Decolonising decoloniality: commentaries and extended conversations

1 Decoloniality at risk

In recent years, “decoloniality” has found its way into sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, gathering momentum as a framework for critique and transformation. Yet, as Harshana Rambukwella and Virginia Zavala remind us in their critical intervention, ‘Decoloniality and language scholarship’, this rise is not without risk. They point out that ‘decoloniality,’ born of radical struggles in the Global South, can be mobilized in ways that ignore and/or perpetuate structures of inequality. Their argument is clear: decoloniality cannot be decontextualised, and thus must stay rooted in the material and historical struggles that gave it life (Cusiqanqui 2012; Zembylas 2025).

There has been in recent years a plenitude of research in sociolinguistics and related fields dedicated to decolonizing projects. Such research, in fact, is relatively new compared to work in other fields. The ‘decolonial turn’ entered conversations in the humanities and social sciences in the 1990s, although one could argue that the decolonial agenda in the academe and in activist politics stretches back much further, at least to the Cold War years and the early decades following formal independence from colonial rule (Alatas 1977; Hau 2005).

Since the 1990s, practically every aspect of both academic work and everyday life has been subjected to decolonial critique. We see it in knowledge production (Apffel-Marglin and Marglin 1996), research and methodology (Ndimande 2012; Smith 1999), theory and culture (Katrak 1989), and regional social sciences (Nilan and Maunati 2025). More specifically, it is also visible in theatre (Balme 1999), science in Asia (Kumar et al. 2018), health (Naidu 2024) and philosophy (Wiredu 1998). More recently, decolonial agendas have been taken up in language, education, and society: family language policy (Gomes 2018), English language education (Loo and Sairattanain 2024), primary English teaching (López-Gopar 2016), foreign language education (Macedo 2019), multilingualism (Ndhlovu and Makalela 2021), language ideologies (Phyak 2021), literacy (Hernandez-Zamora 2010), and writing (Tymowski 2024). This is what Curaming (2017) calls “the surge of interest in knowledge decolonization even among scholars from Europe and the Americas” (p. 69), or, as Keet et al. (2017) put it, “the new frenzy of the decolonial discourse” (p. 7).

While this work is far from homogeneous, it shares a basic starting point: colonialism endures today in different guises. As Patel (2014) writes, “coloniality, because of its pervasiveness, implicates everyone through its ongoing structure of people, land, and well-being” (p. 358). The coloniality of being, knowledge, and power (Maldonado-Torres 2007; Mignolo 2007; Wynter 2003) saturates everyday life and social relations. Hence, the call to decolonize everything – not only institutions and systems, but also how we think, feel, talk, dream, move, and work. The term “decolonial” is used in at least three ways: (1) as an evaluative lens that opens up possibilities for agency and transformation under colonial conditions, (2) as an academic project of recuperating alternative and often long-silenced voices and practices, and (3) as a political strategy to subvert and dismantle oppressive structures of knowledge production and social life.

2 Practices of un-knowing

There is no doubt that decolonial work is a much-needed intervention in academic and social contexts that continue to reproduce colonially shaped ideologies and practices. In sociolinguistics, postcolonial and postmodern work has already questioned the neutrality of knowledge production and promoted epistemic diversity (Gomes 2018). But a decolonial agenda, as Gomes (2018) notes, “takes yet another step and envisages the need to redress the extant erasure of voices from the global South from current sociolinguistic debates” (p. 53). At its core, this is an agenda for social justice, for liberation of the mind, and for freedom from poverty and dependency.

Yet, as Rambukwella and Zavala also warn, the circulation of “the decolonial” brings its own risks of privileging, silencing, and forgetting. We work inside colonial structures of knowledge production, and in trying to dismantle them we may also reproduce their logics. In this sense, decoloniality can become another system of knowing that forgets the broader social and historical relations in which it is deployed. Some strategies end up mirroring the very (iniquitous) conditions they seek to oppose.

Curaming (2017) observes that while progressive scholarship produces new knowledge, it often circulates within the same logics of power. Thus, the supposedly “decentred” or “decolonized” knowledge becomes “re-imperialized” (p. 68), raising questions about who ultimately benefits. Cusiqanqui (2012) takes this further, arguing that appropriation by decolonial scholars has diluted radical politics into a “fashionable, depoliticized, and comfortable multiculturalism” (p. 104) that leaves the structures of empire untouched. Such academic moves “recolonize the imaginaries and minds of intellectuals of the South” (p. 102): through citation games and canon legitimisation, the very ideas that originated in the South are re-circulated back to Southern scholars in mediated form.

Others, like Guillermo (2008), concede that decolonial work continues within the neoliberal academy, but they lament its disconnection from its historical roots in projects of economic and political emancipation. Pictou (2020) contends that decolonization must confront present-day colonial structures rather than treating colonialism simply as a past injustice, thus calling for ‘decolonising decolonisation.’ Similarly, Tuck and Young (2012) remind us that even the decolonial desires of oppressed peoples can be caught up in resettlement and reoccupation projects that ultimately reinforce colonial orders.

