On thinking non-relationally: race, dehumanisation and discourse in higher education

This paper examines a critical classroom incident at a Norwegian university to explore how dehumanisation, epistemic ignorance, racism, and resistance operate within the Westernised university. Using membership categorisation analysis (MCA) and concepts from dehumanization studies, we analyse how students in a media studies seminar invoke and respond to categories of the human during classroom discussion. We show that students’ investments and disinvestments in dehumanisation function as a microcosm of broader dynamics in the Westernised university, including epistemic (white) ignorance, academic ideals of detachment, and a lack of relationality. Furthermore, one student’s unsuccessful attempts to resist dehumanisation demonstrate how sentimentality and ignorance of colonial histories can be implicated in the failure to disrupt the status quo. The paper concludes by reflecting on pedagogical responses to the powerful (white) desire not-to-know and the ideal of academic detachment.