On searching for gender-liberation in homelands lost and imagined.
For my upcoming book's final entry, I want to examine the claim that "the gender binary is colonial", which depends a lot on the scholarship of Maria Lugones and OyĆØrónkįŗ¹Ģ OyÄwùmĆ.
So let's take a closer look at their work, shall we?
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āThis is embedded and universalized in Kant. Black people, according to Kant, āhave by nature no feeling that rises above the ridiculousā, and so without ācapacity to act in accordance with concepts and principlesā, they are by nature not just unfree but beyond even the possibility of freedom.[59]Ā But as state of nature, Black people are positioned not simply as antithesis to the lawful subject whose freedom would be guaranteed under social order produced through lawfulness. Since for Kant anybody existing outside of a (European) nation-state embodies the state of nature, they represent a threat to order. As he writes, ā[somebody] in the state of nature deprives me of this security; even if he doesnāt do anything to me ā by the mere fact that he isnāt subject to any law and is therefore a constant threat to me.ā[60]Ā In other words Black and Indigenous people ā slaves and colonized ā were a perpetual threat.[61]Ā The threat is not limited to political sovereignty, but as disordering alterity that could open out thought and law ā destabilising both ā undoing property and so also undoing freedom. In part Kantās concern in conjoining freedom with mastery is due to what remains from Hobbes in that that the state of nature isĀ spectralĀ ā it is omnipresent in its possible return and āthreatened regression.ā[62]ā
James Trafford - The World as Police (2022) [Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, no. 38]
The legacy of colonialism pervades anatomical science, shaping the way bodies are categorized, classified, and understood. This chapter expl
Abstract
The legacy of colonialism pervades anatomical science, shaping the way bodies are categorized, classified, and understood. This chapter explores the intersections between coloniality, sex, gender, and anatomy, critically examining how anatomical knowledge has been historically constructed to reinforce binary sex and gender systems. By tracing the historical links between anatomy and colonial power, this chapter highlights the ways in which anatomical science has been used to justify racial and gender hierarchies, enforce normative frameworks, and marginalize non-Western epistemologies. Furthermore, it calls for the decolonization of anatomical education, offering strategies to challenge entrenched biases and develop more inclusive and critical pedagogical approaches. The chapter argues that true decolonization requires not only curriculum reform but also broader institutional and material changes that acknowledge and dismantle the colonial legacies of anatomical science.
These three survivors ā MandeĆ and her sisters ā married Uru Eu Wau Wau men; but they all three keep the Juma identity alive, speaking the language and performing rituals. Although Juma identity has traditionally been passed down through fathers, MandeĆās daughter had a traditional Juma wedding, and some of her and her sistersā children use the name Juma.
Now, MandeĆ works for FUNAI, monitoring the lands of uncontacted Indigenous people. Her unique knowledge gives her a keen insight into the territory and the traces that these peoples leave in the forest. She believes that the uncontacted people known as the people of Floresta Nacional de Balata-Tufari are also Juma, possibly other survivors of the 1964 massacre.
āI joined the monitoring work so that this wouldnāt happen again, so that people wouldnāt go in and massacre the uncontacted people. Itās to protect them, so they donāt end up like the Juma people. I like [this work], protecting nature and the people who are there, the uncontacted Indigenous people.ā
Crisis and collapse seem to be the currency of the present. 1st World societies, enveloped in the long shadow cast by prosperity, find themselves coming into open, naked conflict. Reality, or Eurocentricity¹? Reality says, āwe can't have infinite growth on a finite planet!ā Eurocentrism laughs, walking away with delight. Rather than understanding āthat which cannot be repaired is already broken,ā² Eurocentricity tells us that we can pull and pull and pull, that a rudderless faith in extraction will somehow lead to balance. What happens if the world is bent until it breaks? All of our communities are at stake. This is āthe clearest signal that there is something deeply wrong with the global system in its current formā³. We can see that somewhere along the line, someone fucked shit up. There's no other meaningful way to explain how we've gotten to where we're at. Eurocentricity is so prevalent that we even understand our technology on the scale of the ācomplex and specialā, rather than āhow a society copes with physical reality.āā“ Solarpunk's focus on appropriate technologyāµ is a welcome corrective to the myopia of modernityā¶ and capitalismā·. However, it is incomplete without an understanding of colonialityāø.