For Ortega (2017), the problem is also about canon formation: in seeking to decolonize, scholars build a new canon that privileges some voices over others. In this way, decolonial work can carry its own politics of silence, such as sidelining women writers or privileging U.S.-based genealogies of thought. Ortega calls these “practices of un-knowing” (p. 511): efforts that correctly identify systemic injustices but inadvertently reproduce them in the process of trying to undo them. This is distinct from “not knowing,” which refers to the ignorance of those who overlook systemic injustices entirely. “Un-knowing” is more insidious: it recognizes injustice but unknowingly carries it forward under a new banner.

3 Decolonizing the decolonial

All this suggests that decolonial work itself must be interrogated. In sociolinguistics, where the decolonial agenda has only recently been taken up seriously, there is an urgent need to pause and reflect. This is not to dismiss the work already done – indeed, this project aligns itself with it – but to recognize that coloniality seeps even into decolonial imaginaries. As Ortega (2017) notes, “the coloniality of power continues to be at work within the decolonial imaginary” (p. 510).

The task, then, is to decolonize the decolonial to question and unsettle those practices, ideologies, and structures that aim to dismantle colonial power yet end up reproducing it (Quaintance 2020). It is here that Rambukwella and Zavala’s intervention becomes critical. They identify three particular dangers. First, a depoliticized discourse of alterity constructing “the Other” as untouched by modernity. Second, the tendency to produce new binaries such as authentic/inauthentic and indigenous/modern which slide back into colonial logics. And third, a decontextualized decoloniality that removes language from its moorings in the messy, material realities of social life. In this case, decoloniality drifts into abstraction or fashion and thus loses its edge as a tool for justice.

This special issue gathers a set of collective responses from groups of scholars, educators, and activists who take up this challenge and extend the debate.

We begin with Hamza R’boul, Othman Z. Barnawi, and Fajer Bin Rashed’s piece, Domesticated decoloniality: Taming critique in language scholarship. Written by a group of early-career and mid-career scholars working across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond, this commentary introduces the idea of ‘domesticated decoloniality.’ They describe how radical critiques are softened and rebranded within neoliberal academia, turning decoloniality into something safe and marketable. While affirming Rambukwella and Zavala’s critique, they also argue that the article itself risks reproducing this ‘taming’ by avoiding explicit engagement with structures of power.

Building on this concern, Lorena Córdova-Hernández and Mario E. López Gopar write from decades of collaborative work in Indigenous and minoritized language communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. In their commentary, Contextualizing decoloniality: Reflections from Indigenous language revitalization in Southern Mexico, they welcome the move from “normative” to “contextualized” decoloniality, but nevertheless insist that this requires contending with realities such as intergenerational trauma, gender inequalities, and the contradictions of state language policies. Deeply embedded in community-based projects, they ask how decoloniality can avoid reproducing old hierarchies even while trying to revitalize languages.

Extending the debate further, Aileen Salonga, Grace Saqueton, Nelson Buso Jr. and Nicko Manalastas, in What counts as decolonial, and what to do with/about it: Some thoughts on decoloniality and (English) language scholarship in the Philippines, argue that we need a certain degree of suspicion, scepticism and caution as we proceed with the decolonial project. This group of Filipino scholars and educators reflects on how decoloniality is taken up in their national academic context. They show how the three challenges Rambukwella and Zavala identify are also relevant to ‘postcolonial’ Philippines: appeals to a pure precolonial past, the re-creation of binaries, and the risk of “decolonial” talk becoming detached from lived realities. At the same time, they emphasize the Philippines’ long though underacknowledged tradition of anticolonial thought, reminding us that not all decolonial work names itself as such. In fact, it predates the more current conversations about it.

From yet another vantage point, Chieng Wei Shieng, Elmo Gonzaga, Ting Guo, Joseph Li, and Lim Chun Lean stage a roundtable conversation that brings together perspectives from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Malaysia (or East/Southeast Asia in general). All are based at a university in Hong Kong, working across critical and cultural studies, religious studies, public humanities, visual arts and sociology/race. They extend the conversation by situating the issues raised by Rambukwella and Zavala within diverse geopolitical and disciplinary contexts. Their dialogue highlights how coloniality is not only about West versus non-West, but also about nationalisms, local hierarchies, and shifting global dynamics. This extended conversation underscores the value of contextualizing decoloniality across multiple, intersecting terrains.

Finally, Virginia Zavala, writing in memory of her late co-author, Harshana Rambukwella, responds to these collectives. She acknowledges important gaps in the original article such as insufficient attention to gender. She notes how all four responses unsettle domesticated or normative forms of decolonial work, and how they collectively highlight the importance of situating decoloniality within the uneven, sometimes contradictory realities of the Global South.

Taken together, these contributions show why this special issue is much-needed. The commentaries and extended conversations gathered here remind us that decoloniality is not only an academic framework but a demand for transformation in people’s everyday lives. We invite readers – scholars, teachers, students, and activists alike – to join or continue this conversation. The goal is not to arrive at a single definition of what counts as decolonial, but to sustain the difficult, necessary work of questioning, contesting, and experimenting with practices that can make a difference in the worlds we inhabit.