Hamza R’boul
This article introduces the framework of “Decolonial Epistemic Emotions” (DEE), which refers to affective responses that are colonially critical, delinking-motivated, power-literate, and resistant to epistemic hierarchies, arising from and/or promoting a commitment to delinking from colonial logics in the production, dissemination, circulation, and consumption of knowledge. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 Moroccan graduate instructors who use English-medium instruction (EMI) to teach multilingual students, this study examines how these educators emotionally grapple with the lingering colonisation of knowledge and how these emotions shape their pedagogical choices. Findings reveal that instructors: (1) interpret EMI linguistic-epistemic constraints as structural manifestations of epistemic coloniality, mobilising affective alienation into pedagogical resistance; (2) experience epistemic fury, hermeneutic defiance, and critical dissonance as DEE when Western textbooks subordinate local thought traditions. These emotions become pedagogical acts of delinking praxis, including counter-narratives, epistemic bridging, and consciousness-raising that reclaim cognitive sovereignty; and (3) characterise their emotional dynamics in decolonial pedagogy as dialectical affective ecosystems, capturing interlocking systems where vulnerability, defiant joy, and ethical fulfilment interact dialectically to sustain epistemic justice praxis within institutional constraints. By theorising affect as a political-epistemic force, this article establishes DEE as a crucial lens for epistemic justice in multilingual higher education.