I learn where I am : Decolonial exploration of institutional responses to diversity in Swedish universities

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ISRN: LiU-IKOS/EMS-A--21/10--SE

I learn where I am

– Decolonial exploration of institutional

responses to diversity in Swedish universities

Asia Della Rosa

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“How to write, think, and act in ways that work to dismantle the structures of privilege and the modern/colonial matrices of power (of which privilege is part), how to assume decolonial praxis (including decolonial feminism) in practice, and how to help walk a decolonial for (i.e., a decolonial otherwise), are questions that underscore my decolonial and decolonizing intention and methodological-pedagogical-praxistical stance, not only here but in all aspects of my relational being-becoming. By mentioning this intention and stance, I hope to challenge the reader to shift her or his posture and gaze. The challenge is to not look for theory first. It is also to move beyond a simple reading of and about, toward a thinking from and with, a thinking-doing that requires contemplation of one’s own place of enunciation and relation (or not) with the so-called universality of Western thought. I am referring to a thinking-doing that delinks, that undoes the unified—and universalizing—centrality of the West as the world and that begins to push other questions, other reflections, other considerations, and other understandings.” Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality, 2018

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Abstract

The work presented aims to analyse the dynamics of power and inequality within the Swedish academic space, and to do so considers the growing diversity of the Swedish academic composition, in the light of increasing internationalisation and a more recent commodification of higher education (HE). Through a critical discourse analysis of official documents published by the five largest Swedish universities, concerning internationalisation-oriented strategies, documents promoting equal opportunities and guidelines governing discrimination, I reflect on the spaces reserved for concepts such as diversity, interculturality and equal opportunities. To do so, I align myself with a decolonial approach, which questions places of epistemic enunciation, revealing inherent power dynamics represented by coloniality. I intend to argue that a decolonial perspective provides me with the lenses through which to analyse the power structures that still foster a colonial attitude in Swedish academia. The increasing internationalisation of Swedish universities and the way in which this internationalisation it is presented are, in my opinion, in tension with current policies that encourage and monitor equal opportunities. While on the one hand there is a tendency to build an increasingly international, global, and diverse university, on the other hand there is a lack of attention to diversity itself, to inequalities, equal opportunities, and potential discriminations. This tension helps to produce and reproduce power dynamics within the academic context, where the potentially global university does not invest enough resources in recognising and critically naming the differences that, even when unnamed, exist between all those who occupy the physical academic space. This tendency, I intend to argue here, is to be understood in the light of Swedish twofold tendency: on the one hand, a type of hegemonic feminism based on whiteness, heteronormativity and marginalisation of the other is produced and reproduced; on the other hand, such feminism, which proposes itself as the bearer of universal equal opportunities, contributes to the exclusion of other pluriversal subjectivities, excluded because they are racialised and do not belong to the nation-state in the strict sense - to which such feminism is in its nature closely linked.

Key words:

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Acknowledgements

A special thanks to Madina Tlostanova, for her support and care in her role as teacher and supervisor: I felt seen, and this work would have been different without your help.

Thanks to all the professors and lecturer at REMESO, for guiding me and teaching me to look at things with a different perspective, and thanks to all my colleagues for these intense two years. Being part of this programme was a special experience.

I am grateful for the family I have chosen in Norrköping, and for those who in different ways have been a point of reference in these years. A special thanks to Olga: without you, this thesis will be still a draft. Thanks to Kate, Ruben, Sophie, Hammam, Ramin, Jasmine and Danny, for the care, the support and the special time spent together: I will always cherish our friendship. Asher, thank you for the never-ending-enlightening-conversations, and for reminding me “to take just ten seconds at a time”. Your care is not taken for granted at all.

To all my students at FolkUniversitetet and SeniorUniversitetet, for your trust and passion: you have taught me much more than you think. Un grazie alla famiglia Bonaldo, a Lucas e Leo, per avermi regalato un po’ di casa.

Un grazie ai punti di riferimento di sempre, per avermi incoraggiato a sognare la Svezia: Benni e Giulia, sempre nei miei passi, piccoli o grandi che siano, e Silvia, per il supporto incondizionato nella vita di tutti i giorni. Grazie di cuore anche alle amiche ed agli amici che si trovano a Padova, Bologna, Torino, Lugano, Berlino, Londra, Stoccolma e nel mondo: siete nei miei pensieri sempre.

Mamma e papà, grazie per avermi incoraggiato e supportato durante questi anni. I miei meriti accademici li devo soprattutto a voi, per avermi insegnato a pensare e a desiderare. Alla mia famiglia in Italia y a mi familia en Argentina, por el amor que no tiene distancia ni tiempo, y para nuestras trayectorias biográficas, históricas y políticas.

Leon, questo lavoro lo dedico a te, che sei sempre presente in ogni cosa, para que nunca olvides que tu y yo vamos juntos a la par.

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

CMP Colonial Matrix of Power

DO Diskrimineringsombudsmannen [Equality Ombudsman] IaH Internationalisation at Home

HE Higher Education

HEI Higher Education Institution

SOU Statens Offentliga Utredningar [Swedish Government Official Reports] SFS Svensk författningssamling [Swedish Code of Statutes]

UHR Universitets-och Högskolerådet [Swedish Council for Higher Education] UKÄ Universitetskanslersämbetet [Swedish Higher Education Authority]

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1. Introduction

The interest in studying the university as a privileged place in the production of knowledge needs to be found in the particularly interesting perspective this space offers to observe and identify the boundaries that coloniality is still contributing to construct in our everyday lives (Maldonado-Torres 2007). With the term coloniality, I refer to the product of colonialism1

which “is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so many other aspects of our modern experience” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 243).

The work presented aims to analyse the dynamics of power and inequality within the Swedish academic space, and to do so considers the growing diversity of the Swedish academic composition, in the light of increasing internationalisation and a more recent commodification of higher education (HE). Through a critical discourse analysis of official documents published by the five largest Swedish universities, concerning internationalisation-oriented strategies, documents promoting equal opportunities and guidelines governing discrimination, I reflect on the spaces reserved for concepts such as diversity and equal opportunities. To do so, I align myself with a decolonial approach, which questions places of epistemic enunciation, revealing inherent power dynamics represented by coloniality. I intend to argue that a decolonial perspective provides me with the lenses through which to analyse the power structures that contributes to reproduce a colonial attitude in Swedish academia.

