Introduction to the Special Issue Decolonizing Anthropology: Race, Emotions and Pedagogies in the European Classroom

Abstract Here we open up the special issue with an introduction to the topic of decolonizing anthropology through the consideration of the emotionality of race, racism, and whiteness within the classroom and the discipline. Focusing on the European Classroom as a construct, we reflect on what the implications of decolonizing anthropology are for teaching the discipline, particularly in regard to the positionality of “European Others” (El Tayeb, 2011) as students and educators. While demands for structural changes in the discipline and the restructuring of canons and curriculums have been widely proposed, the role of affect and emotions in relation to colonialism, race, and whiteness in the decolonizing process have been addressed only marginally. We offer a contribution to the conversation through the focus on emotions, taking these as a form of knowledge and political action. Bringing together literatures on postcolonial studies, decolonial theory with critiques of anthropology, we suggest a space for thinking about the emotional dimensions of decolonization within the university and across disciplines and describe the contribution of each article included herein that show the power that comes from thinking critically about the emotionality of the classroom, and the role of emotions in reproducing colonial epistemics.


Introduction
This special issue 1 is partly the culmination of a number of panels and workshops that we attended and hosted from 2018 to 2020 including a workshop hosted by the European Association for Anthropology Race and Ethnicity Network meeting, and a European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) panel in 2020 and Association for Social Anthropology (ASA) panel in 2019. When we began this endeavor together, thinking through our own questions to the discipline and wanting to open up space for further dialogue, we were continuing issues raised by the Rhodes Must Fall Movement in Cape Town, South Africa and Oxford University, and countless decolonizing initiatives within and outside of anthropology and Europe. From being in anthropology departments in Aotearoa New Zealand, UK, Germany and the US, we have been following our intuition, based on our own experiences and listening to those of other people, and letting our feelings of discomfort within the discipline guide our thinking -we soon found that such conversations were taking place under the banner of 'decolonizing anthropology'.

Decolonizing Anthropology -where the conversation is at
Anthropology, unlike Sociology, has depended on colonial relations for much of its knowledge production and continues to be primarily rooted in doing research 'elsewhere' outside of the Global North. Or at least this is still the main trope associated with it, if not always the reality. Critiques of anthropology have occurred both within and outside of the discipline throughout the 19 th and 20 th century and have often driven the discipline in new directions whilst also creating tensions. However, perhaps the most poignant and persistent critique has been from Indigenous and Black women academics who have called the ethics of the methodology of anthropology into question, and the extractive and exploitative nature of turning fieldwork experiences into theory with little benefit to the interlocutors. The Black Feminist Anthropology collection edited by Uma McClaurin (2001), and Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), as well as Faye Harrison's (1997) Decolonizing Anthropology, are three texts that stand out in highlighting the experience of those who are often the subject of ethnographic research and the resentment towards academics who see marginalized and oppressed people's as worthy topics for research, largely to the benefit of the academic. Similarly, Patricia Hill Collins (2000) has pointed out the significance of the power dynamics of the relationships formed in fieldwork, and Gloria Wekker's work (2006Wekker's work ( , 2016 has challenged these through demonstrating honesty and emotional relationality that is often formed during ethnographic enquiry directly in her ethnographic text. Whilst many of the decolonial critiques of anthropology have tended to focus on research, few have focused on the process of teaching anthropology and the place emotions have in reproducing uneven research dynamics.

Emotionality and Decolonization
Outside of anthropology, decolonizing the academy has required thinking through the connections between epistemological demands and the legacies of colonialism in economic inequalities. The question of race also becomes fundamental to epistemic decolonizing. Decolonizing should mean more than just how diverse a curriculum is, or what kind of canon is reproduced in any syllabus but recognize the ways in which the classroom and disciplines are a part of how the (economic and social) elements of a colonial global system is maintained and ongoing. The pervasive whiteness of syllabi globally and across disciplines is one way in which colonization never ended. Furthermore, there is an emotional resonance to this, hence demands for decolonization matter at a political and emotional level. For some students their education produces feelings of being side-lined, left out or silenced (Bafo & Dattatreyan, 2021). This collection focuses on the process and practice of teaching anthropology; it also highlights the critical place of emotions to both the experience of whiteness within the academy and the transformative nature of pedagogy and research when the power and structure of emotions are brought into focus. This approach takes inspiration largely from the affective turn, the anthropology of emotions and the long legacy of Black feminist writing that has shown the power of emotions (e.g. 'the Uses of Anger' by Audre Lorde). Emotional experiences of interpersonal racism and epistemic racism form part of the experience that leads to demands for decolonizing; the types of emotions that occur from those who respond negatively to these demands for decolonizing or questioning of their position are also powerful and can be derailing or halting. There is a critical emotionality to the processes of trying to change the practices of a discipline, university or institutional structure -and the uneven load of who bares this work is also part of challenges of a decolonizing process (Doherty et al., 2021). Furthermore, there are many risks with using the concept and terminology of decolonization, and like any radical agenda, once the university officially takes this work on, there is a high chance of its radical potential being removed and watered down for its own interests (Doherty et al., 2020). There are also good reasons why the term should not be used outside of settler-colonial contexts where Indigenous sovereignty is the key element of a decolonial politics (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Nonetheless, as a discipline with such a distinctly colonial past and present, this special issue endeavors to consider what can be learnt through bringing together emotionality, race and pedagogy with the decolonial agenda.
