Decolonizing Epistemology Deconstructing the Cognitive Stabilization Scaffolding of Western Centrism

Abstract

Within global educational systems, ‘knowledge hegemony’ manifests not only as the dominant dissemination of Western content but more profoundly as the systematic occlusion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) through Western ‘Cognitive Stabilization Scaffolding’. Current decolonial curriculum reforms in Global South countries largely remain at the superficial level of content substitution, failing to engage with the deeper cognitive structures and epistemological foundations. This study employs Zhang Xusheng’s triadic cognitive framework of Soma-Emotion-Meaning from Knowing and Speaking , alongside Wang Dongyue’s principle of Progressive Weakening-Compensation articulated in General Theory of Material Evolution , to conduct an ontological critique of the epistemic violence inherent in Western-centric education. The research reveals that Western rationalist education, through the ‘Language Masking Effect’, marginalizes non-Western, embodied, and holistic knowledge systems as ‘myth’ or ‘superstition’, severing the generative roots of Indigenous knowledge at the somatic, emotional, and meaningful levels. Engaging in dialogue with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s ‘Epistemologies of the South’ and Miranda Fricker’s theory of ‘Epistemic
Injustice’ , this paper proposes a cognitive reconstruction pathway for decolonial education: dismantling hegemonic cognitive scaffolding to realize epistemic pluralism, restoring the ontological status of Indigenous languages, and integrating embodied and ecological knowledge revitalization into educational evaluation frameworks. The ultimate aim of decolonial education is to achieve a Progressive Weakening-Compensation balance within the global knowledge ecology, thereby mitigating the civilizational vulnerabilities engendered by a singular cognitive paradigm.