If there are facets of coloniality that we need to address, they are the processes of (1) creating rigid taxonomies and categories for classifying the worldā¹, and (2) creating hierarchies of power and value for the ways those things are classified. These two moves are embedded in the in-group/out-group exclusionary dynamics that coloniality needs to function, from the way that we privilege āhumansā over ānon-humansā, ācentersā over āmarginsā, and the āvisibleā over the āinvisibleā. This isn't just philosophical or for the sake of pontification. These presuppositions of knowledge, being, and meaning privilege Eurocentric assertions that see "other human beingsā ways of life [as] wrong and harming nature, [since] nature needs no human beings."¹ⰠIf we are to move out of ecological calamity, āThe Last Shall be Firstā must be our operating system. By centering the margins (in the ontological and epistemological sense), we can actually end suffering, rather than outsourcing it. This has to take shape in such a way that engenders room for a polyculture of meaning, diametrically opposed to the hegemonic "monoculture of meaning"¹¹, beyond the ability to label any human based on what they "lack" as an "Other"¹².
This move to truly embody decoloniality has to critique modernity, capitalism, and coloniality. This is important to understand as āmodernity organizes the world ontologically in terms of atomic, homogeneous, separable categories. Contemporary women of color and third-world women's critique of feminist universalism centers the claim that the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender exceeds the categories of modernity. If woman and black are terms for homogeneous, atomic, separable categories, then their intersection shows us the absence of black women rather than their presence. So, to see non-white women is to exceed "categorial" logic. [...] the modern, colonial, gender system [is] a lens through which to theorize further the oppressive logic of colonial modernity, its use of hierarchical dichotomies and categorial logic. [...] categorial, dichotomous, hierarchical logic [is] central to modern, colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, and sexuality.ā¹³ We see that even in ostensibly postcolonial societies, "indigenous people who had already suffered from decades of colonial conservation policies, little changed with decolonization."¹ⓠThis shows the depth at which we have to go to adequately respond to the social and ecological issues that are currently coming to a head.
This commitment isn't (principally) a moral or ethical one. One of the main reasons that we have to move towards a holistic decoloniality is because of the inability of coloniality to address the issues we're facing. "Indigenous leaders say [30x30, a worldwide conservation program] ignores generations of effective indigenous land management. [...] there was limited scientific attention paid to Indigenous stewardship."¹ⵠUnless we are willing to be radical, to grasp the roots of all the oppressive structures that we're facing, we will reproduce the things we are (ostensibly) trying to abolish in our (potentially unintentional) inability to critique coloniality onto-epistemically while proposing responses rooted in other ways of being. In the effort to try and correct the excesses of Eurocentricity, we see that Eurocentric modes of being like "nation-states [...] struggling to catch up with indigenous and other non-capitalist culturesā understanding of the interdependence of life."¹ⶠThis is not to exalt Indigenous, Black and 3rd/4th world onto-epistemes, to reify them beyond critique. It is to say that the Eurocentric onto-epistemic inability to see those modes as valid dampers the emancipatory potential extant in the world preventing the ability to reach the purported values of "progress" and "development". Eurocentric ideas have to play catch-up, and by their colonial and capitalist nature are unable to.
We have to problematize, to see as an issue, many of the foundational concepts might deploy as mired in Eurocentrism and coloniality. We can do this by (1) decolonizing what it means to be human by creating the space for Black, Indigenous and 3rd/4th worlders to self-determine and (2) "[take] non-humans seriously as persons[/beings] with agency [which] allows us to de-center humans, to notice how limited our field of sight becomes when fixated by the idea of the Anthropocene. Far from remaining a matter of theoretical discussion, non-humans [... ] influenc[e] social, political and legal realities."¹ⷠWe have to bridge these two worlds: acknowledging the ways that the ideas of animality were defined along the bodies of Black people, how that relates to conceptions of humanity, and the care that we should have in highlighting the agency of non-human beings (both in the actual sense, and those who get denied humanity). This has to be done on the terms of those beings, as best as we can manage. If we are able to acknowledge that there are issues in modernity with how we taxonomize humans & how that relates to non-humans, for the sake of the biosphere, and we center those marginal and invisible beings, we can get a lot done.