USA'. This is probably why my first intensive engagement with the anthropology of race took place in the US during my PhD Studies.
The decolonization movements, initiatives and reform of museums in Germany are now taking up the topic of colonialism, racism and the questions of diversity. Since 2018, I have organized conferences and panels together with the help of my colleagues from the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology in Tübingen and Olivia.
I started to engage in decolonizing because it addressed the problems of race and colonialism not only on a reflexive and theoretical level but much more on an emotional and embodied level. Being socialized in a majoritarian white society and universities, decolonizing is the access point to rethink the production of knowledge in relation to colonialism, racism and whiteness. As an anthropologist of Indian German descent who is often racialized as Black due to my relatively dark skin color, I was trained to be objective and keep the emotions about race and racism out of my academic work. I learnt fast that I will be rewarded if I am not disturbing the status quo or addressing whiteness and racism. Since I embarked on this journey as a student, later as educator and post-doctoral academic, the people and literature engaging in decolonizing theory and practice helped me realize the centrality of race and emotions in our academic and anthropological work. Having my own experiences and seeing how a diverse classroom reacts to these topics, I realized the emotional barriers to address racism at the university are still immense. The work in this journal forms a contingent moment of transformation to tackle these issues and reshape our classrooms and the discipline in the hope that the next generations of BIPOC Anthropologists might have more empowered journeys ahead of them.
A few words from Olivia -My own sensitivity to the politics of knowledge production in anthropology was substantially influenced by living on Indigenous land and learning from local activists. During the process of studying for my PhD in anthropology in Aotearoa New Zealand (a settler-colony with ongoing structural violence towards Maori and a long history of Indigenous resistance) I participated in environmental and social justice activism whilst writing up my PhD research from a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Entering anthropology for the first time at PhD level, I knew little about the discipline but was conscious of the racial starkness between who becomes an anthropologist and who typically features as the subject of research. Hence it was no surprise when I felt the disagreement and negative assessment that many within anti-racist movements in Aotearoa felt towards anthropology. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith has said, 'research is a dirty word' amongst Indigenous people, but arguably 'anthropology' has an even worse connotation. Nonetheless, I have also felt the real strength of anthropology for bringing alternative epistemologies and worldviews into the academy and giving students an opportunity to see the world from perspectives that may not otherwise be available to them. However, for me, anthropology enabled me to realize what I had been denied as an Iranian and English person brought up in the UK within a dominant white culture. So, living in Papua New Guinea and Aotearoa New Zealand and learning an economic anthropology that focuses on how social relations are made and maintained, has, ironically, been part of my own journey of decolonizing and coming to understand and appreciate my Iranian heritage in a new light. For many reasons, I seek to remain in anthropology (and understand why some people don't), but do not stay without caution. Much of what I read and am inspired by comes from outside anthropology. bell hooks taught me that for teaching to be transformative, it must be done with heart, where every student is heard and seen. My own PhD research incorporated the anthropology of emotions, and together with Black feminist theory, I soon realized that the emotionality of subjects such as the anthropology of race and racism, or decolonizing anthropology (as I have taught at Goldsmiths University), are a critical element to how we come to learn and unlearn, as students and educators. But the politics of emotions, as Sara Ahmed's (2014) work has shown, can also mean racial power dynamics are reproduced.
Hence Antony and I have sought to bring the emotionality of the classroom into the spotlight through the contributors and articles we have selected here. In both of our teaching, we acknowledge that some topics will have a more personal effect than others, and that we should take care and be conscious of what we say and how we say it. Creating space for lived experience as a form of anthropological knowledge and recognizing the way we move through life in affective and emotional ways has been part of our developing pedagogical practice and theoretical interests. In this special issue, our writers and collective convey their/our own perspectives on the power of emotions, and the politics of who speaks and who is heard within anthropology and universities in general.
For both of us (Olivia and Antony), a decolonized anthropology is locally accountable and globally conscious to past and ongoing processes of colonization and the material and emotional implications of this in academia and beyond. It is rooted in the way we engage as academics and as people, with our full humanity, multiplicity and complexity, and relate to the world around us in a way that acknowledges and respects difference, without objectifying or fetishizing ourselves or others. In short, we see decolonizing as a process that takes deep awareness and care, and despite the issues that are presented in this special issue, we recognize the value of the anthropological method and ways of thinking for the challenges of the 21 st century. This special issue opens up questions of emotionality in the classroom between educators and students as a way to dwell on the significance of decolonial praxis -not just what we teach, or who teaches, but how we teach and make sense of the classroom as an intersectional and affective space, interwoven with the European project of empire. Whilst the issue of decolonization is far greater than classrooms or anthropology, we see that how we teach anthropology and assume who our audience is, is fundamental to much bigger issues of epistemic and material sovereignty for Indigenous and colonized people. Taking Europe as it is, a diverse, multi-ethnic and contested region that has a long colonial and imperial history, we are all implicated directly or indirectly in the plunder of resources and exploitation of Indigenous lands. Creating alternative spaces that rethink what it means to be together and exist outside of a colonial and capitalist economic setting, is the broader work of the reformist agenda of equality, diversity, inclusion work within universities.

