Problematising the ‘hegemony’ of epistemic ‘universalism’: A case of the South African school history curriculum

Abstract

In contemporary times, history education has been the subject of rigorous debates about the type of knowledge that should shape and define the South African school history curriculum. At the heart of these debates lie questions of epistemology – the idea of what constitutes evidence and valid knowledge or truth when dealing with the past. Within these debates, the paper critiques epistemic universalism. While it cannot be disputed that these Western epistemologies of history are important, universalising their existence creates hegemony, reified by coloniality, which the paper intends to challenge. Subsequently, as an exemplar, the paper interrogates two curriculum documents, focusing on the apartheid school history syllabus of 1967 and the post-apartheid school history curriculum of 2011, as a way of problematising how hegemony leads to epistemicide in relation to history education.