I really want to impress the fact that not taking the trifecta of Eurocentrism¹⸠seriously is resigning ourselves to doom. If we continue to build the cyberpunk future that we've been worried about for decades, the future of "urban decay, corporate power and globalization. The rise of zero tolerance policing, anxieties around health care and the psychological toll of the Cold āForever warā and the possibility of nuclear annihilation,"¹⹠we resign ourselves, even in our imaginaries, to further our immiseration. We can use the 30 x 30 framework for conservation as a great example, where 200 countries were willing to accept it²ā°. This conservation framework reinforces the dichotomy between human/non-human²¹, assuming that top-down, bureaucratic processes of "management" are the answer to the problems that those very ideas created. The ironic thing is, even though this move would be woefully inadequate in addressing the issue of biodiversity loss or climate change²², we very likely won't even get to see it achieve protection of "30% of the world's land and water by 2030."²³ There's no meaningful accountability structure within the Eurocentric hegemony to do this. There is no room for living freely and honestly under these conditions.
"To see the coloniality is to see the powerful reduction of human beings to animals, to inferiors by nature, in a [piece-meal] understanding of reality that dichotomizes the human from nature, the human from the non-human, and thus imposes an ontology and a cosmology that, in its power and constitution, disallows all humanity, all possibility of understanding, all possibility of human communication, to dehumanized beings."²ⓠThis is the double-edged sword of creating hierarchies and taxonomies around valid ways of being, knowing, and meaning. By operating along these lines, we end up in a situation where there is no meaningful way for anyone to truly reach the kinds of fulfillment that modernity is supposed to provide. Now, this is not to say that I'm personally going to cry very hard about colonizers dehumanizing themselves by dehumanizing me, but I think it's worthwhile to mention; we all benefit by tearing down Eurocentrism and building a new, multifaceted perspective that allows for mutualism between different ways of thinking about the world and our relations with/in it.
By creating these rigid categories of difference, there is an assumption of innateness that tends to become a part of it. If we are looking to dismantle coloniality, we have to situate ourselves in such a way that those seemingly subtle distinctions between differences in general²ⵠand the specific conception of colonial difference become visible. This allows us to see that "the epistemological fractures between the Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism is distinguished from the critique of Eurocentrism anchored in the colonial difference."²ⶠCritiques of Eurocentrism that don't apprehend the imbrication of coloniality, capital, and modernity are left unaware at the meaningful distinctions that can be made between critique left incomplete and critique that gives us a way to move forward and build new relationalities.
I want to point back towards the phrase "The Last Shall Be First", which comes from Fanon (and the Bible). I understand this as resonant with the adage of centering the marginalized. If we truly believe that harmony and unity in life are worthwhile to work towards, the practical move to make is to, in every moment, work towards empowering those removed from power. By foregrounding those most negatively impacted by Eurocentrism through an understanding of intersectionality in material and onto-epistemological senses while spotlighting the "'decolonizers of the imaginaryā, [which can be understood as] future generations, past generations, non-humans, and spiritual beings and concepts"²ā·, we can point ourselves towards more egalitarian and self-determining outcomes. We can compose and integrate efforts together, where cultural workers can do solarpunk art and organizers & community/affinity groups can build solarpunk sociality and architects can do solarpunk guerrilla urbanism and more, where collaboration becomes a space that starts to break down the borders between different ways of relating to the world. By problematizing the human "we", by understanding that while, ideally, abstractly we are including everyone, in practice, there are critical things missed that lead to the issues we purportedly want to face. We have to point towards a world where many fit.
As far as my specific commitments on the matter, I'm what I call an egoist. I've appropriated this term to mean that I find myself to be important (though not supremely so), to assert my onto-epistemology as valid, even though Eurocentric society was built at my (peopleās) expense²āø. I have hope, which I understand as the grounded counterpart to "faith" or "optimism", that things can change, that even if the world has to be broken down, that it can be, and a new, decolonial one can be built. In this space, I hope that every being is acknowledged on its own terms, to have the capacity for its "ego" to be fulfilled, roughly along the lines of the golden and platinum rules, depending on what makes sense given the situation²ā¹. Solarpunk is very egoistic/anarchistic in my conception. Through horizontal power structures, we can minimize immiseration and foreground approaches to life that move our social activity towards the biosphere.
