Knowledges that Destroy : Education, Decoloniality and Social Justice

This open access book offers an urgently needed re-imagining of what education can and must be in an era marked by escalating division, culture wars, and global precarity.


Writing against the backdrop of “Brexit”, the Covid-19 pandemic, far-right resurgence, and intensifying geopolitical crises, Gholami and Tran show how contemporary politics weaponizes concepts such as social justice, diversity, and decolonization—either to vilify them or to empty them of meaning. In response, the book reframes social justice as a “good ideology”: an educational necessity that transcends left–right political binaries and offers a foundation for democratic, pluralist educational futures.

Addressing a range of issues from the politics of untruth to climate injustice, from the religious-secular nexus to higher-education free speech debates, the authors illuminate how the "thumbprint" of coloniality can be discerned across all the key issues affecting education today, threatening both democracy and the ethical purpose of education. They argue that a re-energized decoloniality must run through the practice of education at all levels. The book thus offers a practical, research-informed framework for educators to make social justice immediately “workable” in their classrooms, communities, and institutions. It maps a pathway towards “collective knowledge”—a collectivist epistemology born of and reflecting the unique ethical dynamics of diverse locales and rooted firmly in social justice.

Accessible, timely, and conceptually innovative, Knowledges that Destroy is essential reading for educators, policymakers, and all those committed to renewing education as a shared, democratic, and socially just endeavour.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.