Learning to re-exist. An afrodiasporic dialogue on how to transgress education towards freeing the soul

This article draws on Afrodiasporic thought and practices in the Andes to question educational structures that continue to dismiss Black lives, knowledge, and ways of knowing. The question guiding the proposed paper is, how can education support re-existence as a practice of freedom? We follow bell hooks’ proposition that education is sharing peoples’ “intellectual and spiritual growth” in a way that “respects and cares for the[ir] souls”. From that standpoint, we examine the possibilities of transgression in education based upon the work of Afro-Ecuadorian educators and community leaders. We articulate how those practices support the process of the Afro-Ecuadorian community to exist again, as proposed by Edizon León, and to set the soul free, in a Fanonian sense, from the constraints of universalized meanings of being human as Sylvia Wynter urges us.