I’m currently re-reading Maya Wind’s Towers of Ivory and Steel, and this book has made me reflect on the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum across disciplines.
Hi Jairo - Thank your for your research and activism. Could you recommend decolonial scholarship that specifically deals with decolonial management or administration? I am a student, and I dont want to waste time in exploring liberal scholarship that does not center decolonial concerns. Thank you!
This is an essential read describing the machinery of settler-colonial myth disguised as knowledge production. I'd like to add that the coloniality of curriculum isn’t just a legacy of empire—it’s the continuation of a story. A simulation.
Western institutions don’t just teach colonial ideas. They perform a script—one written long ago. A simulation that sanctifies chosen peoples and lands, predetermines destiny, and demands a final act to prove its truth. That’s how - and why- the Zionist story works. This script doesn’t just describe reality. It enters into it. Constitutively. The world bends to accommodate its plot points. First: appropriation of sanctity (archaeology). Second: predetermination of destiny (legal & military scholarship). Third: climactic validation.
The university isn’t just complicit because its schorlarship legitimizes occupation. It’s complicit because it’s been epistemically recruited—colonized by a civilizational simulation that requires constant validation through conquest and dispossession. It’s not a coincidence that disciplines like archaeology, law, and Middle East studies so neatly align with settlement expansion and violence. They’re not neutral. They’re the narrative engineers of a prophecy they don’t even realize they’re helping fulfill. The epistemicide Wind describes isn’t a byproduct - it’s a requirement because the simulation can’t validate itself unless it erases what came before because it’s exporting an endgame. A teleology. And its institutions, especially the university,are the finishers. They complete the arc by making the simulation feel real. Brilliant work by Fúnez-Flores. If we’re serious about decolonizing knowledge, we have to de-script the simulation. Otherwise, we’re just playing roles in someone else’s final act.
Thank you for engaging this post Ella! More importantly, thank you for sharing your thoughts on the material and symbolic dimensions of coloniality and the university’s centrality in maintaining and actively participating in colonial dispossession.
Hi Jairo - Thank your for your research and activism. Could you recommend decolonial scholarship that specifically deals with decolonial management or administration? I am a student, and I dont want to waste time in exploring liberal scholarship that does not center decolonial concerns. Thank you!
This is an essential read describing the machinery of settler-colonial myth disguised as knowledge production. I'd like to add that the coloniality of curriculum isn’t just a legacy of empire—it’s the continuation of a story. A simulation.
Western institutions don’t just teach colonial ideas. They perform a script—one written long ago. A simulation that sanctifies chosen peoples and lands, predetermines destiny, and demands a final act to prove its truth. That’s how - and why- the Zionist story works. This script doesn’t just describe reality. It enters into it. Constitutively. The world bends to accommodate its plot points. First: appropriation of sanctity (archaeology). Second: predetermination of destiny (legal & military scholarship). Third: climactic validation.
The university isn’t just complicit because its schorlarship legitimizes occupation. It’s complicit because it’s been epistemically recruited—colonized by a civilizational simulation that requires constant validation through conquest and dispossession. It’s not a coincidence that disciplines like archaeology, law, and Middle East studies so neatly align with settlement expansion and violence. They’re not neutral. They’re the narrative engineers of a prophecy they don’t even realize they’re helping fulfill. The epistemicide Wind describes isn’t a byproduct - it’s a requirement because the simulation can’t validate itself unless it erases what came before because it’s exporting an endgame. A teleology. And its institutions, especially the university,are the finishers. They complete the arc by making the simulation feel real. Brilliant work by Fúnez-Flores. If we’re serious about decolonizing knowledge, we have to de-script the simulation. Otherwise, we’re just playing roles in someone else’s final act.
Thank you for engaging this post Ella! More importantly, thank you for sharing your thoughts on the material and symbolic dimensions of coloniality and the university’s centrality in maintaining and actively participating in colonial dispossession.