In our previous module, our class read The Charismatic Lecturer in session, which was about two lecturers, Stephanie and Max. The latter was framed as a ‘charismatic lecturer’, versus the description of Stephanie which referenced her engagement with the Church of England (or something similar) (Macfarlane 2004). An interesting discussion unfolded about our own implicit biases, but there seemed to be a class preference for Max. One colleague described Stephanie’s penchant for religion as undermining her credentials. Of course, this thinking is supposed to be unacceptable under the Equity Act, but yet Higher Education (HE) and its foundational principles of rationality are underpinned by secularism. This concept is complicated. In decolonial and critical race theory, secularism and rationality was not devoid of religion, but rather, its introduction through modernity and the Enlightenment was shaped by Christianity. Appiah makes mention of this, citing Columbus and how the history of Christianity is the history of people killing each other (Appiah 2014). Perhaps less explicit in that video was that Christianity served as a justifying moral principle to propel colonialism, and moreover, that our concept of Man and humanity overrepresents an Anglo-European version of personhood that was built from displacing a relation between God and Man onto Self and (Racialised) Other (see Wynter 2003). Equality and human rights, in my cynical purview, were always precarious principles, although I am terrified to see how fragile they actually were/are.
I was frustrated to watch the video from Trinity University where the interview subject described how he had to laugh and display images of his daughter to prove that he was normal. I noticed that the YouTube video did not even include a name for the interviewee (Trinty University 2016). I’m so sick of not being enraged, of controlling my behaviour, because dehumanising people is a violent act, so why wouldn’t it be met with reactions that identified and mirrored that? `
Back to the introductory point: secularism is what underpins the university, and this was evidenced in Rekis’s research about epistemic injustice/exclusion. It was an illuminating essay that made me think deeply about my own assumptions of religious testimony in the classroom, and made me recall a seminar experience where two students began to debate issues around gender, sex, and sexuality through religion: specifically, Christianity and Islam. I tried to steer the conversation away from religion, as I reminded the students this was not a theology class, but Rekis maps out how religious experience has been excluded in the academy as a form of epistemic injustice, so now I’m wondering whether religious approaches should be legitimised in Cultural Studies as decoloniality also acknowledges other worldviews. No clear answers on my end, just more questions though (Rekis 2023).
Works Cited
Appiah, K.A. (2014) ‘Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). YouTube [Online] 16 June 2014. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY. [Accessed 12 May 2025]
Macfarlane, B. (2004) Teaching with Integrity: The Ethics of Higher Education Practice. New York: Routledge Falmer.
Rekis, J. (2023) ‘Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account’, Hypatia 38: pp. 779-800.
Trinty University (2016) ‘Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom’, YouTube [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CAOKTo_DOk [Accessed on 12 May 2025]
Wynter, S. (2003) ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review 3, 3: pp. 257-337.