Moving away from damage-centered research and confronting sovereignty

In our meeting on October 27th Audrey presented the text “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities”, written by Eve Tuck. Here Tuck is calling for a moratorium in a type of researched that she identifies as “damage-centered” that defines communities by their experiences of pain and oppression. As Tuck says, “In damaged-centered research, one of the major activities is to document pain or loss in an individual, community and tribe.” (p.413) Even though they situate their analysis in the history of exploitation of those communities, Tuck observes that “the danger in damage-centered research it is a pathologizing approach in which the oppression singularly defines a community.” (p.413). One alternative Tuck presents is a research that is based on desire rather than damage. Desire-based research allow to account for the complexities and contradiction of communities. While it recognizes the pain and loss of those communities, it accounts for the hopes, visions and humanity of the lives of the people. In doing so, it sees them more than broken people. 

Kate opened the discussion with a question about the idea of sovereignty in the indigenous context. At the end of the text Tuck introduce the centrality of the idea of sovereignty within the desire-based framework. 

"We can practice our sovereignty within a framework of desire but cannot within a damage framework. By this I mean that a framework of desire recognizes our sovereignty as a core element of our being and meaning making, a damage framework excludes this recognition." (p.423)

We spent time trying to flesh out the idea of sovereignty, how do we think about it beyond Modern political narratives, and the difficulty of thinking about sovereignty without the logics of coloniality. One of the problems we identify with the idea of sovereignty is how it has been attached to ideas of the modern State, absolute authority, and ownership.  We discussed about the difficulty of understanding the concept in different contexts in relation to the US indigenous context: in the case of India, in the Palestine-Israel conflict, and in Irish history. 

There are some differences to consider in the Indigenous context. First, sovereignty is tied to the land, but not in the logic of ownership, but rather in a form of relational convivence with land, that could be understood with an idea of stewardship. Sovereignty manifests itself through the land, practices, bodies, stories and traditions. Second, we should think sovereignty in regard to the communities, as a defense of a way of living of those who belong to the community. In this sense, sovereignty can be understood as a way to assert and affirm community and culture. Here one should be aware the inadequacy of modern concepts of the individual, but as Tuck mentions, we should think more of the contradictions and multiplicity of ‘complex personhood’. Third, sovereignty and survival are strongly linked. Due to the history of settler colonialism, claims to sovereignty can be understood as a defense for the survival of the communities and tribes. There are more complexities about the relationship between members of a tribe, the belonging to a community, the recognition of tribes as nations and the relationship between different tribes in the context of US Native American history that are beyond the scope of this summary. 

Some of the challenges we faced with this discussion is recognizing the pervasiveness of modern European concepts to think the realities of different colonial communities and experiences. We talk of this difficulty as not only a linguistic and philosophical one, but also as a historical and geopolitical one. There are challenges when we attempt to apply ideas such as sovereignty in context with different colonial histories, political, economic, geographical, linguistic and cultural differences. Puja called to be careful with the problems of ‘incommensurability’, and the limitations/possibilities of reimagining a concept as sovereignty. In some contexts, such as possibly Kashmir, it might not be productive to apply a concept as sovereignty. Is important then to attend issues in their historic, cultural, economic, and geopolitical specificity. 

Lastly, we closed with questions about solidarity that takes seriously the need to move beyond damage-centered frameworks. How is it possible to build solidarity that is not based on injury? Beyond a common wound? We thought about the possibilities of coming together in our aspirations, desires, and longings. We opened the possibility of building solidarity with the desire to open new possibilities and doing a productive work of reimagination…. 

The Coloniality of Language and the possibilities of a Decolonial Communication

 

This week, Rosa presented the article "A coalitional approach to theorizing decolonial communication", written by Gabriela Veronelli. We have wondered previously on the thought- how would a decolonial communication look like (especially how to communicate such that we do not appropriate the epistemologies, cosmologies in the margins). More importantly, how can a dialogue be facilitated amongst the marginalized groups. In both cases, we have seemed to come to a sort of impasse. This article was selected with such an existing dialogue and prevalent narrative in our minds.

The article draws on a decolonial approach to communication. It involves in the understanding of possibilities of an inter-cultural dialogue. It raises important questions that seem long due (and yet which govern) the decolonial logistics in communication. The author does a great job of assuming possibilities in various frame-works of decolonial thinkers but also being equally critical of them, thus showing us (pushing us) for the need to a new model to re-think our ways of negotiations in relating to Self-Other and hence of communication. She clearly invokes a transcendence from merely an epistemic conceptual talk about an ‘intercultural approach’ to what would such a dialogue look like, in the real world with what she refers as ‘real people’. The author takes on the frameworks of Dussel and Mignolo for her analysis (but we in our discussions do not go in a very detailed analysis of that part). We understand and note that the author’s position is primarily of taking these decolonial scholars and establishing a fine critique of their epistemic positionality.  And by pointing out how they operate significantly at a macro level of epistemic projects, Gabriela Veronelli creates a special space for recognizing what she terms as the common people, the real people. It is in this move, that we go back and reflect on her deeper take on the notion of communication here.

