A growing body of scholarship identifies the ethical and political dilemmas of internationalization under the umbrella of critical internationalization studies. In this talk, I consider the possibilities and potential circularities involved in mobilizing critique toward the transformation of how internationalization is actually enacted in higher education contexts. Drawing on decolonial and Indigenous theories of enduring colonial patterns of habit and desire, I identify some of the intellectual and affective investments that foreclose possibilities for deepened engagements with the full extent of our individual and institutional complicity in harm, and the full complexity involved in making substantive change. I also propose some possibilities for reframing our critical engagements toward more open-ended, self-reflexive experimentation in ways that approach transformation as an ongoing process of learning and unlearning, rather than as a predetermined point of arrival.
