Decolonizing and re-theorizing radical democratic education: Toward a politics and practice of refusal

The aim of this article is twofold: first, it seeks to discuss the relationship between democracy and colonization, and to examine the implications of this relationship for democratic education and, second, it turns to decolonial thinking as a resource for critiquing and reconstructing “radical democratic education.” A decolonial critique offers two crucial insights to radical democratic education that draws on Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy: first, it shows how Mouffe’s theory entails the risk of re-inscribing the hegemony of liberal democratic principles because this theory is insufficiently attentive to the harms caused by dispossessions of colonized peoples, especially the loss of their land and, second, a decolonial critique highlights the role of recent ethico-political movements such as “refusal” in resurrecting and rehabilitating the radical promise of democratic education. These insights have practical implications for those who are rethinking radical democratic education in terms of an expanded notion of democracy encompassing subaltern standpoints.