ABSTRACT. This paper interrogates the paradox of academia as a transformative site while simultaneously perpetuating colonial centres of power. Informed by the work of decolonial thinkers from South America Abya Yala, such as Aníbal Quijano, with his modernity/coloniality concept, and supported by the work of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, Walter Mignolo, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, this paper examines how academia reproduces Eurocentrism. This work emphasises colonial legacies like human exceptionalism and cognitive imperialism, which grant knowledge hegemony in the academy and reinforce hierarchies that cannot tolerate epistemic pluralism. Additionally, this paper engages with theoretical frameworks, such as post-abyssal thinking, to claim that there’s no social justice without global cognitive justice and that epistemic liberation is necessarily connected with wider struggles for both decolonisation and emancipation. It also critiques academia’s complicity in reproducing colonial logics and offers strategies to disrupt colonial practices. This exploration advocates for a radical reconfiguration, for transitioning from the universalising paradigms to relational, embodied and decolonial approaches that challenge established academic norms and allow the generation of spaces for diverse worldviews.

Keywords: academia; modernity/coloniality; cognitive imperialism; decoloniality; cognitive justice

How to cite: Peña, C. (2025). Reconfiguring scholarship’s colonial legacy: Abya Yala perspectives on decolonial academic praxis. Knowledge Cultures, 13(1), 105-121. doi: 10.22381/kc13120255

Received February 27, 2025 • Received in revised form March 12, 2025
Accepted March 16, 2025 • Available online May 1, 2025