The European Classroom/the Colonial Classroom
The construct of "the European Classroom" is taken as a space for ethnographic inquiry -the spaces of learning that occur in colonial and post-colonial modes, recognizing that these are spaces where racialization and coloniality get made and remade through affect and emotion but can also be a space for decolonial reckoning where colonial histories, racism and enduring forms of colonial violence are brought into student's awareness. These classrooms are not necessarily located within Europe but are following a mode of hierarchical learning that is associated with that of the Northern European idea of formal education. We, in this collection, think through the classroom as 'European Others' (El Tayeb, 2011), people who may be in Europe but are not simply of Europe. We think through the classroom from our different positionalities, as Indigenous people, and as hegemonically white, with all of the complexities and intersections that play out between these axes, to this special issue and to the classroom as a point of departure for rethinking and transforming the discipline. We think carefully about how we can rebuild the project of understanding 'what it means to be human' by considering how parts of the discipline's foundation have rendered some people human and the rest as 'Other 2 ' -the subject for generalizations, objectifications and epistemicides (Dotson, 2011). Engaging with these foundations and tracing the echoes of violence leads us to a "reinvention of humanness", or a reclaiming of radical humanity, inspired by Sylvia Winter and Paul Gilroy (Koshy, 2021). Reinventing the idea of humanity is a core potential that lies at the heart of anthropology, and is unearthed through critical self-inquiry and emotional sensitivity (McKittrick, 2015, Wynter, 2003, Jobson, 2020.
A critical position on anthropology and education within European imaginaries can be questioned from the position of 'European Others'. Fatima El Tayeb created this term to explain the way non-white and non-Christian bodies are continuously displaced within Europe socially and psychically. In her work on European Others and her queer of colour critique of feminism she explains: Racialized populations are thus positioned within a spatial and temporal paradox: they are permanently frozen in the moment of arrival -and the further away the actual moment/movement of migration, the stronger the paradox, i.e. the "queerness" of their presence in space and time. The current so-called third generation of post-war labour and post-colonial migrants is perceived to be more alien and out of place and time in Europe than their grandparents, the first generation of actual migrants, exactly because they are (made) impossible as an internal presence within (and by) the ideology of normalized colourblindness that places "race" and thus racialised populations necessarily outside of Europe. (El Tayeb, 2017, para 2) El Tayeb describes European Others as the positionality that Europeans of Colour inherit in the classroom, the university and society. It describes the othering, racialization and ethnicization that takes place on the European continent against the backdrop of localized forms of whiteness. 3 This is the norm that we are subjected to, by the sheer fact that "all parts of Europe are arguably invested in forms of 'whiteness'" (El Tayeb, 2017). "We are here because you were there" is a phrase from Ambalavaner Sivanandan that resonates for many of us and our studentsbut we are here because you invaded and never left is the sentiment for those who continue to fight for Indigenous land and epistemologies in settler-colonial contexts (Patel, 2021). Hence, we are extending this analysis of race in Europe to race in the European Classroom -a classroom which is not fixed within the boundaries of Europe but has been exported globally, particularly to settler-colonies on Great Turtle Island and Aotearoa -hence the European classroom as we take it, may also be thought of as the colonial classroom. In such settler contexts, European pedagogies and curricula must be unsettled and critical Indigenous pedagogical praxis which centers the emotional, sensory and embodied nature of learning is one way this is being achieved (see Judge et al., this issue).

Emotions, Race and Pedagogy
The significance of emotions to pedagogy and specifically anti-racist pedagogy have long been explored within education literature (Grosland, 2013;Macdonald, 2013;Wagner, 2005;Walker, 2018). Similarly theorizing of emotions within anthropology is also well-established, however, here we bring the lens of emotions to bear on anthropology as a discipline and a way of understanding its power dynamics. The key conceptual contributions of theorizing emotion as more than individual or natural, are outlined by education scholar Zembylas (2014). He focuses on three particular contributions of the affective turn for reframing theoretical work on emotions and pedagogy: 1. moving beyond the emotion/reason dichotomy; 2. highlighting the politics of emotion and affect and its implication; and 3. strengthening the intersections of the psychic and social. The affective turn, when applied to education, can be highly generative for making sense of anthropology and how it can inadvertently reproduce racist and colonial dynamics when the affective tenor of teaching is not acknowledged.
Emotions become a conscious and unconscious way in which established hierarchies are maintained in classrooms. The power dynamics of the teacher-student relationship are maintained through affect, as both parties seek to manage boundaries and the performance of disinterested relations. The relationship is often one expected to be professional, distant and detached. And yet so much learning requires healing, questioning and existential transformation in relationship with others (hooks, 1994), especially when it comes to shifting one's worldview, as anthropology seeks to do. Emotions, both as individually experienced and socialized sentiments, are critical to the process of transformation -but whose emotions get allowed or become dominant is often a matter of power. As Zembylas (2014) argues, the relationship between emotion and power is critical to the micro and macro levels of education.
