, first, by rethinking media studies research practice, and second, by critically revising traditional teaching practices within media and communication studies.

Roland Barthes constructed the semiotic formula for myth to illustrate how myth acts as a mode of (often political) speech, regularly utilized in visual and mediated cultural artifacts such as film and advertising, for the purposeful naturalization and justification of dominant modes of thought and power.¹ Mythologization, which is the activity of mythic speech, differs from the concepts of, for example, discourse and/or narrative in that it declines the provision of detail, empties out its subject of history, and presents only a partial, simplified, and uncomplicated view of the world. Although mythic speech neither tolerates nor accommodates contradiction, it can be remarkably effective in persuading a lot of people that the ways things are, are the way they are meant to be. Since Barthes's original theorization of myth as the "top-down" exertion of communicated power by the dominant sections of society, countermyth theory has examined the conscious mythologization of voices of opposition and dissent.² The contestation of dominant colonially inscribed power and its resultant myths, and the current oppositional movements fronting decolonization, can be understood within this theoretical frame.

A key moment in the decolonization movement arose in 2015, when a collective of students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa called for the removal of a statue of the nineteenth-century imperialist Cecil John Rhodes from the university's campus. Demands to remove the statue were metonymic of a desire for the transformation of university curricula and culture, as many black students felt alienated within an institutionalized Eurocentric outlook. The #RhodesMustFall initiative provided impetus for the #FeesMustFall student movement, which blossomed on campuses shortly thereafter, sprouting a series of student-led protests in 2015 and 2016. The students' requests varied depending on the particular conditions at each campus, but in general two demands appeared as the main thrust. The first was the provision of access to quality higher education to all willing scholars, free of charge. The second was for a revision and transformation of university curricula, that is, for the decolonization of education.³ Subsequent to #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, collective mobilizations have initiated across the globe, emphasizing similar substantive points of critique and foci, such as the 2015 student protests in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and the 2017 social movements against Confederate monuments in the United States.⁴

Responsive South African academics in tertiary communication and media studies schools are currently engaging in a significant process of overdue curriculum revision. The national conversation, which was initiated by the students and followed by the collaborative efforts of media studies and communication academics, partially facilitated by the South African Communications Association (SACOMM), to confront the necessary task of decolonization, provides a rich platform for debate, contestation, and transformation.⁵ Narratives of racial division have often directed the trajectory of this conversation about curriculum, which in the South African context is to be expected, given the country's recent apartheid history.

Fissures of race differences that germinated during colonialism may have evolved in their form (if not their function), but they nonetheless persist in the present. A gruesome beast, this mythology shifts the balance of opportunity and power in favor of some peoples over others, and it crawls about within the socioeconomic structure of things in South Africa much as it does in many other societies. But an overemphasis on issues of race politics risks ignoring the fact that the project of decolonization is about more than balancing the scales of racial inequality. To be sure, the...