Captive Minds and Post-colonial Subjects: Textual representations of the Global south and the Muslim ‘Other’ in IGCSE’s Modern World History

Abstract

This article explores the discursive base of the IGCSE O-level’s world history curriculum taught across the world, by combining the textual examination of the curriculum texts with patterns of historic and contemporary systematic exclusions of alternative truths. The article employs Jennifer Milliken’s methodological insights on discourse analysis to explain how discourse operates as a background knowledge for the creation of common sense in students regarding world history in general and of international relations in particular. The article’s central aim is to expand on the nature and operationalization of knowledge production processes embedded within the global North-South divide. The article’s focus lies particularly on the curricular representation of Muslims, how they are characterized and signified in link to ‘terrorism’ and ‘west hating’ and how that depiction is linked further to terrorism which leads to a contorted/veiled interpretation of ‘Muslim’ identity in academic corridors. To this end, a discourse analysis of the curriculum devised for the subject of World History for international students of the Cambridge education system permits an effective evaluation of how representations operate within highly popular texts of information and the dominant discourse is uncritically assimilated and circulated worldwide.