My interest in these issues stems from my personal experience as a student in the Ethnic and Migration Studies Programme at Linköping University, in which I have been constantly invited to reflect on knowledges that I was used to take for granted, and from my working position as an International Student Ambassador for Linköping University. From the very beginning of these two experiences, I questioned my position as a female, white, privileged student coming from a European country, and the more time I spent in the classroom, the more I questioned my own positionality (and that of others). Studying in this programme thus helped to provide me with valuable critical tools to be able to (re)interpret and question my being-in-the-world, and for the first time I had the chance to give a form and a name to my privilege.

1_{Instead, with the term colonialism, I refer to the historical Western colonial expansion as explained by Aníbal}

Quijano (2000). Nelson Maldonado-Torres refers to colonialism as “a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire.” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 243).

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It is in this context that my desire to critically reflect on Swedish academia and diversity of these spaces was produced, where on the one hand I recognise the positivity of what we call internationalisation - having experienced it personally and having been enriched from it - but on the other hand I see its limitations and problems when diversity is never problematised but merely romanticised. The introductory reflections on internationalisation and the recent commodification of the Swedish academic space have thus allowed me to understand in more general terms the context within which concepts such as diversity and regulation concerning equal opportunities are articulated. The increasing internationalisation of Swedish universities and the way in which this internationalisation is presented are, in my opinion, in tension with current policies that encourage and monitor equal opportunities. While on the one hand there is a tendency to build an increasingly international, global, and diverse university, on the other hand there is a lack of attention to diversity itself, to inequalities, equal opportunities, and potential discriminations. This tension helps to produce and reproduce power dynamics within the academic context, where the potentially global university does not invest enough resources in recognising and critically naming the differences that, even when unnamed, exist between all those who occupy the physical academic space. This tendency, I intend to argue here, is to be understood in the light of Swedish colonial complicity, and is articulated in two different ways: on the one hand, a type of hegemonic feminism based on whiteness, heteronormativity and marginalisation of the other is produced and reproduced (even in the academic space); on the other hand, such feminism, which proposes itself as the bearer of universal equal opportunities, contributes to the exclusion of other pluriversal subjectivities, excluded because they are racialised and do not belong to the nation-state in the strict sense - to which such feminism is in its nature closely linked (Keskinen, Tuori, Irni and Mulinari 2009; Martinsson, Griffin and Nygren, 2016; Nygren, Martinsson and Mulinari 2018).

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1.1. Contextual background

An account of the process of internationalisation of the university in Sweden is given by Bengt Nilsson, who in 2003 published a particularly interesting article on developments of Swedish higher education and its internationalisation (Nilsson 2003). The process of internationalisation of Swedish HE, according to the author, can be divided into two phases. The first begins in 1972, when the Office of the Chancellor of the Swedish Universities appointed a special committee, called the Swedish Commission on Internationalisation, with two aims: on the one hand, to enter an expanding international market, that of university education, and, on the other hand, to take the opportunity to confront diverse cultures and reflect on international issues (Burn & Opper 1982; Nilsson 2003).

The second phase, according to Nilsson, begins with the participation of Sweden in the European Educational and Research Programs in the 1990s’. Internationalisation, argues Nilsson, was at that time a question of quantity, where “what was counted as an international success for a university was the number of exchange students and the number of agreements with foreign universities” (2003, 29): issues concerning the quality of the internationalised programmes were thus at that time not a priority. With the intention to restore meaning to a process of internationalisation oriented towards quality, in the 2000s’ were proposed projects oriented towards the so-called Internationalisation at Home (IaH): a series of measures into practice by a number of universities (including Malmö University, where the author conducted this study) to promote an international environment for everyone within the university. Among the procedures put into practice are strategic plans geared towards the internationalisation of curricula and staff, but also specific oriented activities aimed at building a multicultural environment and intercultural education.

What is particularly relevant to the work proposed here are Nilsson’s reflections on (at that time) recent developments in the Swedish internationalisation process. The author questions the possible consequences that internationalisation might have on the Swedish educational system. In particular, he refers to two issues: the commercialisation and the competition of the Swedish academic environment. “Some Swedish universities have realised that international education has a huge market, not least in the area of open and distance learning” (2003, 30), writes Nilsson, referring to the report Advantage Sweden, published in 2001 (SOU 2000:92). The report, Nilsson points out, does not proposed to introduce a tuition-based model for international students wishing to enrol in a Swedish university, and adds: “it is doubtful that the Minister of Education will approve such a solution. Education, including higher education without any kind of tuition fee, has always been regarded as a civil right for all children in

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Sweden” (2003, 30). However, eight years later the Swedish education system changes dramatically, with the introduction of the Ordinance on Admission Fees and Tuition Fees at Higher Education Institutions (SFS 2010:543). In the press release which followed the presentation of the Ordinance on Admission Fees and Tuition Fees at Higher Education Institutions (SFS 2010:543), according to the Minister for Higher Education and Research Tobias Krantz, education is a global market and “Sweden should compete in this market by offering education of high quality, not by offering a free education” (see press release 2010). The awareness of a profitable global market for higher education and the internationalisation in terms of the presence of foreign students, as pointed out by Per-Anders Forstorp and Ulf Mellström, “is now being defined as a burden that has begun to affect the quality of higher education for Swedes” (Forstorp and Mellström 2018, 220). As a consequence, according to the report compiled by Migrationsverket [the Swedish Migration Board] and the Swedish National Contact Point of the European Migration Network (EMN), “the introduction of tuition fees resulted in a 52 per cent drop in the number of third country national students granted a residence permit for studies” (EMN Policy Report 2011, 5).

In order to meet with the global economic imperatives in the field of education, Sweden in the last years has therefore invested in a strong international openness, offering quality programmes with the aim of attracting new students from all over the world. At the same time, in order to be able to meet the expenses in the field of HE and present itself as an attractive alternative in an increasingly competitive field, tuition fees were introduced in 2011 for those coming from outside the EU. While thus international and global openness favours the creation of a richly diverse academic space, the establishment of fees for international students, shaped by an increasingly market-driven education, represents a first major distinction - producing inequality - between students. However, this inequality is rarely considered in missions and strategies aimed at internationalisation, just as are absent other forms of inequity structurally present among those who occupy the academic space. The work proposed here aims precisely to investigate the production and reproduction of these inequalities, which represent the other side of the coin of internationalisation processes and are maintained invisible within university spaces.

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1.2. Aim and research questions

The research presented here recognises a tension between the increasing internationalisation of the Swedish academic space on the one hand, and the insufficient problematisation of the challenges of diversity in the Swedish academic context. Among these challenges, I highlight the lack of attention given to the composition of the internationalised university, which increasingly included students from all over the world, considered from a formal point of view as equal, but from a practical point of view subjected to different forms of oppression such as class, gender, and race, but also discriminated in Sweden because of migration policies.