Emotions are key to effective education, to ensuring people feel safe enough to learn, question and push their own perspectives. Yet without care, the anthropology classroom can be a space where non-white 'Others' are generalized, and a distant, detached God-like universal knower is created (Maldonado-Torres, 2007;Mignolo, 2002).
Emotions are part of the production of power (Ahmed, 2004;Solomon, 2003). The mood of a classroom or the change of tone used, depend on the structural dynamics of an academic social relation and can make or break the potential of positive or negative connections (Walker, 2018). Such matters beg questions; how can we reflect on the emotionality of the classroom? How does what we do, say, or not say turn off some students, and engage others? How do we handle difficult conversations that students want to have, but academic staff often avoid? These questions become even more pertinent when the classroom is online, creating an even flatter affective space and requiring conscious effort to create those important emotional connections that facilitate learning and unlearning.
The classroom can be a transformational and fundamental part of a bigger emancipatory project. In this era, it is an important space for dwelling in other worlds, but not only for theory's sake -and not to learn from 'an Indigenous Other' through the mouthpiece of a European 'knower'. In this special issue, we reflect on our own experiences in anthropology and our students, we reflect on the epistemic violence and discomfort that can occur in the classroom, along with the silences, and emphasize an alternative that is already present (Harney & Moten, 2013).
Inspired by Black feminist thought and Franz Fanon's linking of individual experience to structural phenomena, this special issue welcomes the everyday, psychological and ephemeral moments of classroom interactions. We place lived experience as critical to the teaching of a decolonial anthropology, centering the knowledge our students already bring to the classroom and showing how the conceptual tools we teach them can enhance this knowledge. But this must be done with caution and care. Singling out students due to their differences can be discriminatory and recognition of difference can become discrimination-as-exhibition. But opening up personal reflections and learnings from a student's intersectional experiences can show the complexities of how class, race, gender, sexuality and neurodiversity come together. Our affective and emotional responses are shaped by these positionalities, and many more, and their complex intersections, and we propose acknowledging that within pedagogy is key to a decolonial praxis in the classroom. Hence this is not a special issue that only considers the practices of teaching anthropology, but also the experience, emotions and effect of students and teachers of anthropology and other related disciplines, as marginalized and racialized people. As Ahmed argues, affective economies of emotions need to be understood in their particular context. In our case, we need to understand how emotions work in relational ways, how they align people and communities in the social and educational space of the classroom (Ahmed, 2004). We suggest that anthropology can gain from bringing together its own methods of analyzing and working with the power dynamics and effect of emotions and their meaning (Lutz & White, 1986), with a dialogue about decolonization, critically looking at the connection of race and emotions through history (Zembylas, 2014, p.7) Taking up emotionality, affect and the classroom together helps develop a decolonial practice for our pedagogies. But to think about decolonizing anthropology, we must consider issues of decolonization, colonialism and race and racism.

Decolonization Terminology and Anthropology
It is important to be aware of the multiple forerunners of today's decolonization movement both outside of and within the academy, especially those who have long theorized and critiqued the western episteme of social sciences (Moosavi, 2020). Here we outline some of the key genres of thought and practice that have contributed to a theoretical underpinning of decolonial thinking.
Decolonization is a term that can be troubling depending on how it is being used and where. First and foremost, in our opinion, it should always be contextualized within the contemporary and historical moments of dispossession driven by the requirement of capital to claim property and seek out resources to be transformed into profitable commodities (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Thus decolonization is not just about how we teach and what knowledge systems we privilege or claim to belong to. For anthropology -it is about accounting for the colonial pasts and continuities that condition all of our all lives and our research practices. Calls for decolonizing are steeped in the idea that colonization and its structures continue in the present. This is to varying degrees of visibility depending on where we are standing and how we are positioned.
A definition of colonialism is helpful before we continue to consider key tenets for decolonizing.
The following definition offers us a point of departure: 'Colonization', at its core, denotes a process of land grabbing, 'colony' a special kind of political and social association of persons, 'colonialism' a relationship of domination. The foundation of all three concepts is the idea of the expansion of a society beyond its ancestral habitat (Osterhammel and Jansen, 2017, p. 8-9).
Calls for decolonization have been present for a long time, as long as colonial forces have been at play. They come and go in waves always rooted in anticolonial practice and characterized through the push backs to colonial power. From the Igbo Women's Wars, to Lakshmi Bai -Queen of Jhansi in Northern India -to the thinkers of Albert Memmi, Aimé Césaire and the rebellions of enslaved people and freedom fighters such as Toussaint L'Ouverture. There have long been people fighting for the ability to live free of white supremacy, imported values and cultural impositions that imply some norms and codes are superior to others (Thiong'o, 1986).
