Campus in Camps

Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of Un-learning

Abstract

The paper addresses the topic of decolonial pedagogies in the Global South analyzing Campus in Camps, an educational program founded in 2012 by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal that activates critical communal learning within the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, Palestine. The program reflects on refugee camps which are in a process of social and spatial transformation. The paper raises two main questions: how does the program of Campus in Camps decolonize methodologies of knowledge construction about the camp life? How does it activate processes of embodied pedagogy where knowledge is grounded in action and emerges as a group effort accommodating subjects born from the interaction among participants, tutors and the broader social context? The article will first focus on the problematic of conceivingthe camp as a site of history and knowledge. Secondly it will dig into the pedagogical strategies, research methodologies and participatory design methods enacted in order to “decolonize knowledge” through exercises of collective un-learning.