On page 405, the author notes (and Rosa directed us there) to some pertinent question, essential to the navigation of this project.

Decolonial futures don’t have words yet; they don’t have a “how”: How would these networks of exchange of people thinking and living against coloniality be formed? What are the conditions of possibility of this pluriversal movement? Would it be necessary to establish conditions for these dialogues? Among whom would they be? Would they include the oppressor? What languages would be spoken? How would nonverbalized knowledge be recognized? The call for plurality and critical intercultural dialogue is there; the idea of pluriversality is there. It is a nice idea. The question is how to go about it. Is it necessary to decolonize dialogue itself.

 

It seems that the author suggests that coloniality restricts and limits our modalities of communication. Once we understand that, there is a need to re-imagine a new form of dialogue. Talking about coloniality of language and speech on page 408, the author throws light on the linguistic element and coloniality of power. She teases out, quite brilliantly, how the process of racialization affects the consolidation of language. Not only that, there is pernicious attempt of dehumanization, racialization, and linguist stripping through coloniality – all processes disfiguring the birth of not only existence but speech. Thus, the author outlines how a space of fracture and birth of a seemingly new subjectivity happens through the consequence of colonial difference. Teasing out the challenges with coloniality of language, the author points to the production of coloniality of mistrust. And the choice of mediation through the colonizer, a state utterly problematic (as elaborated on page 411). The author proposes a nondialogical understanding of communication that moves beyond the colonial and rationalistic understanding of the encounter of two logos (dia-logue), moving to a more emotional and affective perspective with Lugones and Glissant. We noted that Glissant is not only helpful here to illuminate a different understanding of ‘relations’ but that in his thinking we might find possibilities of averting a teleological method of communicating (which is helpful because it does not allow the colonial logic to replicate itslef further).

 

We opened the floor with some important question based on the readings above. We tried to gauge if Gabriella in her article has underestimated the project that Dussel or Mignolo had in mind. To elaborate further, we wondered if the realm of sensibilities of the real people that the article seems to indicate as the space where organic exchange ought to happen at the cost of the political? Clearly, Dussel and Mignolo have political considerations here when they talk about decoloniality. We also looked at a particular quote on page 417, to understand what the author makes of communication to be this organic, non-willful exchange that is happening in what she has seemed to indicate as a different space. “There is no need to think here of willfulness or resistant consciousness. The possibility that the "Echos-monde” opens to engaging complex communications is neither a linear nor agential sense of communication, but, rather, an uncertain one. Opacities need to be preserved and one is never sure of understanding them.”

 

We had different views on this quote. Some of us felt that this quote signifies to a crack that is often left out in the larger discourses guided by larger structures of power. Things that are not said because they cannot be said does not mean that they do not have agency. In fact, it is a limit of defamiliarization in communication and perhaps the inability our epistemic positionality to grasp. We discussed how the quote challenges a theory that arises bereft of community. Often, we take theory to the margins, whereas perhaps the author is throwing light to an important element by saying that communication is already, always happening. Outside academia and theory, in various forms, through art and literature, preservation by being ordinary. The need to let these communications unfold. We at the same time wondered about the lack of what we from our positionality might term as ‘the political project’ (what some of us think as Glissant’s position.) We also wondered if her and Glissant’s position is normative or descriptive.

 

We came to understand rather that it is a synthesis of both. The moment we idealize Glissant’s position, we fall ourselves into the trap of a colonial linear idea of time where we think of solutions as mostly normative. Linearity of time is not helpful to think when it comes to coloniality. Maybe Glissant is opting out of this framework by/through/via his writing. We also recognize that we might be in a trap. We operate under both forms of time- linear and cyclic as we think about coloniality. Hence, we struggle to find a ‘political solution’ to the project of decoloniality and at the same time understand that relationality is happening (organically) at some level for some individuals and even for us. Our worlds are, as precursors, as forerunners, because of our history- a parable of two times. A linear modernity with a need of politics and a cyclic time where we are continually operating through this struggle.

 

There is another question that arises in terms of understanding Glissant, and the notion of rootedness and indigeneity. We conclude that Glissant’s position on relationality is difficult to grapple with, but if understood in its entirety and complexity, will show us how it is an appeal to a rhizomatic thinking. He is never writing devoid of the relationality with the land and language. Everything is coming together in his process of understanding relationality- the historical process, the land, the language, modes of being, etc.

 

We understand that this relationality that is operating through various forms of time translates itself in communication and resistance in various ways. It manifests in different areas in different situations. And this different translation reiterates a point made previously too, that how not only communication but decolonization will appear to manifest differently in different parts of the world. Say for someone it might mean, political juridical decolonization, for some bodies, it might mean economic reforms. For some other bodies it might mean claiming back language, revitalization, re-establishing cultural signifiers. This also suggests how and what we understand as ‘political’ might mean different things on the map given where we are located and what we do.

