Deleuze and the Unmaking of Colonial Narratives in Education

This book offers a philosophical examination of how colonial powers manipulate time and narrative to maintain control in educational contexts, using Deleuze’s philosophy and decolonial thought. It brings Deleuze into conversation with decolonial scholars including Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Mark Rifkin, to form a critique of standardized schooling structures based on age-based grades, developmental rubrics, and global “learning loss” metrics that naturalize Eurocentric progress narratives. Fallen Matthews proposes alternative frameworks rooted in Indigenous and relational temporalities, emphasizing cyclical, place-based conceptions of time as tools for epistemic justice. She integrates affect theory, comparative education scholarship, and speculative thought to equip educators, scholars, and activists with philosophical and practical tools for challenging colonial time regimes and cultivating temporal justice as a vital dimension of decolonizing pedagogy and policy.