The objectives of this study are therefore oriented towards understanding the ways in which diversity among students is understood and addressed, in a context of increasing internationalisation and commodification of Swedish universities. In order to do so, I propose a critical analysis of the official documents published by the five largest Swedish universities, taking into account two elements: firstly, the international tendencies of academic environments, which strongly support a global openness and the recruitment of international students, expressed in the missions and strategies promoted by the institutions; secondly, the institutional support of diversity and the equal opportunities in these spaces, contained in the documents specifically concerning these issues. Ultimately, the aim of this study is an in-depth critical reflection on these environments - promoted as equal and diverse and often romanticized in academia: the questions guiding the research are therefore as follows.

In the light of increasing internationalisation and commodification of Swedish universities, where the academic space is increasingly diverse in its constitution:

• What are the spaces dedicated to power asymmetries in the official documents concerning the strategies and missions of the universities here considered?

• How are inequalities within the academic space defined and addressed in the official documents regarding equal opportunities?

• What kind of diversity is taken into account in proposals to fight inequalities and instead promote equal opportunities?

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1.3. Thesis outline

The thesis has the following structure. In the first chapter, I explore the aims of the proposed study and the research questions that organised the work. The second chapter focuses on the analysis of the previous research on two different issues, respectively: studies conducted in the social sciences related to internationalisation and commodification of the Swedish university, understood here as a knowledge-based nation, and the ones which have adopted a critical perspective on Sweden as a nation which promotes equality for all. In the third chapter, I give an account of the theoretical framework which had guided my reflections, and I focus on the origin of my thesis title and, at the same time, trace the essential genealogies in order to understand concepts such as decoloniality of knowledge and decoloniality of gender. In the fourth chapter, I describe methodologies and materials used, which include a reflection on methods, analytical strategies, materials analysed, limits of the study and my positionality. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the analysis and the discussion of the official documents published by the five largest universities in Sweden: in this section, I adopt a decolonial perspective, exploring the institutional responses to diversity in Swedish academia. In the sixth and final chapter, I outline possible further explorations of the field and I summarise the outcomes of the work here proposed.

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2. Previous research

In the section presented here, I intend to reflect on the existing studies of the tensions between internationalisation, commodification, diversity, and colonialism in the Swedish academic context, wandering from the general to the particular. The first section addresses relevant scholarly inquiries that dwell on the university as a space of knowledge production that is increasingly internationalised and commodified, with a specific attention to the concept of Sweden as a knowledge-based nation. In the second part, I summarise studies which focused on postcolonial Nordic feminism, highlighting the importance that such research has had in the field of colonial complicity studies in Sweden. However, the exploration of research does not pretend to be all-encompassing: the section presented here is designed only to introduce in broad terms the context in which the work proposed here is intended to contribute.

2.1. Internationalisation in Sweden: a knowledge-based nation project Since the aim of the work presented here is to explore the complex power dynamics present in the academic context, reflecting on the responses and official guidelines given by the universities as institutions, it is first necessary to contextualise the spaces considered here. To do so, it is crucial to reflect on the increasing internationalisation of the university, a well-known and certainly not new phenomenon: the literature addressing these issues is in fact rich and diverse, and the key words around which many studies have focused are ‘internationalisation’, ‘globalisation’, and ‘commodification’. Numerous studies have focused on students, mobility, and higher education, both in field of sociology of education but also adopting an international and comparative perspectives. Among these, some research are dedicated on the global growth of education (Altbach 2016) while others have made specific references to student experiences (Brooks and Waters 2011; Murphy-Lejeune 2001); other studies adopted a perspective oriented towards the understanding of the complex dynamics of marketisation of HE (Slaughter and Rhoades 2009), while other scholars have been interested in changes in educational systems from a geographic perspective, focusing on students’ mobility (Burns and Roffee 2020; Holloway and Jöns 2012).

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Internationalisation & globalisation

In the contemporary debate concerning the educational context, the international character of HE is implicitly understood as positive, often defined as a necessity (Stier 2004), and the word ‘internationalisation’ associated with the university is nowadays synonymous with quality, progress, and development (Cambridge and Thompson 2004). However, as stated by Forstorp and Mellström, the unspecified character of internationalization “functions as the promotion of an attitude of openness, a willingness to learn and cooperate and perhaps even an attitude of promiscuity or exploitation” (Forstorp and Mellström 2018, 212). As argued by the authors, given that the ‘international’ as a term is unspecified, the power of defining the meaning is in the hands of the ones which define it. Instead, Forstorp and Mellström prefer the term ‘eduscapes’, understood here as “the transnational flow of ideas and people in regard to research and higher education” (2018, 18; 2006). The theoretical reference that inspired the authors to use this specific terminology draws on Arjun Appadurai’s conceptualization of global flows, with the aim of adding another global dimension precisely oriented to the study of education (Appadurai 1996). The globalisation of the academic spaces instead, in the one hand is often understood as a myth, constituted on the basis of a prescriptive and descriptive rhetoric (Ferguson 1992); on the other, critical studies have emphasized the importance of understanding this trend in term of ‘emancipatory globalism’ of international higher education (Forstorp and Mellström 2018; Sidhu and Dall’Alba 2011). Such terminology is preferred here because it focuses on the emancipatory nature of education, but more importantly, it considers the potential limitations to which the students, are bound. In particular, boundaries referring to age, gender, class, race, and disability are emphasised here. As stated by Forstorp and Mellström, what assumes a particular relevance is the importance of conceptualizing differences in describing HE, in particular when it is organized around “contradictory patterns of mobility, aspirations, and transnationalism of a young globalist generation” and where the role of education “can simultaneously be emancipatory, situated, and embodied and also a constitutive part of global, neoliberal political technologies” (Forstorp and Mellström 2018, 295).

Sweden as a knowledge-based nation

One of the strands of research that has covered the issues mentioned here has specifically focused on theories, in the field of critical education research, that see Sweden as a knowledge-based nation. The knowledge-knowledge-based economy is here understood as an education system centred on the production of a certain type of knowledge, useful for technological advancement

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and the reproduction of wealth (Godin 2006), and where the access to it should therefore be considered in its form as instrumentalised, precisely because education is to all intents and purposes part of a global market and therefore follows its logic (Forstorp 2008).