Inspired by these anti-colonial practices and thinking, post-colonial scholarship created an epistemic project of decolonization, that emerged during and after the formal moment of political decolonization (Getachew, 2019). By turning the European gaze and analysis on its head, postcolonial theory reveals the projections, imaginations, and silences of Europe and 'the West'. Postcolonial approaches evolved out of an engagement with literature and language, attempting to break through Eurocentric narratives of English literary studies. It addressed the 19th and 20th century conditions of knowledge production from the perspective of South Asia and the Middle East. Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha are examples of this (Bhambra, 2014); sometimes referred to as the 'trinity of postcolonial studies' (Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2015, p. 18). Their works are a foundational and complementary steppingstone to what is addressed in decolonial approaches, particularly in highlighting Eurocentric epistemes and the silencing of non-European voices (especially when they challenge the notion of Europe as 'Enlightened'). Between postcolonial and decolonial theory, there are overlaps in the intention to address the politics of knowledge production.
As Gurminder Bhambra (2014) describes schematically, the well-known Colonialidad/Modernidad group from the Latin American context where the term 'decoloniality' is mostly associated with, is rooted in the works of Anibal Quijano and his concept of the 'Coloniality of Power'. Other thinkers associated with this form of decolonial theorizing include Walter Mignolo, Catherine Walsh, Ramon Grosfoguel and many more. In their understanding coloniality is the basis of the project of modernity and irreversibly connected with colonialism, racism and global capitalism.
Within these strands of critical decolonial thinking, there are critiques. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui reminds us how the academic jargon produced through Mignolo and others in these debates have led to building a "small empire within an empire, strategically appropriating the contributions of the subaltern studies school of India and the various Latin American variants of critical reflection on colonization and decolonization (Cusicanqui, 2012, p. 98). Often this happened without obligation to cooperate or dialogue with the people leading the decolonial struggles on the ground -and many of us in the Global North have to consider our own complicities in such appropriations.
Indigenous and Critical Race Studies scholars rightfully point out that for Indigenous people 'decolonization is not a metaphor'. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) argue, instead decolonization is about sovereignty and an imperative to get occupied land and cultural resources back under Indigenous guardianship. Land sovereignty is about Indigenous rights to being, cultural identity and survival. While we acknowledge and agree with Tuck and Yang's (2012) demand, we also see that there can be multiple uses of this concept which depends on particular locales. We see the potential that decolonizing as a concept and practice can have in non-settler colonial contexts when taken up as an epistemic project and see the classroom as a critical part of that work. But we understand that there are often complicities and hypocrisies that come with an engagement in decolonial theory and praxis; hence we see it as an ongoing process that requires deep reflection and care.
We have thus far established that the decolonial movement of thought and praxis has existed in many places and forms (and what we have presented is by no means representative), and each implores us to think about how colonization, i.e. the domination of one group over another and the command over their land and psychological and cultural resources, continues in the present and thus requires continuous engaged enquiry. Racism is one element of the ongoing legacy of colonization that requires such engaged enquiry and is fundamental to the work we are doing collectively in this special issue.
While we understand race as a scientifically falsified social construct that has been historically shaped through media to politics and every-day life (Hall, 2021), it still serves as a category that has civil, political and policy-oriented significance, precisely because of its contested history, ambivalence and effects. Foroutan explains it well: "Racism is a structure of dominance, in which the presumed biological or cultural superiority of one or more socially hegemonic groups is constructed to justify or induce the social inequality of other groups" (Foroutan, 2020, p. 13).
In her book, Plantation Memories, psychologist and artist, Grada Kilomba (2019) writes on everyday racism in Berlin. She explains racism as a continuity of colonization and connects the need for decolonization to this.
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, politically, the term describes the achievement of autonomy by those who have been colonized and therefore involves the realization of both independence and self-determination. The idea can be easily applied in the context of racism because everyday racism establishes a dynamic similar to colonialism itself: one is looked at, spoken to, assaulted, injured and finally imprisoned in white fantasies of what one should be like. To translate these five moments into the militaristic colonial; one is discovered, invaded, attacked, subjugated and occupied. (p. 146).
The racism of everyday life reveals a conquering dynamic similar to material processes of militaristic colonization and of epistemic appropriations from the micro to the macro level (Essed, 1990). This metaphorical dimension is most commonly sustained through different forms of microaggressions, as in the above-described manner this can happen in the form of an intentional micro assault (e. g using racial slur), or unintentional microinsults (e. g compliments on the local language skills of non-white person in a majoritarian white society) and microinvalidations (e. g telling an Afro German person 'they don't look German'). These different forms of microaggressions have considerable effects on the mental health and the aspirations, career development and self-esteem of people effected by them (Bonifacio et. al., 2018).
Thinking with Sara Ahmed's 'Phenomenology of Whiteness' illustrates how a connection between whiteness, racism and microaggression can be understood. In her understanding, whiteness is the structuring or orienting of power in a room or social setting, a force in which the movement of non-white-bodies is directed through their relation to whiteness (Ahmed, 2007). This shapes the experience of non-white bodies: Whiteness is only invisible for those who inhabit it, or those who get so used to its inhabitance that they learn not to see it, even when they are not it […] The effect of this 'around whiteness' is the institutionalization of a certain 'likeness', which makes non-white bodies feel uncomfortable, exposed, visible, different, when they take up this space. (p. 157).
Both of these examples point to the importance of an awareness of these problems in the classroom, and the transition of these effects through the canon and the structures of the discipline. This necessity is pitted against a benevolent self-understanding of anthropology that needs a critical reassessment.
