What to Do with Europe in a European Studies Classroom? Following Contradictions as a Decolonial Praxis

Decolonizing European studies requires engaging with the contradictions that structure Europe’s epistemic foundations. This article proposes contradictions—particularly those within citizenship—as an analytic tool that exposes the colonial logics sustaining the field. Citizenship embodies tensions between rights and exclusion, universality and hierarchy, and emancipation and control, revealing how Europe’s claims to progress remain entangled with domination histories.
Using the Erasmus Mundus course Dimensions of Citizenship as a case study, the article examines knowledge production, curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional embedding to show how coloniality of knowledge is reproduced and contested. It calls for inhabiting contradictions as a generative praxis to unsettle European studies.