EDITORIAL

 

PINS Editorial

 

 

Floretta Boonzaier; Shose Kessi

 

 

When we joined PINS as co-Editors 2018 we were intimately familiar with the space the journal occupies within a strong tradition of critical psychology in South Africa. We entered the 'space' as two black feminist, critical, decolonial psychologists, that have long been involved in work that explores and disrupts political processes of psychological inferiorisation and control. This work covers issues of gendered and racialized violence in different contexts, the Stigmatisation and oppression of poor and working-class communities, research on intersectional identities and oppressions and interest and practice in methodologies that promote the participation and collective action of marginalised groups as well as tools that contribute to a decolonial agenda in Psychology and the social sciences more broadly.

We had envisioned using the PINS platform to open up a space that provides the necessary theoretical and methodological expansions in the field of critical psychology in South Africa, being invested in creating an intellectual space that embraces a decolonial aesthetic and praxis for psychological work in South Africa, Africa, and the diaspora. Our further aim was to bring PINS into the current critical debates on decolonisation and how these relate to psychology and critical psychology specifically, striving to attract black psychologists in shaping the intellectual contribution of critical psychology as well as contributions from the continent and the global south.

According to Bulhan (2015) decolonising psychology involves disrupting the symbiotic and mutually supportive relationship that establishment psychology has maintained with colonialism. Doing so, according to Bulhan involves a recognition of what he calls metacolonialism and the ways in which it operates in the contemporary moment. It involves shifts in the work of psychologists - from individual to collective well-being; from obsession with instinct to the promotion of human needs; from adjustment to empowerment; from understanding humans as passive victims to self-determining actors; working from top-down to bottom-up approaches. Fundamentally, decolonising psychology is an ongoing reflexive, questioning and insurgent project that takes seriously questions of context, power and history in the knowledge production arena.

In the global south, discourse on decolonisation in Psychology occupies an almost central space in the discipline - as evidenced by the number of recent publications on the topic (see Maldonado-Torres, 2017; Boonzaier & van Niekerk, 2019; Diop, 2019; Adams, Osei-Tutu, & Affram, 2020; Malherbe, Ratele, Adams, Reedy, & Suffla, 2021; Stevens & Sonn, 2021; Seedat, Suffla & Kessi, 2021), yet its practice in terms of offering a practical alternative to the doing of psychology that renounces its settler-colonial history and its ongoing practices of alienation and marginalisation requires deeper engagement.

As editors of PINS, we worked to build such alternatives in the publishing space. Attracting new and more diverse voices into the discourse, including those from historically marginalized groups and encouraging contributions from a broader geographical reach were part of what we envisioned as significant and practical ways to build a decolonial project in the knowledge production industry. With the support of associate and consulting editors, much effort was placed on mentoring new and younger colleagues with the ultimate aim that these younger and newer voices would see their ideas and their work recognized as significant contributions to the future of psychology. We also continued the collaborative ways of working with the associate and consulting editors in overseeing the editorial process, including placing strong emphasis on PINS' sustainability by bringing in younger colleagues to take on more ownership and leadership roles in the management of the journal.

Over this period, issues 58 to 61 covered themes that fit squarely within a decolonial feminist agenda for psychology. This included theoretical questions of what African-centered and feminist lenses can provide for broadening our understandings of the human condition. These contributions covered but were not limited to four broad areas: Critical perspectives on the professionalisation of psychology challenging the de-politicized nature of this field of practice. Race identities, including forms of whiteness and blackness and their intersection with other identity markers as legacies of the colonial encounter and ongoing challenges in South Africa and globally. Questions of gendered power relations and the role of masculinities, how these manifest through practices of sexuality, marriage, abortion, and teenage pregnancies amongst others, featured prominently. Finally, a significant contribution has been in the area of methods for psychology that promote social and epistemic justice to counter the harm inflicted on the marginalized through mainstream experimental work that re-produces hierarchical knowledge about people and instead focusing on work that promotes the needs and aspirations of individuals and groups in society.

We believe these contributions provide a solid grounding for the continued work of the journal. With its historical commitment to critical thinking in psychology, PINS is a journal that represents a long tradition of struggle and critical inquiry for South African psychologists. Opening up this space to a broader pan-African and global south agenda may be what is needed for the continued relevance of psychology. Theorizing the human condition in contemporary life offers much potential for psychologists to address the impact and afterlives of slavery, colonization, and apartheid and how these manifest in current forms of inequality and discrimination in Africa, the diaspora, and the global south. The interconnectedness of these manifestations of violences, the struggles for belonging, the collective efforts at resistance, reparation, justice, and transformation cannot be overlooked if we are to take seriously the psychological dimensions of modern life.

We felt strongly that our efforts in this regard should focus on a decolonial, feminist agenda that foregrounds transforming power relations through the exploration of the knowledge and experiences of the marginalized. South African psychologists have already taken the lead in this area. As we write this editorial, the last volume of the Springer Community Psychology series is in its final stages of publication. Edited by Shahnaaz Suffla and Mohamed Seedat, this series brings together decolonial and feminist perspectives on psychology together in four volumes of contributions edited by South African psychologists. PINS continues to be a scholarly home for many of the authors of these volumes, which indicates the growing international influence of decolonial feminist psychologists from this continent.

Finally, addressing questions on the politics of publishing remain vital to the sustainability of journals such as PINS. The emphasis on writing and producing knowledge in and from Africa is a commitment to disrupting oppressive knowledge production practices, which are characteristic of the dominant and Eurocentric orientation of academic work about Africa and the global south. The imperative to maintain open access is also an important consideration with regards to producing accessible knowledge for the public good. The worrying reality however is that, in the absence of sufficient funding, this kind of work places a significant burden on editors and compromises the sustainability of the journal. Growing the editorial board beyond the confines of South Africa may attract new sources of support and partnership and grow the reach and visibility of our work in line with the collaborative, pan-African, global south beginnings that we hope we have sowed.

We are grateful for the opportunity to have contributed to the journal and to our field in this way and look forward to the new possibilities and alternative spaces to think that the new editors of the journal will open up.

 

References

Adams, G, Osei-Tutu, A, & Affram, A A (2020) Decolonial perspectives on psychology and development. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. Oxford University Press.         [ Links ]

Boonzaier, F, & Van Niekerk, T (Eds.) (2019). Decolonial feminist community psychology. Springer International Publishing.         [ Links ]

Bulhan, H A (2015) Stages of colonialism in Africa: From occupation of land to occupation of being. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 239-256.         [ Links ]

Diop, I S (2019) African mythology, femininity, and maternity. Palgrave Macmillan.         [ Links ]

Kessi, S, Suffla, S, & Seedat M (2021) Decolonial Enactments in Community Psychology. Springer International Publishing.         [ Links ]

Maldonado-Torres, N (2017) Frantz Fanon and the decolonial turn in psychology: from modern/colonial methods to the decolonial attitude. South African Journal of Psychology, 47, 432-441.         [ Links ]

Malherbe, N, Ratele, K, Adams, G, Geetha, R, Suffla, S (2021) A decolonial African-centered psychology of antiracism. Review of General Psychology. Published online 26 June 2021.         [ Links ]

Stevens, G & Sonn, C (2021) Decoloniality and Epistemic Justice in Contemporary Community Psychology. Springer International Publishing.         [ Links ]