The Myth of Oxford and Black Counter-Narratives

The myth of Oxford, which echoes and replicates the ideology of an unchanging world of privileged white youth, is a common trope in many films and literary works. This vision is, however, overlaid and underlaid with counter-traditions that decenter Oxford and instead insert Oxford upside down into other epistemologies, geographies, and networks. Some attempts at the transformation of elite institutions such as Oxford inadvertently serve to continue the centering of these same institutions. Coetzee argues that, instead of focusing on the histories of ascendant Black/black excellence and achievement at Oxford University, a more powerful way to relativize and decenter the institution is to document and emphasize histories and accounts of Black marginalization, failure, and disconnection.