One version of anthropology's story animates an idea that the discipline was the defender of Indigenous people, Black people and those being colonized. It sought to show that 'they' had rationality, had their own logic and that underneath all of that difference between 'them' and the European -there were indeed similarities. To some, anthropology was doing the work of rendering 'the Other' as human. Anthropology is thus founded on the notion that the non-European must be understood by the European colonizer. Over time its tools and methods have been adopted in non-European contexts, used still as a way for the center to make sense of, and better order, the peripheries -whether that be the nation-state researching its own indigenous peoples or nomadic tribes that are not so easy to control (Khosravi, 2014).
However, for many both in and outside of the discipline, this is not how it appears or feels. Instead, to many Indigenous scholars and to anthropologists such as Ifi Amadiume (1987) -it seemed anthropologists were mostly whites who came to 'observe' (or sneak around) and then write about Brown and Black people (Biolsi & Zimmerman, 1997;Harrison, 1997;Tengan, 2005;Trask, 1991). Whilst the discipline has mutated and created new missions for itself, especially since the reflexive turn, and now 'studies up', this does not negate the origins of its methodologies, or the tools that continue to be used by states and corporations to 'make sense of' or order those that reside in peripheries, yet to be 'modernized' (Khosravi, 2014). Furthermore, the discipline's internal make up does not represent the supposed radical epistemic shifts it has made (Brodkin et al., 2011).
Who teaches the discipline is not the only or main issue for decolonizing. The positionality of knowledges, of our students and of educators of anthropology are all important. How can we think with and inside the affective space of our classrooms as a part of transitioning to an anthropology that does not rest on relations of exploitation and extraction in our research? As Faye Harrison reminds us, in her ground-breaking volume Decolonizing Anthropology, that transformation is at the heart of decolonial practices of knowledge production and that the liberal and rational foundation of anthropology, which comes from the colonial undertones of the discipline, need to be abolished through "participatory ethics" (Harrison, 1997). This means such research encounters consist of caring, mutual and ongoing relationships that are open to vulnerabilities which are exposed and shared.
The classroom of anthropology in Europe is no longer one where people are trained to understand the non-European but is a mixture of people of different geographic locations and experiences, that come with a range of lived experiences and cultural knowledges. We as educators and students are positioned differently at complex intersections of power as the concept of intersectionality highlights, and this affects both the kinds of knowledge we seek to embrace and the ways in which we relate to our fieldwork and our classrooms. Our students' lived experiences mean ideas, histories and theories have different emotional resonance for them, acknowledging that we all come to anthropology from different places is part of embracing this reality.

Decolonial Practice in the University
In their chapter "diversity or decolonisation", Icaza and Vazquez (2018), state that calls for decolonizing the university take up debates which have also been important for Chicana, Black Feminist and postcolonial literature.
They name three of these debates as Positionality, relationality and transition -we see these as critical to our reflection on decolonizing anthropology as an epistemic project.

Positionality
Positionality is seen by them as important for questioning the assumed monocultural approach to knowledge practices and education. Namely the assumed universal, abstract and disembodied vantage point of a knowing subject. The dominant location of knowledge claims which are in fact Eurocentric become couched as universal validity claims (Icaza & Vasquez, 2018, p. 119). For them, positionality is not just about the author, the teacher or the student but is about revealing the geopolitical location of knowledge. Highlighting the intersectional conditions of knowledge production becomes part of how students are taught and thus see the way the canons we teach have been essential to reproducing axes of discrimination along lines of race, class and gender.
The recognition of difference as enriching for teaching and learning has to go hand in hand with the positionality of knowledge, that is, with a knowledge that has been humbled, a knowledge that recognizes its own limits and perceives difference as enriching and not as a curiosity (Icaza & Vasquez, 2018, p. 121) This positionality is never fixed but rather negotiated through solidarity, humility and respect. This means to be aware of the struggles that are shaping an intersectional classroom. The Poem by Audrey Lorde (1983) "There is no hierarchy of oppression" is exemplary for this understanding. In her poem she illustrates the importance of different belongings and the need for solidarity I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from the oppression of any other part of my identity. I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. (p. 9) While the aspect of solidarity is important, the way oppression has been grown historically and locally needs to be taken into consideration. History cannot be undone and the effect of oppression that come from a specific history need to be acknowledged in their effects and negotiated through our positionalities. This can help build relationalitycritical also to building solidarity. Icaza and Velasquez (2018) also highlight that the decolonization of the university requires a transformation of the relationships established in the classroom and across the university.

Relationality
The notion of relationality brings into focus the practices of knowledge that contribute to the fostering of diversity by enabling open and dynamic forms of interaction in which the diverse backgrounds are recognizes as valuable (p. 120) Relationality becomes critical to this because students are welcomed to bring their full selves to their educational experience, including their experiences and understandings of who they are in a broad geo-political history. The way our lives twist and interconnect with global processes and intersections is embraced in a relational approach where students from diverse backgrounds are recognized and feel included.

