Transversing Our borders: Decolonizing Communication Theory

Abstract

This dissertation explores the limitations of western communication models through analyzing the western colonial philosophical assumptions which underlie theories of communication. The themes of knowledge, reality, identity, and time and space will be analyzed through the postcolonial lenses of anthropologist Malidoma Somé and Latina feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa in an effort to understand these themes from the lens of the non-hegemonic “other”. Through the epistemological and ontological restructuring of the western tropes of knowledge, reality, identity, time and space this dissertation argues for an alternative model of communication “transversal communication” which positions the process of communication outside the binary assumptions of western philosophy in order to legitimize non-western or “othered” epistemologies and ontologies.