We can’t breathe our way out of this: Why even the Czech psychology needs decoloniality
This opinion paper applies decolonial principles to the personal experience of the Psychology discipline in the Czech environment. Decoloniality is not just a theoretical current or metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012) but an embodied practice. I am engaged in this practice for the second year in my doctoral studies at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University. For that reason, I primarily discuss my personal matters, even if it is unusual for academic works. However, I think that it is through personal stories that we can counter those „well-established truths“ and engage in real relationships and conversations. In the text, I argue why psychology in its current form often supports adaptation to non-adaptable conditions instead of trying to empower the most vulnerable. The text is situated in a broader historical and current socio-economic context, and I try to demonstrate each point with my experience in the academy so far. My experience (of a white Czech queer non-disabled middle-class leftist emerging researcher) is not only mine. It is composed of and connected to everything around me. The presented ideas are not particularly new, only quite unknown in the Czech environment. That is why I intermingle with passages from decolonial literature in the text.
https://doi.org/10.29364/epsy.558
(Fulltext in Czech)
Keywords
decoloniality, neoliberalism, Liberation psychology, structural inequalities, Czech psychologyLiterature
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