Forstorp and Mellström in particular focus on the Swedish case, highlighting the previously mentioned changes in the diversity of HE in recent years. The authors, drawing on the narratives proposed in a report published in 2000 by the Swedish Government (SOU 2000:92), assume that in the second part of the twenty-first century the Swedish education system has undergone fundamental transformations from an HE point of view, as a result of an increase in cultural and ethnic diversity. The peculiarity of Sweden, as pointed out by Forstorp and Mellström, lies in the propensity for internationalisation and globalisation and precisely in its promotion as nation which provides an innovative, internationalised, global, attractive, and competitive academic space. What distinguishes in fact a knowledge-based economy from an economy based instead on the nation/knowledge binomial is precisely the reintroduction of the concept of nation when linked to HE in a global context, reinforcing the expectations on citizenship and desire to be part of an imagined community (Anderson 1993). Thus, HE offers itself as a viable alternative in the global educational marketplace to attract willing students who will collaborate in creating and strengthening the nation as an educational vanguard. Nevertheless, as argued by Forstorp, knowledge society should be “understood as a tool-kit for global survival written primarily from the perspective of the colonial West” (Forstorp 2008, 2). Although the studies presented here are part of a very different field of study than the ones in the following paragraphs, I intend to argue that perspectives that include an analysis of the founding economic structures that organise academic institutions, such as those highlighted here, should be considered in order to better contextualise the study proposed here.

2.2. Swedish gender equality or hegemonic white feminism?

With regard to previous research focusing on gender issues in the Swedish context, the strand of studies useful for the analysis presented here reflects critically on the link between coloniality, gender and other forms of oppression. In particular, postcolonial Nordic feminist studies is characterised by a substantial critique of studies on gender that have over the years marginalised other forms of oppressions, such as race and ethnicity. The postcolonial Nordic feminist scholars have instead revealed how in Nordic countries contemporary policies are still strongly influenced by colonial complicity, understood here as “processes in which (post)colonial imaginaries, practices and products are made to be part of what is understood as the ‘national’ and ‘traditional’ culture of the Nordic countries” (Keskinen, Tuori, Irni and

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Mulinari 2009), which still contribute to forming and influencing highly racialised and gendered power dynamics, even in Sweden (Pred 2000).

The perspectives adopted by postcolonial Nordic studies aim primarily to reflect on the contexts and spaces analysed by adopting an intersectional perspective, understood here as theorised by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Crenshaw 1989; 1991). Intersectionality is in this sense understood as a “short-hand term” to describe and to address multiple forms of oppression experienced by bodies and the ways in which individuals are invariably positioned through differences in gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national belonging, class and more (Davis 2014, 18). Through the intersectional study of the relationships between the forms of oppression mentioned above, a number of scholars have critically reconsidered links between gender and neoliberalism (Nygren, Martinsson and Mulinari 2018), hegemonic feminism and intersectionality (de los Reyes & Mulinari 2020), feminism and nationalism (Keskinen, Stoltz and Mulinari 2021), and racial formations in relation to the Nordic welfare state (Mulinari and Neergaard 2017), to mention a few.

Particularly interesting are the reflections made by this strand of studies with regard to the significance that gender equality has assumed in the Nordic countries. In this regard, different studies have shown how gender equality is closely related to the concept of whiteness, where both serve to reinforce national belonging that is understood “in terms of assumed uniform cultural traits that distinguish the ‘West’ from the ‘Rest’” (Keskinen, Tuori, Irni and Mulinari 2009). According to Tobias Hübinette and Catrin Lundström, “the state-sanctioned and institutionalized gender equality discourse carries with it a sense of national identity which is intimately intertwined with whiteness and racial hierarchies, and which excludes migrants as Others in relation to the very notion of gender equality” (Hübinette and Lundström 2011, 48). Lena Martinsson, Gabriele Griffin, and Katarina Giritli Nygren in this regard precisely investigate what they call “the emergence of a mythical mantra”, namely the performative construction of Sweden as the most gender equal country in the world (Martinsson, Griffin and Nygren, 2016). According to the authors, there is the need to specifically problematise this mythical construction, precisely because it is deeply and structurally rooted in the concept of nationhood. Two important circumstances follow from this: firstly, Swedish practices and pretentions of a gender equality that is unique in the world, it is in its structure (still) strongly anchored to a binary and heteronormative interpretation of gender; in this regard, Mia Liinason focused specifically on the relationship between gender and production of knowledge in the Swedish academic context, proposing an analysis of course readings widely disseminated in undergraduate courses in gender studies in Sweden (Liinason 2010). The author emphasises

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how institutionalisation of feminist knowledge in academia needs to be understood “both as an effect and a cause of a national project”, which has as a point of departure the Swedish/Western/heterosexual understanding of gender. Secondly, the close correlation between being (‘we’) Swedish and also intrinsically oriented towards gender equality, leaves little room for manoeuvre for racialised and marginalised subjectivities (considered, in relation to us, ‘other’), and this contributes to the production (and reproduction) of stereotypes (Alm et.al 2021). What is important to stress, as it is functional to the work presented here, is precisely the close connection that exists between the numerous forms of oppression (briefly mentioned here) and the type of hegemonic, white, exclusive feminism that proposes itself as universal (but is not) that characterises Sweden as a nation-state, and that for this reason excludes (and does not include, does not name) all the marginalised pluriversal subjectivities, that do not fall into the category, as they are considered non-Swedish. The particular circumstance of gender equality taken into consideration here, is therefore shaped and reproduced in a narrative context that is still strongly neo-colonial, and which is based on racialised processes, and is founded on heteronormativity and cisnormativity (Keskinen, Tuori, Irni and Mulinari 2009; Martinsson, Griffin and Nygren, 2016). Ultimately, it is in this context that the very idea of Swedish exceptionalism is reproduced (Habel 2012), where this contributes precisely to the construction of an imagined community of modernity, based on the “hegemonic idea of being a role model imperialistic” (Alm et.al 2021, 2).

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3. Theoretical framework

In this section I consider the theoretical references that guide the analysis in the work presented here, namely the possibilities provided by the decolonial option. However, the choice of this specific theoretical framework might seem problematic: those who adopt a decolonial perspective in fact often refuse to define it as a theory, because this would mean thinking about the production of knowledge only according to Western epistemological canons (Walsh and Mignolo 2018). And precisely because of the decolonial resistance to the division between theory and praxis, it is not easy to adjust the imposed structure of this work to decolonial perspectives. Nevertheless, I argue that the title itself provides an interesting geo-historical genealogy, useful to explain the theoretical framework within which it is possible to contextualise, reflect and analyse the instances presented here2_{. In the words of Catherine}

Walsh, “here, theory, as knowledge, is understood as incarnated and situated, something that the university too often forgets” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, 28), and this is an important point in the work here presented.