Transition
Finally, Icaza and Velasquez (2018) highlight the importance of transition -namely the way the university is implicated in the kinds of socio-historical conditions that we face today. They argue that recognizing the societal and ecological implications of what we teach means students can bridge the epistemic border between classroom and society, or classroom and the Earth. They argue that a pedagogy of transition never loses sight of how knowledge addresses and reproduces impacts for the Earth, as the environment that we are dependent on and in relationship with. Each of these three concepts is critical to decolonizing our pedagogies. We highlight the significance of emotions and affect to this process, especially for bringing an anti-racist orientation to the work of decolonizing the classroom.
Taking these considerations of positionality, relationality and transition means to acknowledge the differences that exist between those that feel the experiences of everyday racism and the white majority who do not. This represents a lack of empathy between racialized and non-racialized people. For a decolonized classroom, this means to interact with people in recognition of their respective identities to enable learning from each other. When students are confronted with the racism they learn about historically, institutionally and at the individual level, the classroom needs to be a place where teachers and students, marginalized and privileged, are attentive to these historically produced and lived structures and experiences of oppression (Roig, 2021, Pattathu, forthcoming, Ingold, 2018. The problem of race in the classroom is connected to language. For European Others to be heard, it is not necessary to give primacy to one group over the other, but attention should be given to emotional dimensions of student and teachers' identities. Since, for many who are marginalized, we have been socialized to be amenable for the dominant group (Hill Collins, 2000, Kilomba, 2019. Nevertheless, we must remain vigilant to the way discourses get co-opted, the way words can misrepresent intentions, awareness or hard work (Ahmed, 2013;Rosa & Bonilla, 2017). Decolonization has many critiques, and these are also necessary to dwell in. Decolonization cannot be achieved through surface level changes; it is not cosmetic. There must be deep consideration of how structures limit the extent to which decolonization within the academy can be achieved.
What it means is different depending on the context and thus decolonization must at all times be locally grounded whilst connected to global struggles and histories (Bhambra et al., 2018). In settler-colonial contexts such as Aotearoa New Zealand, decolonization has to be about Tino Rangatiratanga -sovereignty over knowledge, land, language (Smith, 2012). In Great Turtle Island, decolonization requires bringing knowledges from the land outside the university into the classroom to undo the 'cultural bomb': The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples' languages rather than their own. (Thiong'O, 1986, p. 3)

Our Special Issue
The articles here push questions of what it means to consider decolonization in relation to anthropology, but also to reflect on the personal and experiential intersections that arise within the academic classroom. Through experience, emotions and deep political reflection, the authors each take up a strand of the issues we raise here. The educators and students writing here take their classrooms as the ethnographic field and reflect on positionality and pedagogy considering the ongoing work of decolonizing the classroom, education and anthropology (O'Sullivan, 2019). Not all of us are employed within anthropology departments. We are however, collectively, thinking anthropologically about the process of teaching and learning, our own subjectivities within the classroom and the politics of who we are and what we learn. Thus, this special issue is not just a collection of works thinking about decolonizing the discipline, or what this may mean in pedagogical and educational terms, but is also about taking the process of learning and unlearning seriously in decolonial and anthropological terms.
Together the pieces examine concepts that are only now being fully taken up within anthropology and for a long time have been ignored or evaded. Whiteness is taken as a phenomenon, a set of social and political practices, a combination of emotional dispositions and a habitus that is found in liberal, educated, 'middle-class' contexts of educational settings. Thus, we debase the idea that to study whiteness in Europe is only to study the Far Right or neo-Nazis. Instead, we examine the deep structures that permeate societies, especially in educational institutions and offer methods of critique, understanding and radical alternative education to enable consciousness raising and critical antioppressive learning.
In Abraham's piece, what it means to conduct ethnography in Europe as a 'body out of place' in a context of hegemonic whiteness is analyzed specifically through fieldwork conducted in a school in Belgium. This takes up the question of how accessible being an 'objective' ethnographer really is, especially when conducting research in 'the global North' as someone who may be associated with 'elsewhere'. This provokes questions about privilege and whiteness that enable so much research to be conducted in post-colonial contexts and also challenges the notion of accessible education when schools themselves exhibit the characteristics of white innocence.
Similarly, through direct interactions, Camufingo reflects on who gets to be the 'knower' and how hierarchies of knowledge are reinstated in classrooms through the affective gestures that reinforce 'white knowledge'. Taking up such intimate interactions which can provoke deep political change, Camufingo shows, also through autoethnography, the kinds of political stakes that are at play in broader student led struggles for anti-racist action within universities. This piece demonstrates the similarities between dismissive and heightened emotions of a white educator to student peers when their position as 'knower' is challenged. These deep, rich ethnographic moments are exemplar of the way interactions reproduce broader institutional structures on a macroscale and work to exclude racialized students further both from their own learning journeys and from making their educational settings safe.
Judge, Fukuzawa and Ferrier take up the issue of Euro-Western educational systems being imported to settlercolonies and specifically in Canada. To counter the impacts of this, they share their experience of teaching community-engaged learning within higher education as guided by local Indigenous community members from the Anishinaabeg National and the Mississauga peoples. Moving away from an education system that can be exported to any time or place, this education is specifically located and based on relationships and community contribution. They demonstrate the value of bringing an Indigenous way of knowing and learning into the colonial Academy and analyze how different kinds of knowledge get valued and assessed within anthropology and post-secondary education in general.
