Here I would like to be guided in decolonial practice by Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh’s concept of ‘epistemic insurgency.’ (Epistemology being the study of knowledge systems - how we know what we know.) In their framing, epistemic insurgency is an intentional praxis of knowing, feeling, acting and/or being otherwise despite the dominance of Western knowledge constructs. For many of us, this is to swim upstream against the systems, institutions and norms to which we have been raised to conform. It is a dis-assimilation. As I see it, this stance does not center difference as exceptional or separate, but rather as a currency of multiplicity that can undermine supremacy.
To dis-assimilate and unlearn/relearn, Walsh writes:
"The challenge is not to look for theory first. It is also to move beyond a simple reading of and about, toward a thinking from and with, a thinking-doing that requires contemplation of one's own place of enunciation and relation (or not) with the so-called universality of Western thought." (21)
One way to contemplate our own place of enunciation is to write (and share) a positionality statement ahead of embarking on new work, research or collaboration. To ask oneself –
What shapes the way I look at things? Where are my blind spots? My biases?
What is raw for me in this? What makes me feel passionate about it?
How do I feel about this question/endeavor? And where are those feelings rooted in culture, family, upbringing, community, education, gender, spirituality, my body?
What can I share about myself at the get which will probably reveal itself anyway? What should you know about me? “Who is speaking thus?” 1
We start with ourselves not to stay there, but to collaborate with self-awareness and cultivate language we can use for transparency and connection. There is a real bravery in it (at least it feels that way to me). Naming and making space for aspects of ourselves we may not often or explicitly share in “professional” contexts can train new muscles in collaboration and expand our relationships.
Along with encouraging reflection on our positionality, the citation calls us to contemplate our “relation (or not) to the so-called universality of Western thought.” This contemplation is not only critical, but fundamentally generative and creative. In Walsh’s words:
“It is in the for, in the postures, processes, and practices that disrupt, transgress, intervene and in-surge in, and that mobilize, propose, provoke, activate and construct an otherwise, that decoloniality is signified and given substance, meaning, and form... (34)
Identifying Western thought as a constructed universality and recognizing the normative and colonial in it, is to “see” the invisible air we breathe. It is to discern the fabrication of concepts such as progress, linear time and “I think, therefore I am.” Concepts ingrained to become foundational values - taught and passed on to young people as though they are innate. For those of us categorized as other, queer or transgressive, it’s likely we perceived the imposition of this normativity and universality early on, even if we didn’t have the words or theory for it.
To think-do otherwise is a monumental undertaking in the face of dominant ways of knowing. But that dominance has produced a pervasiveness that also offers us endless possibilities for epistemic insurgency. We can be insurgent in every (inter)action: how we relate - to anyone; how we use time - all the time; and how we create - everything. It is both overwhelming and mundane. We may be drawn towards grand decolonial ambitions and projects. But there is great power in the accumulation of small insurgent actions.
To me, at its core, decolonial heritage work is cultural work that puts relationships first. In front of output, products, reports, exhibitions, performances, etc. This goes against the grain of capitalism, most research and cultural funding, and most institutional structures. Relationship precedes community, participation and inclusion. To expand reciprocity and mutual flourishing it helps to start from our place of enunciation - ourselves, our cells, our body.
The changeMakers project has reminded me to root my thinking-doing deeper inside than my usual analytical language-based sense-making. Not just to think about the body, but to think with and through the body… embodied heritage… my body. My body that is generative and feeling. My body that is always changing, always sensing, always relating, always expressing. My mixed-race body that was interrogated as a child and asked, “What are you?” My body that carries the lineages of my grandmothers and their grandmothers, surviving again through my being.
Validating our body as integral technology and data (as sensing archives) within our work might be a radical re-attunement for many of us more at ease with words, documents or objects. But even if we do not work with dance or somatic practices, we can center our bodies in heritage work in many ways. For instance, by explicitly naming and making space for the embodied cultural heritage, ancestral lineages and positionalities we all bring to our work. As well by prioritizing care and hospitality in every phase of work to cultivate accessibility, safety, well-being, connection and nourishment for diverse bodies.
These are not new proposals, and they are easier said than done, both on an individual internal level, as well as on a structural level. Trying to do inclusion, participation, democratization and decoloniality with/in institutional structures, I often experience how under-resourced and truly otherwise this labor is. It requires more time, emotional labor, care, catering, conflict, facilitation, inner work and interpersonal work than budget lines can contain. This insurgent thinking-doing demands our love and creativity.
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“Smelling is not looking at the world, but being in it. This embodiedness comes wrapped with ideas of shame, around our origins, our animality, our lack of control. Perhaps we repress smell not because it is weak, but because it reveals far too much—of where we come from, and what we are made of.” - Gabriella Gasparini on Lisette Ros
“Ibu Elly keeps encouraging me to work from a ‘less is more’ mindset. Less doing. More being. Not striving for perfection or constantly trying to ‘fill’ things up, but rather daring to trust in simplicity, silence, presence, and intention. That feels at odds with what I often experience in the Dutch professional field, where a lot is regularly demanded of you: bigger, faster, fuller, more elaborate.” – Cheroney Pelupessy (my translation from Dutch)