3.1. Geo-historical genealogies: I think therefore I am

The title of this work is inspired by the (re)contextualisation of the famous ‘cogito ergo sum’ phrase made by numerous authors who have engaged with the decoloniality of knowledge and the decoloniality of being (Mignolo 1995; Maldonado-Torres 2007). In 1637, Rene Descartes published Discours de la méthode: Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, and in the fourth part of the text, the French philosopher elaborates the concept of cogito ergo sum (Descartes 1637). The first philosophical principle, as defined by the author, can be summarised as follows: one can doubt the existence of everything, but not of (my) doubting existence; if all other things exist, but there is no capacity to think about them, there is no reason to believe in (our) existence. In the Western philosophical tradition, Descartes represents a pivotal moment: the rationality of the human being/subject is distinguished for the first time from the natural objectivity of the body. Unbeknownst to the father of modern scientific thought, ‘I think, therefore I am’ became a justification for systematically denying all other rationalities. Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’ is considered in fact as the origin of the concept of the coloniality of being. Using Nelson Maldonado-Torres’

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words, “behind the ‘I am’ it is possible to locate the philosophical justification for the idea that ‘others are not’ or do not have being” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 252). According to the authors considered in the following paragraphs, the active negation – if I think, you do not - will nourish in fact the Eurocentric philosophical thinking, and with it the institutions that embrace its principles.

In 1953, the Argentinian philosopher Rodolfo Kusch published his first work La seducción de la barbarie: análisis herético de un continente mestizo, where he reflects on the concept of mestizaje cultural as a characteristic of being American (Kusch 1953). According to the author, mestizo is an identity played out around two founding realities: one acquired, formal and fictitious, which is the product of the Conquest and Latin American independence, and another experienced, linked to emotional life and the geographical and physical space occupied3_{. The}

American identity, according to Kusch, is thus ontologically dual and constantly straddles reality and fiction: the mestizo is a conciliación de opuestos [reconciliation of opposites]: on the one hand, the European being – civilizado [civilised] - on the other hand, the American being – barbaro [barbarian]. The reference to Descartes in La seducción de la barbarie is metaphorical, almost lost in the rich reflections made by the Argentinian author. “No es la estufa de Descartes” [it is not Descartes’ stove], writes Kusch (1953, 128), mocking the French philosopher when he writes “[...] je demeurais tout le jour enfermé seul dans un poêle, où j’avais tout le loisir de m’entretenir de mes pensées” (Descartes 1637, 18) [I stayed all day sitting alone in a heated room, where I had the comfort of entertaining my thoughts]. The space in which the French philosopher finds himself when he writes the Discours de la méthode is also the privileged place from which he observes the world, discovers the mathematical interpretation of natural phenomena and, above all, determines himself as a rational human being. More than three hundred years later, the Cartesian plane is a founding principle of Western mathematics as well as Descartes’ ego, colonialism is often considered as an historical event (only) happened in the past, but a critical understanding of coloniality is taking the form of a decolonial turn.

From ‘cogito ergo sum’ to ‘cogito ergo conquiro’

In 1969, the Argentinian philosopher Enrique Dussel returns to Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. In his work Lecciones de introducción a la filosofia, de antropología filosofica, Dussel

3_{In this regard, Walter Mignolo reflects on Kush’s mestizo consciousness, arguing that the author’s understanding}

of the mestizaje has more to do with his immigrant consciousness and the awareness of not-belonging and “not being such” (Mignolo 2011, 183). Thus, the principal reference to mestizaje is Gloria Anzaldúa (1987).

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investigates the concept of filosofía de la liberación and on the ways in which man has seen and conceived himself in the world, reflecting on Heidegger and again on the duality introduced by Descartes (Dussel 1969). However, it is only in the Filosofía de la liberación that Dussel introduces the concept of ego conquiro for the first time (Dussel 1977). According to the author, modern philosophy - perhaps before Descartes, but certainly with him - is based on a fundamental premise: what recognise itself as the centre, the ego cogito, becomes oppressor of the periphery. And from this (not recognised as such) privileged position, interrogates the periphery, questioning the humanity and the ability to reason of the ones who have been conquered. “[…] ‘yo conquisto’ es el fundamento práctico del ‘yo pienso’” [‘I conquer’ is the practical foundation of ‘I think’], writes Dussel, establishing the foundations for the coloniality of being (1977, 15). According to Dussel, the philosophical principle expressed by Descartes is the conclusion of a process that began in 1492, with the colonisation (and not discovery) of the New World by the West, and for this reason it is with the French philosopher that Dussel identifies the historical constitution of modernity in 1637 (Dussel 1994, 11). Nevertheless, Dussel’s reflections concerning the ego conquiro do not stop here. In Filosofía de la liberación, he defines the ego cogito as a “[…] ego fálico, masculino (Descartes negó a su madre, a su amante y a su hija: pretendió el solipsismo total pero fue una pura comedia)” [phallic, masculine ego (Descartes denied his mother, his beloved and his daughter: he pretended total solipsism, but it was a pure comedy)] (Dussel 1977, 101). Dussel’s reflection is therefore as follows: the relationship of domination between the dominador and the oprimido is also such because the former is a man and the latter a woman: the dominio del centro sobre una periferia [dominance of the centre over a periphery] is not therefore only spatially and historical-geographically located but is also gendered4_{(Dussel 1944, 11).}

From ‘cogito ego conquiro’ to coloniality of power and coloniality of being

From Dussel onwards, the reflections concerning the ego conquiro are elaborated, re-proposed and further explored in different ways by different authors part of the decolonial turn - and all of them contribute to laying the foundations for decolonial perspectives on knowledge and being. For reasons of space, it is not possible to further explore the numerous references made by decolonial authors to Descartes’ ego. Nonetheless, for the purposes of the analysis, it is instead important to understand the role that Descartes has played in the modern philosophical

4_{The presence of women as dominated beings in Dussel’s reflections is not to be confused with the concept of}

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tradition and, consequently, in what is considered non-modern. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ writes Descartes, drawing a clear line between what is rational and what is not: unknowingly, he contributed to define what deserves to be considered science and what, by nature, is not. “Esa esclavitud de la ciencia europea impide que lo americano se manifieste en su autententicidad” [This enslavement to European knowledge prevents the Americans from manifesting themselves in their authenticity], wrote Kusch (1953, 135), inaugurating a current of thought that reflects critically on the concept introduced by Descartes, and which includes not only Dussel, mentioned above, but also authors such as Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Aníbal Quijano, who refer to the ‘cogito ergo sum’ when reflecting on concepts such as the coloniality of power and the coloniality of being.

The Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano in 1992 publishes Colonialidad y modernidad/ racionalidad, where for the first time is theorised what is referred to as the coloniality of power: once again, the starting point is the philosophical principle formulated by Descartes (Quijano 1992). According to Quijano, the European coloniality is based on the relationship between the subject and the object, introduced by the French philosopher (1992, 14). For the purposes of the analysis presented here, Quijano’s contribution represents an important turning point for decolonial perspectives. In his text Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America the author specifies how Descartes’ division between body and soul made possible the so-called scientific theorisation of the problem of race, according to which there is a difference between the subjects – rational and therefore possessing the reason - and the object of study - “certain races [which] are condemned as inferior for not being rational subjects” (Quijano 2000, 555). Quijano is therefore essential because he is the first to reflect on the link between the concept of race and what he calls the coloniality of power (Quijano 2007). In this regard, with this term I refer to Quijano’s understanding of the “relation between modern forms of exploitation (structured around the dominance of capital) and domination (articulated around the idea of race)” (Maldonado-Torres 2008, 217).

An additional understanding of Dussel’s ego conquiro is provided by the Puerto Rican philosopher Nelson Maldonado-Torres. According to the author, the Cartesian - and then Dusselian - ego, can be understood as a twofold entity: the ego conquistador and the ego conquistado (Maldonado-Torres 2007). With this in mind, the male ego is the one that conquers – ego conquistador and mind at the same time; the conquered object is instead the female body. Maldonado-Torres adds: “the links between war, conquest, and the exploitation of women’s bodies are hardly accidental” (Maldonado-Torres 2008, 219). Coloniality of power has been therefore intrinsically linked with “the transformation and naturalization of war and conquest

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in modern times” (2008, 220). The concept of modernity takes on a specific meaning here, and it is worth restating: according to Maldonado-Torres, “modernity as a discourse and as a practice would not be possible without coloniality, and coloniality continues to be an inevitable outcome of modern discourses” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 98)5_{. In conclusion, decoloniality of}

being and decoloniality of power are here defined as way of thinking, being and re-existing which criticise the discourses in support of modernity as an historical pivotal moment, which marks the break between a before - traditional - and an after - refined, modern, universal. Instead, modernity is considered by the decolonial turn as an excuse used by the West to justify the colonial imperial affirmation over the rest of the world, which does not end with colonialism but re-exist in every-day practices of coloniality.

3.2. Corpopolitics and coloniality of gender

According to what has been mentioned so far, the ‘cogito ergo sum’ introduced by Descartes contributed to nourishing the idea - Western, and therefore imposed as universal - that there is a division between mind and body, and this division became a founding element of modern Western philosophy. This first body/mind division becomes therefore justification for a whole series of other divisions, especially the contrast between modernity and tradition. In relation to the object of discussion presented here, an essential part are the reflections on concepts such as gender and multiculturalism proposed by María Lugones. The Argentinian author in her celebrated Colonialidad y Género first reflects on the concept of coloniality of gender (Lugones 2007; 2008). The author, starting from Quijano’s reflections on the coloniality of power (Quijano 2000), points out how the Peruvian sociologist actually understands the coloniality of power as solely in relation to a patriarchal and heterosexual system. Lugones comments on Quijano’s work by pointing out the erroneous assumption that the Peruvian sociologist makes, between gender and sex. According to the latter, Eurocentric domination relations also have repercussions in what he calls gender relations, namely those - again according to Quijano - between men and women. “[…] el eje de colonialidad no es suficiente para dar cuenta de todos los aspectos del género” [the logic of structural axes shows gender as constituted by and

5_{In this regard, the concept of modernity and its historical beginning have been object of a rich debate. For the}

purposes of the discussion proposed here, I would point out the fact that Western thought is currently still organised around the binomial modern/traditional. Deciding a priori what is modern, according to the canons imposed by modernity itself, and what it is not, is another way to reproduce coloniality. In the same way, deciding what is knowledge (again according to the modern canons of what is considered science) and what is not, excludes everything that has been thought, produced, and reproduced in spaces (physical or not) that were considered non-modern.

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constituting the coloniality of power] (Lugones 2008, 82) states Lugones, recognising how the imposition of a binary system regarding gender is as much a part of power colonialism as is the racial classification recognized by Quijano. Coloniality of gender therefore needs to be understood as strictly related with coloniality of being and coloniality of power, in relation to the emergency of the concept of race, the control of labour, the domination of subjectivity and the control of knowledge production, as well as the hierarchical distinction on the colonised subjects - considered as non-humans in order to justify the colonisation. To eradicate the current, everyday influences of the coloniality of gender, Lugones proposes a decolonial feminism as a possible alternative. Such re-existence is based on the acknowledgement of a pluriversal constitution and finds its place in relation to the coloniality of being and power, as an act consequent to “a shift from a logic of oppression to a logic of resistance” (Lugones 2014). These two founding principles of decolonial feminism are essential to the discussion presented here. The first aspect, namely the constituent and founding pluriversalism of decolonial feminism, it is considered in relation to Lugones’ own reflections on radical multiculturalism, as it is proposed as a possibility for “disrupt and transgress the white feminist universal as they pursue insurgencies, standpoints, and propositions of decoloniality and decolonization” (Walsh and Mignolo 2018, 39). The second aspect has to do with what, in the following paragraphs, is understood as the Colonial Matrix of Power (CMP), consisting of the axes of colonial power described above together with the coloniality of knowledge, discussed below.

