A decolonizing historicization of our pedagogy as a possibility for rehumanizing management education and educators

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a personal reflection on the global rise of anti-Blackness capitalist neoliberalism since 2016 by relating its impact on higher education in the author’s experience positioned in the Global South. Design/methodology/approach This unstructured action research develops a rehumanizing dialogue between the Euro-British historic turn in management and organization studies and the decolonial response from Latin America accompanied by an equally rehumanizing dialogue between these scholarships with the field of Black Studies denied by both. Embraced with the liminal perspective of the new global poor this project embodies a response to the post-2016 offensive expansion of anti-blackness/indigeneity ultra-neoliberal capitalism in Brazil in connection with the arrival of post-Trump populist anti-democratic democracy supported by radical expansion of colonial/racial capital and co-optation of decolonial agendas. Findings Moved by fear and encouragement created and recreated by the dominant origin story of the “human-as-Man,” the author shares outcomes and processes of an action research project as rehumanizing responses to what Black Studies scholar Sylvia Wynter calls “unparalleled catastrophe for our species” across the planet. Originality/value This paper addresses how and why academics and non-academics of North and South might relive the unprecedented 1960s at this critical moment for the human species through rehumanizing dialogues between management history and education with Black Studies. The author proposes that by embracing the liminal perspective of the new global poor and retelling our stories through collective mobilization of infinite hope and dark fields of knowledge and practices, we might recover unfinished decolonizing possibilities toward rehumanizing management education and educators in conditions of impossibility.