 

However, we do understand that underlining all this is an idea of a ‘community’. But we also wonder about how decolonization would looks for those geo-political spaces where there is multiple position of subjects such that there is still no community formed. Here we discuss about the dangers of national narratives that run through the logic of blatant homogenization of communities. We feel that in case of varied multiplicity, if establishing a commune is dreary, what can still count as a way of unification is deciding what are we against. We do not know if such a thinking will appeal to all bodies, singularities, and subjectivities but we recognize that solidarity across myriad differences have happened. We think the history of solidarity would be a useful literature to turn to, to understand how communities based on understanding solidarity were actually and materially established. Next week, we plan to tease out the notion of community further.

(Notes taken by Puja)

Discussing Concepts of Cross-Cultural Communication

 

For October 13th, we read and discussed “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts” by Ofelia Schutte. 

Published in 1998, “Cultural Alterity” draws on postcolonial feminist theory and phenomenological ontology to propose methods for embracing rather than obscuring incommensurabilities in dialogues across gendered and racialized hierarchies, particularly those in the academic contexts in the USA. Schutte concludes that alterity is productive, and incommensurability needs to be maintained in cross-cultural dialogues. To do this, Schutte proposes postcolonial feminist frameworks as a mode of communication that tracks difference without dispelling or attempting to resolve that difference.

Implicit questions that Schutte raises are: What distinction is there between the dominant position and that of the subaltern? To what extent are these two terms overlapping, relational, or non-essential? In a condition of sameness, how does alterity emerge? Is the burden on marginalized others to unsettle normative, dominant identities?

Our discussion of the text began with a clarification of terms, namely, how Schutte was using the idea of “the split self.” We talked about the psychoanalytical, postcolonial, and feminist theory implications of this term, which led to a conversation about the stakes of Schutte’s argument. That is, what are the consequences of listening? Is it possible? Since the burden of the split in colonial contexts is imposed on colonized others by the dominant group/discourse, a conversation that decenters and splits the dominant position remains uneven. 

Such persisting colonial hierarchies turned the conversation toward the material stakes of tensions and contradictions between ethics and politics. Philosophies of ethics upon which Schutte draws (e.g., Habermas and Levinas) obscure some of the material and political implications of cross-cultural dialogue. Group members pointed out how ethics examines how the split is happening and establishing the Self and Other but does not give us the conditions as to why this split exists in ways that perhaps Foucault would offer. Oppression only ends with the change to social reality and not through communication. 

Building on this, questions of larger social realities and their material implications also came up for discussion, particularly in how European philosophy is often more ethical than political. We talked about how ethical questions implicitly invoke Euro-centric forms of humanism, materialism, and modernity to discuss colonial contexts. Group members noted how the ethical question thus posits an implicitly white, western subject as needing to become cognizant of how different colonial projects independently create the many outsides writers are imply in theoretical texts.

The conversation concluded with questioning Schutte’s understanding of solidarity and how we can critically position philosophical traditions in our own readings of various theoretical texts on postcolonial or decolonial methodologies. We finished by discussing what to read next week. We’ll continue discussing communication by reading Gabriela Veronelli’s “A Colonial Approach to Theorizing Decolonial Communication” for October 20th.

Continuing the Conversation on Solidarity- The Local and the Universal

 

 Last week, we continued our conversation on solidarity and focused on chapter four and chapter 6 in Mohanty’s text Feminism without Borders. 

 

Rosa presented on chapter four, Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience. She summarized and highlighted the main points by asking the following questions: 

How do we think about difference in feminist discourse? “Feminist analyses that attempt to cross national, racial, and ethnic boundaries produce and reproduce difference in particular ways. This codification of difference occurs through the naturalization of analytic categories that are supposed to have cross-cultural validity.” (pg. 107) 

Where do we situate commonality? Mohanty points out commonalty is often found along two threads- women as victims or women as truth tellers. She argues instead that discourse around difference must be self- conscious of its production of notions of difference and experience. (pg.  119) 

Do we need a form of commonality to have communication and coalition? Mohanty argues “for a politics of engagement rather than a politics of transcendence.” (pg. 122) 

Puja presented on chapter 6, Women Workers and the Politics of Solidarity. This chapter focuses on the exploitation of poor “third world” women and their agency as workers. Puja highlighted these main points:

Capitalism makes certain women consumers and other producers.  “The fact of being women with particular racial, ethnic, cultural, sexual, and geographical histories has everything to do with our definitions and identities as workers.” (pg. 142) 

The class struggle is a strategic move that pits people against each other. Instead of an intersectional approach, racism, sexism and classism are treated as separate issues that do not inform each other. 

The problem with qualifying work as “women’s work”. “Ideologies of domesticity, femininity, and race form the basis of the construction of the notion of ‘women’s work’ for Third World women in the contemporary economy… women’s work is defined as unskilled, tedious, and supplementary activity for mothers and homemakers. It is a specifically American ideology of individual success, as well as local histories of race and ethnicity that constitute this definition.”(pg. 158) 

 

In response to these presentations, the question was asked, “to what degree is solidarity a personal or impersonal phenomena?” This question occupied the remainder of our discussion time. 

(Notes by Audrey)