Radical multiculturalism for a decolonial feminism

“El deseo por la monocultura es un deseo de tener un alma pobre” [the desire for monoculturality is a desire to have a poor soul] write Lugones and Price in 1995 (Lugones and Price 1995, 1). According to the authors, the concept of culture, when (colonially) perceived as universal, implicitly involves the erasure of cultures other than the dominant one. This process, under the name of monoculturalism, can be resisted just with the practice of multiculturalism, when the latter is not conceived just as ornamental. What distinguishes good practice in multiculturalism, according to the authors, are three (unusual) elements:

uncertainty/incertidumbre, complexity/complejidad and open-ended

understanding/comprensión abierta. Ten years later, Lugones proposes radical multiculturalism (Lugones 2005), as a “resistance [which] is in part constituted by different knowledges” (Lugones 2014, 77). Using the metaphor of the mask, the author gives an account of the historical evolution of White Feminism - Western, colonizer and oppressor - and of the

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unmasking conducted by Black Feminism with the introduction of the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1995). Lugones then reflects cautiously - “quiero moverme con cautela porque la lógica de la situación es compleja” [I want to move cautiously because the logic of the situation is complex] (Lugones 2005, 69) - on what she calls “desplazamiento resistente desde el eurocentrismo al multiculturalismo radical” [resistant shift from Eurocentrism to Radical Multiculturalism]. On this occasion, such multiculturalism is defined as radical precisely because it is different from the Eurocentric one, disguised as such but in reality, profoundly monocultural, and which contributes to “the erasure and colonization of memory of oppressed peoples by equating multicultural education with the study of cultures ignoring any relations of power between them and dismissing as biased and “political” any study of cultures of resistance” (Lugones 2014, 78). The coloniality of gender is therefore particularly important when understood in its pluri/versal composition, and in particular, decolonial feminism critiques so-called white Western feminism - which has imposed itself as universal and representative of all women except non-white women. What is essential to stress here is that according to the decolonial perspective, gender domination is as much a product of colonialism as knowledge or being. Indeed, the universal axes of domination mentioned above constitute what is called the Colonial Matrix of Power (CMP): the coloniality of being, gender and knowledge define its structure and support its scaffolding.

3.3. Geopolitics of knowledge

“How does where we stand look to you, from your location? How does that location give you perspective on or restrict your ability to evaluate either of our positions? How might you look from our own position?”: these are some of the questions that Lugones and Price ask themselves when reflecting on the concept of multiculturalism, but they are particularly interesting with regard to the treatment of the (de)coloniality of knowledge presented here (Lugones and Price 1995, 110). The importance that positionality has, expressed here by the authors in the form of questions, is intrinsically linked to the decoloniality of knowledge. In order to understand the latter, however, it is necessary to introduce the concept of hybris del punto cero [hubris of the zero point], formulated by Santiago Castro-Gómez (Castro-Gómez 2005). According to the Colombian philosopher, the hubris of the zero point is nothing other than the Western presumption of having a point of view - from which to see and dominate -

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that is considered as universal6_{. The zero-point hubris must be understood as a constituent, and}

not only in relation to the coloniality of knowledge, and on the words of Castro-Gómez, the claim of “hacerse un punto de vista sobre todos los demás puntos de vista, pero sin que de ese punto de vista pueda tenerse un punto de vista” [to make a point of view above all other points of view, but without being able to have a point of view from that point of view] (Castro-Gómez 2007, 83).

I am where I think / I am where I do

Following the previous reflections, the Argentinian philosopher Walter Mignolo further investigates the concept of the coloniality of knowledge. Relevant to this thesis are the author’s considerations on the decolonial politics of location (Mignolo 1995, 28): once again, the starting point is Kusch, and his definition of lugar filosófico, as a place “donde incide toda mi duda sobre cuál es realmente el eje de la universalidad que pasa por esta degradación existencial, o esta caída que supone estar calentándose junto a la estufa” [a place where all my doubts about what is really the axis of the universality that passes through this existential degradation, or this fall that involves warming oneself by the stove, come into play] (Kusch 1987). This universality, of which Kusch speaks, becomes central in Mignolo’s reflections on the space one occupies when producing knowledge. Essential to the decoloniality of knowledge is therefore the epistemological positioning from which reality is seen and interpreted, in an act of delinking, where the terms of the conversation need to be modified (Mignolo 1999; 2007). In this regard, Tlostanova and Mignolo clarify how “decolonial thinking is formulating the epistemic, political, and ethical basis for global decolonial options in the existing world order, which we all witness or take part in today” (Tlostanova and Mignolo 2012). ‘I am where I think’ Mignolo initially proposes when questioning the coloniality of being and its positioning in the world (Mignolo 1999); a reflection that a few years later becomes ‘I am where I do’, underlining how once again, there is a need to consider the epistemic and physical space occupied when reflecting on the context in which one finds oneself (Mignolo 2011, 77). The work proposed here, in conclusion, takes inspiration from such decolonial conceptualisations: ‘I learn where I am’, I argue, and to do so I intend to adopt a decolonial perspective despite the fact that the context in which I find myself is structurally based on colonial logics. But as argued by Walsh, decoloniality “implies the recognition and undoing of the hierarchical

6_{The concept derives from the Greek word hybris, the sin and human arrogance that leads the individual to rebel}

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structures of race, gender, heteropatriarchy and class that continue to control life, knowledge, spirituality, and thought, structures that are clearly intertwined with and constitutive of global capitalism and Western modernity” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, 17).

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4. Methodology and materials

The research presented here intends to find its place in a complex circumstance, where the production of knowledge in the Swedish academic environment is both the object of study but also formally dictates the rules for the writing of this work. For this reason, despite the continuous (implicit) questioning of the imposed structure, this work is nonetheless constructed on the basis of the compulsory directives, which include a specific section concerning the methodology adopted. Writing about research methods in the arts and humanities it is not an easy task (Griffin 2011), but in spite of this, in the following paragraphs the methodologies, the materials analysed, the strategies of analysis, my positioning as a researcher and the general limits of the research are clarified. The basic premise is that the work proposed here is intended as interdisciplinary, as described by Nina Lykke (2010), and hence as a mode of working “that transgresses borders between disciplinary canons and approaches in a theoretical and methodological bricolage that allows for new synergies and transversal cross-disciplinary dialogues to emerge between heterogeneous fields of theory and methodology” (2010, 27).

4.1. If I could suspend the method…but I cannot

At this point, thinking with Lykke, the question would be: “what are the appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches to this particular object of study?” (Lykke 2011, 145). If it were possible, I would appeal here to the ‘suspension of the method’ as described by Lewis Gordon (Gordon 2014). An academic system which not only favours a schematic and structured methodological approach, but which does not consider what is produced in other forms to be equally valid - is in my view a flawed system. Nevertheless, in order to make the claims presented here admissible - from a formal point of view - I had to choose a methodology that conformed to the content and objectives of the work proposed here. Using Gordon’s words, “becoming ‘right’ is simply a matter of applying, as a fetish, the method correctly” (2014, 86). However, as Tlostanova argues, it is also necessary to adopt an honest stance when it comes to methodology and decoloniality, and this basically means “stop promising radical delinking from Euromodern theorizing when in fact we are still very much ingrained in it methodologically and theoretically” (Tlostanova forthcoming).

