Epistemic and moral tensions in student activism: the potential of decolonial love in an Argentine university

This paper examines the epistemic and moral tensions arising from certain decolonial and Southern epistemologies that emphasize discourses of opposition. These discourses often presume fundamental and incommensurable differences between Western and non-Western epistemologies, framing the West as “morally evil” and the non-West as “morally good.” As an alternative, the paper explores the concept of decolonial love, proposing that its enactment can generate new pedagogical and political spaces, fostering relationalities that critique colonial models of exploitation, extraction, and oppositional cosmopolitics, but through a different epistemic and moral framework. To illustrate the potential of decolonial love, the paper outlines a language course curriculum that incorporates decolonial practices, encouraging students to critically engage with a contentious episode of student activism at an Argentine university. The analysis highlights the openings created by the concept of decolonial love in addressing pedagogically the epistemic and moral tensions present in student activism.