University as a Knowscape for Epistemic Emancipation: Possibilities and Constraints

ABSTRACT Epistemic emancipation refers to the erosion of any interference that obstructs subjects' ability to produce, gain and negotiate knowledge. This article argues that epistemic emancipation does not fundamentally and solely proceed from the spatial and temporal presence of alternative epistemologies as an end in itself, nor does it presuppose a complete delinking from the dominant epistemes to reaffirm the originality and non‐derivativeness of Southern ways of knowing. This article draws on email interviews with 16 Moroccan university professors, as key agents in unsettling or reproducing epistemic hierarchies, to explore the mobilisations of decoloniality within Moroccan higher education. The findings revealed that (a) Moroccan professors framed epistemic emancipation to be fundamentally about reclaiming intellectual sovereignty from colonial knowledge hierarchies, including paradigms of knowledge production and validation; (b) they mobilised curricular interventions which recenter local epistemes to enact epistemic emancipation, but they were required to navigate institutional constraints; and (c) linguistic hierarchies, colonial institutional policies and epistemological gatekeeping were the main constraints complicating professors' epistemic emancipation struggles.