Similarly acknowledging the importance of positionality, place and identity in education and moving towards pedagogical tools and methods for decolonizing classrooms within Europe, Diallo and Miskow Friborg share specific methods and approaches to teach anthropology in a way that is conscious to cis, heteronormative and white structures and encourages students to think about ethnography that is accountable and ethical. Acknowledging the structural conditions of the Academic Industrial Complex Diallo and Miskow-Friborg show the importance of the classroom and educational practices to thinking critically about the broader context of the university and what it represents for whom. Acknowledging the lack of accessibility and the forms of inequalities that are created through anthropology, they suggest training students to be aware of whiteness, class, race, gender and sexuality is one way of breaking down the walls of exclusive academia. They offer their zine as a mode of producing knowledge that is accessible beyond the university and participatory.
Hammana and Klinkert move from the politics of decolonizing anthropology to decolonizing the Discipline and academia in general and interrogate the place all disciplines have in reproducing coloniality, which has 'separated, divided, broken down and individuated us from each other and from study within the University' and a key element of the Academic Industrial Complex or what they refer to as 'the University Machine'. Hammana and Klinckert state, "Anthropological study is to us a doing, thinking and feeling that transcends the classroom, the field, or the books, and it is one that ought to be anticipated in the in-between spaces." Developing the modality of al masha, means to return anthropological study back to (its) common use and cultivate it through common use (Hilal & Petti 2019 in Hammana and Klinckert this issue). This is as a means of decolonization: 'as the counter-apparatus to restore to common use what the colonial order has separated and divided' (Hammana and Klinckert this issue).
Chaudhuri-Brill and Berg write from different starting points and positions within their academic journey as students of anthropology and educators. Both bring together questions of national identity, migration and matters of how anthropology gets taught. Chaudhuri-Bell uses Ingold's notion of 'commoning' to think about how narrative and personal experience as a method is a way of creating space within anthropology for diverse lives and experiences. Berg reflects on the assumption of the white, European student and a shared subjective position between student and educator when teaching methods of ethnographic enquiry. Reflecting on the way 'Africa' gets cast as the anthropologist reflects on what is required of them through ethnography, it becomes evident that to in fact be both of Europe and Africa is not a position that the anthropologist in training is imagined holding. This is a theme that relates to many of us who straddle 'Europe' and 'the East'/Global South/'Developing Countries'/'post-colonial' and find ourselves unable to fit comfortably within the hegemonic position that the ethnographer is purported to have when producing anthropological knowledge. Instead, our knowledge is inevitably positioned and complicated by hybridity.
This special issue opens up questions of emotionality and race in the classroom between educators and students as a way to dwell on the significance of decolonial praxis -not just what we teach, or who teaches, but how we teach with humanity and humility to make sense of the classroom as an intersectional and affective space (Nash 2019).
To close this special issue, we have produced a collaborative piece where we have written together on our thoughts on decolonization and the manifold issues that have come up with both critiquing anthropology and bringing dialogues on decolonizing to the discipline. These collective discussions are a continuation, exploration and reflection of the issues that are raised throughout this special issue. We close with a consideration of what it means to write out the individual and to focus on a radical reformulation of what teaching anthropology is about and who it is for through a method of collaborative writing and becoming the River and Fire Collective.
We believe the anthropology classroom can become a transformational space -a space where radical humanism is practiced and encouraged, where to embrace our similarities and differences is critical, where whiteness is put under the limelight as the 'Other' (Burton, 2015;Chung, 2012;Hargrove, 2009;Magbouleh, 2019) as much as non-Europeans, and knowledge is not devalued for its supposed limited 'objectivity' if produced by 'native anthropologists' (Camufingo, 2018;Goddard, 2000;Haraway, 1988;Narayan, 1993;TallBear, 2014). Anthropology truly becomes the discipline that explores humanity when all of humanity has the capacity and power to produce knowledge about and from one another equally. Thus our propositions are not a repeat of the reflexivity debate, or calls for positionality, or for a reckoning of anthropology's role as a 'handmaiden' to colonialism. Instead, we point to the political economy of knowledge production -who produces knowledge, in what way, about who, for whose sake? Questions Ralph Troiullout has provoked in his work on anthropology's 'savage slot'. We want to consider 'being human as praxis' (Alexander, 2005;Wynter, 2003). This eventually matters for how we think about 'fieldwork' and the colonial origins of research designs and methodology (Amit, 2000).
The classroom can be a space to create the Undercommons (Harney & Moten, 2013). It can be a space where systematic hierarchies and inequalities are challenged rather than reproduced (Brodkin et al., 2011). The classroom can be a space of radical transformation and unlearning as personal evolution and thinking about the ethics of building relations, that are not just for the purpose of knowledge production, but for the sake of becoming more conscious of the histories we are all implicated in (McClaurin, 2001). For anthropology specifically, we consider the ongoing obligations and responsibilities we have to the people we are in relation with through research, teaching, conferencing and applied work (Clarke, 2010). The following papers investigate how.