This is a post to unscramble my ideas regarding the direction of my project post-supervision meeting.

I think I have had to come to an understanding that what I originally had in mind is perhaps far too complicated, detailed and lengthy for me to accomplish given the time frame that I am working with hence it has been a redirection to a more doable yet equally exciting project.

Given my background in literature and my interest in the negotiation of identity in the postcolonial contexts, especially the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent I have shifted my focus to a topic that I explored in my project for Educating for a Challenging Future; the Decolonisation of Education.

This is a question that is personal to me and relates to my own lived experience as a postcolonial subject of the empire and having grown up with a world that despite having achieved independence insists on internalising a British worldview. In the after-math of the British Empire it is important to recognize the bid for identity, the internalised perspective of the coloniser, the role of linguistic imperialism and how these systems of power are enacted and re-enacted.

Does our current educational curriculum, which by the way is full of dead white men’s work, only create lackeys for the empire? A new sort of janissary? Who does such a system benefit and how are those within the system affected?

Thus, I have now turned my attention to literature curriculum in the Pakistani context and the omission of post-colonial voices from the curriculum. I hope to draw on foundational texts in post-colonial theory, Foucault’s right to discourse and work on power, Butler’s idea of performativity in identity formation and key texts in educational theory such as Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

I believe that such research can be instrumental in reworking educational policies for a future that empowers citizens to engage in discourse and shape their own national narratives, and by extension of that form a emancipated identity in polst-colonial contexts.

Post-Supervision Meeting / Zainab Abbas / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Education Futures (2023-24) by is licensed under a