DETERRITORIALIZING EDUCATION: EXTENSION AS A DECOLONIAL METHODOLOGY

Abstract

This article proposes a cartography of educational experiences that emerge from the encounter between active methodologies, decolonial epistemologies, and extension practices developed in a Brazilian public university. Starting from the understanding that education is not neutral, but traversed by disputes, affects, and hegemonic rationalities, it analyzes formative processes that displace the traditional logic of teaching and affirm university extension as modes of deterritorialization of knowledge. Inspired by authors such as Freire, Deleuze and Guattari, Spinoza, and Krenak, the study understands learning as experience, creation, and expansion of the power to act. The empirical material consists of narratives, field diaries, and extension experiences in projects developed at a Brazilian public university. The cartography reveals that, by bringing university and territory closer together, extension breaks down hierarchies, creates horizontal spaces of co-authorship, and recognizes community and popular knowledge as central to the production of knowledge. The results show that active methodologies and decolonial practices not only amplify the potential of individuals, but also produce new ways of existing in education, affirming joy, encounter, and creation as the foundations of an emancipatory education.