Dear diary: reimagining academic knowledge production and publishing from an intersectional decolonial lens

Abstract

This paper interrogates the colonial foundations and enduring inequities embedded in academic publishing and peer review. Written collaboratively by three community psychologists committed to decolonial praxis, it weaves together narrative, critique, and lived experience to expose how scholarly systems often function as mechanisms of epistemic control rather than dialogue. Dominant models of peer review—framed as neutral and objective—frequently demand conformity to Euro-Western norms of knowledge, structure, and language, marginalizing work rooted in relationality, politics, and community accountability. Drawing from personal composite experiences through archetypal “diary” entries, the authors trace how coloniality operates through seemingly routine academic processes, including reviewer feedback, grant evaluations, and publication norms. Rather than follow conventional academic form, the paper itself enacts refusal of linear argument, abstraction, and the performance of objectivity. It embraces recursive structure, layered reflection, and voice to model an alternative mode of scholarly engagement. This is not a traditional empirical study; it is an archive of affective labor, epistemic violence, and resistance within academic ecosystems. We critique the corporatization of knowledge and the structural exclusion of scholars from the Global South and other marginalized communities. We conclude with decolonial recommendations aimed at transforming peer review, research training, institutional power, and scholarly accountability. This paper is not an appeal for inclusion in a flawed system, but a call to reimagine scholarly practice altogether. It offers an embodied, grounded vision of knowledge-making that values justice, complexity, and care—inviting readers to slow down, listen deeply, and join in building something better.