For this reason, my interdisciplinary methodological proposal consists of the following elements, ranging from classical critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989; Van Dijk 1993), to a decolonial understanding of this methodology (Ahmed 2021; de Melo Resende 2018;

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Moya 2011): while the first reference is necessary here to understand the relations between signifiers, meanings, and power relations in the texts under consideration, the second prevents me from adopting a colonial posture in the analysis. With regard to the latter, I therefore adopted the method of critical discourse analysis, which according to Teun A. van Dijk “is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context” (van Dijk 2003). In this respect, referring to the reflections made by Norman Fairclough (Fairclough 1993), I understood the method chosen as aimed to “to systematically explore often opaque relationship of causality and determination between a) discursive practices, events and texts, and b) wider social and cultural structures, relations, and processes” (1993, 135). In order to do so, I considered the three-dimensional model proposed by Fairclough, setting discourse analysis on three levels: the linguistic components of the text, the discursive practices (the set of processes related to the production and consumption of the text), the social practices (the more general circumstances to which the discursive practices and the text belong) (Fairclough 1995a; 1995b).

In addition, I have considered the reflections of Marianne Jørgensen and Louise J. Phillips on critical discourse analysis, which seemed to be appropriate given the work here proposed, for different reasons (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002). Firstly, discourse analysis has to be understood as intertwined with theory and this, according to the authors, are basic philosophical premises in order to use it. This consideration should not be taken for granted: in fact, on other circumstances - that is to say, in Western academia - often theory and method are considered as separate, just as distinct are usually the practical stage from the theoretical one. I would instead argue, following Walsh’s understanding of decoloniality of knowledge, that “theory - as knowledge - derives from and is formed, molded, and shaped in and by actors, histories, territories, and place that, whether recognized or not, are marked by the colonial horizon of modernity, and by the racialized, classed, gendered, heteronormativized, and Western-Euro-U.S.-centric systems of power, knowledge, being, civilization, and life that such horizon has constructed and perpetuated” (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, 28). Secondly, I consider that Jørgensen and Phillips’ approach to methodology and theory - and in particular their reference to the multiperspectivalism of discourse analysis - can in some way break this rigid pattern imposed by methodological constrains. According to the authors, the concept of multiperspectivalism can be summarised as follows: “the view is that different perspectives provide different forms of knowledge about a phenomenon so that, together, they produce a broader understanding” (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 4). On the other hand, I have also

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acknowledged the easy tendency to adopt a colonial posture, in using what can be also called Eurocentric critical discourse analysis (Ahmed 2021). Because in the work presented here the term power has a very precise meaning and is here closely related to the colonial production of knowledge, I considered in my analysis the reflections on pluritopic decolonial hermeneutics, proposed by Tlostanova and Mignolo (Tlostanova and Mignolo 2009), with the aim to focus on a decolonial analysis which “enlarges the scope of critical discourse by weaving into the analysis coloniality of power” (Ahmed 2021, 140). This type of hermeneutic calls into question the very homogeneity of the understanding subject and is oriented towards the construction of a space of knowledge where it is stressed “the social, political, and ontological dimensions of any theorizing and any understanding” but where above all the Western locus on enunciation is questioned, which, as the authors state, is often disguised as universal (Tlostanova and Mignolo 2009, 18).

In conclusion, the approach to the methodology proposed here is intended to be interdisciplinary (Lykke 2010), structured around Fairclough’s framework for critical discourse analysis, considering multiperspectivalism (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002), and thus admitting that there is no single type of universal understanding, analysis, and knowledge. Rather, there are multiple loci of enunciation, and adopting a decolonial perspective in this regard allows one to question not only the dynamics of power but those specifically related to coloniality (of the power of being, of knowledge, of gender), but also interpret what is analysed from a decolonial pluritopic perspective, contesting the concept of otherness (Tlostanova and Mignolo (2009). Paraphrasing Viviane de Melo Resende, which critically reflects on studies devoted to critical discourse by adopting a decolonial perspective (de Melo Resende 2018), I would argue that the decolonising effort of this work is directed towards two main paths. Firstly, decolonising knowledge, not only in the sense of criticising theories and methods while understanding that there is no universal knowledge – and at the same time, as mentioned above, having to design the work here presented according to these structures; but above all to engage in the politics of citation in the struggle for epistemic decolonization, as pointed out by Paula M. L. Moya (Moya 2011, 90). Secondly, “making strategic use of this paradoxical space”, in order to make room not only for these perspectives, but also to make public reflections on institutional responses to diversity that safeguard all those who inhabit these common spaces from possible discrimination (de Melo Resende 2018).

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4.2. Selections of the materials: explaining where, how, when

In this section I summarise the selection criteria for the material analysed, which is composed by the official documents published by the five largest Swedish universities, respectively: Stockholm University, University of Gothenburg, Uppsala University, Lund University and Linköping University. In deciding which universities considered for the work here proposed, I conducted a research on the number of students fill-time enrolled in the most popular HEI in Sweden. According to the fact and figures published in their websites, the five largest Swedish HEI are respectively: Stockholm University (29.300 students in 2020), University of Gothenburg (29.142 students in 2020), Uppsala University (28.289 students in 2020), Lund University (26.800 students in 2019) and Linköping University (17.907 students in 2019). It is important to stress that the analysis presented here is not oriented towards a comparative study of the five universities considered: this means that the objectives of the work are in no way aimed at establishing a hierarchy among these universities, nor at assessing which of them have more or less respected and implemented equal opportunities. On the contrary, the work aims at investigating the institutional responses and the language used to address issues related to equal opportunities and discriminations within the academic space, adopting a decolonial perspective. The materials were therefore selected from the main official websites of the examined institutions; despite searches were carried out on the various internal portals of the universities, often divided into ‘staff portal’ and ‘student portal’, all the information collected are official documents published on the institution’s website and therefore are accessible to everyone. In addition, in order to trace any publications and reports published concerning the issues under consideration, I also consulted the DiVA database7_{of the universities mentioned}

above. In selecting the material, some key words were essential in deciding which documents could be included in the analysis. In particular, the research included these terms: equal opportunities, equity plan, equal rights, missions, goals, strategies, internationalisation, discrimination, action plans. In total I collected and selected thirty-two documents. The structure is thus articulated on two levels: division of the documents into three categories (based on the general content of these documents, and their specific role as such); division of the terms considered relevant into three thematic clusters, which transversally cross the three categories, and which are considered according to their relevance precisely on the basis of their dependence (and therefore presence) in certain documents rather than in others.

In relation to how materials were collected, all the ones selected were only considered in