Unit of Oral Health, Dentistry and Society, School of Clinical Dentistry, University of Sheffield, UK.
Community Dent Health. 2022 May 27;39(2):143-148. doi: 10.1922/CDH_IADR22Lala06.
Students across disciplines in UK universities are demanding decolonisation of their education. These demands aim to resist the white European colonial endeavour that create racist inequalities. To address racial inequalities, the dental discipline has predominantly focused on diversity rather than decolonisation. By using two inter-related referents of decolonisation to dental caries and cosmetic dentistry, this article demonstrates the epistemic violence exerted through the objective hierarchised knowledge practices in dentistry. First, by starting from the position of racisms, empire and slavery, the enduring colonial patterns of power and hierarchies come into view. We see how knowledge production in dentistry has neglected the interconnected histories of colonialism, racial capitalism and patriarchy that continue to shape oral health inequalities and work towards promoting white supremacist beauty ideals. Moreover, the interconnected character of inequalities - race, class and gender - begin to emerge. Second, by proceeding from the place of colonialism, the limits of dental knowledge and the violence embedded in knowledge practices emerge. This highlights the need for new ways of knowing. To decolonise is to confront and weaken the dental discipline's entanglement with the enduring colonial patterns of power and hierarchies that are complicit in maintaining inequalities. Diversity without decolonisation will simply subsume marginalised voices into the existing hierarchised knowledge paradigm and continue to reproduce a hierarchised, unequal world. I argue that if dental schools want to address racial and intersectional inequalities, they need new transformative ways of learning and knowing to equip students to work towards social justice in the outside world.
英国大学各学科的学生都要求对他们的教育进行非殖民化。这些要求旨在抵制造成种族不平等的白人欧洲殖民努力。为了解决种族不平等问题，牙科专业主要侧重于多样性，而不是非殖民化。本文通过使用与龋齿和美容牙科相关的两个相互关联的非殖民化参照点，展示了牙科学中客观分层知识实践所施加的认识论暴力。首先，从种族主义、帝国和奴隶制的立场出发，持久的殖民权力模式和等级制度就会显现出来。我们看到了牙科学的知识生产如何忽视了殖民主义、种族资本主义和父权制的相互关联的历史，这些历史继续塑造着口腔健康的不平等，并致力于促进白人至上的美丽理想。此外，不平等的相互关联特征——种族、阶级和性别——开始显现出来。其次，从殖民主义的角度出发，牙科知识的局限性和知识实践中固有的暴力就会显现出来。这突出了需要新的认知方式。非殖民化就是要面对和削弱牙科学科与持久的殖民权力模式和等级制度的纠缠，这些模式和等级制度共谋维持不平等。没有非殖民化的多样性只会将边缘化的声音纳入现有的分层知识范式，并继续复制一个分层的、不平等的世界。我认为，如果牙科学校想要解决种族和交叉不平等问题，他们需要新的变革性学习和认知方式，以使学生能够为外部世界的社会正义而努力。
