While interdisciplinary academic spaces have slowly but gradually spread through the Western academy, their status is far from clear. They are often located within existing structures that limit their scope. This is particularly true of spaces that not only engage in interdisciplinary work, but that also seek to break with forms of epistemic racism that are part of the humanities and the sciences. These areas are typically known as "ethnic studies," including the studies of indigenous peoples, as well as of racialized communities everywhere and their diasporas. In this essay, I seek to identify the epistemology proper to "ethnic studies" which I identify as a form of decolonial transdisciplinarity. This helps explains the difficult fit between "ethnic studies" areas and the Western liberal arts and sciences, as well as their potential for the decolonization of knowledge and society.
decoloniality; ethnic studies; epistemic racism; Frantz Fanon; decolonial attitude