We can start working towards this, right now. Like, on some "you can go do the work after this" kind of thing. While we don't necessarily have a linear path forward, we can listen to ourselves and our desires, and experiment with doing things to fulfill them in the present, seeing them as springboards for further movement into the kind of spaces that we want to go. On a basic level, we can think about the ways that we are restricted by our needs due to alienation from self-determination, and devise plans to get those things, from food autonomy, to housing security, to social and cultural spaces. With this, I want us to be rooted in place--no White Flight ass culty commune shit. Our work should ground in locality and communality. If every being deserves the kind of world that solarpunk futures suggest, it makes no sense to leave if we have capacity³Ⱐto stay. In a more egoist turn, I think places where we can practice what James Scott calls anarchist calisthenics³¹ are worthwhile endeavors; authority, as in authoritarian rule, is never legitimate. Whenever we can and have the desire to, we should rage against it. Hosting do it yourself (DIY) events are a good example of this. DIY events are usually music shows, but they can be parties or anything else, where you do it without "permission" from the state or authorities. They can happen "in a park, on a beach, deep in the forest, in a barn, under a bridge, in a parking lot, next to a pool, or at the top of a mountain. The event could be on wheels: in an RV, on the back of a truck, in a van. You could build a secret tree house. You could borrow a boat. You could find an abandoned or empty building and re-purpose it. If thereās no electricity and you need it for a PA, find a generator. If you donāt need electricity, use candles for lighting. If you would like to lessen the chance of police interference, acquire several buildings and move people from building to building during breaks. You could even take over a street."³²
If we're willing to commandeer space, the elusive element in much theorizing on change³³, we can start changing the paradigms. Rather than "fall[ing] back on [...] creat[ing] protected areas"³ⓠfor the sake of reaching "biodiversity goals" and "ecological harmony", we can focus on land back, we can pull from knowledges in appropriate technology, traditional ecological knowledge, and the best that western science has to offer for being good partners with other beings in our communities. To horizontalize relationships between humans, breaking down barriers of political and socioeconomic varieties, we can put the last first and act as accomplices, supporting their needs and fighting alongside them. Any critiques that we have of the system should, within our capacities, be externalized, the (dialectical and logical³āµ) contradictions laid bare in the material world. If there is a public building that isn't being used for the public, we can commandeer it and turn it into a commons³ā¶. Around these moves we can build or tie in networks of support and take seriously the militancy, strategy, and tactics required to defend that space. Or, we can be more fluid, moving from place to place, an occupation traveling band that swarms spaces, creates more solarpunk and communistic relations within, shares those tools and collaborates with folks more rooted in that space, and floats out as to remain flexible. Or, a ton of other possibilities, a ton of other ways to engage space. There are many ways to do it.
This is meant to be a conversation starter. I have a lot of love for solarpunk--you can see that from my writings. It is a really useful meta-frame for the narrative component of systems change. I also acknowledge the susceptibility that it has towards eco-modernism, crypto-scheming, and reactionary yearning to return to the "good old days", whether it's a time "before agriculture" or a time before industrialization". I hope that, through the works of 3rd and 4th worlders, and more material ties to prefigurative and insurgent practices vis a vis systems change, solarpunk can shake off the chains of Eurocentrism, towards a pluralistic decoloniality and anti/non-capitalism.
Notes
Eurocentricity/Eurocentrism is the cultural and philosophical constellation of worldviews that sees the ideas birthed from Europe and wedded to capitalism and coloniality as the only valid, worthwhile, and legible modes of knowledge, being/existence (especially as it relates to āhumanityā/humanism), and meaning. Things like linear progressions of time, a fetish for scientific thought, and atomistic conceptions of the individual permeate Eurocentric thought.
XXIIVV ā permacomputing
Beyond Extinction. Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable | by Nafeez Ahmed
Anthem of the Sun ā Real Life
Appropriate technology is essentially what it sounds like; it looks at what technology would be appropriate, meaning that it would minimize ecological harm, to achieve specific needs/goals.
The advent of nation-statism, colonial empires, and industrial capital make up modernity. It is the ānever-endingā historical period in which we find ourselves.
Capitalism is distinct, in all of its configurations, for the fact that it combines: (1)private, dictatorial authority over property, most notably of the means of production, (2) wage labor relations where those who donāt have productive private property need to work using someone elseās to survive, and (3) a focus on continual growth, which is seen as an unquestionable good.
Coloniality is the power structural relationships and ways in which society was chopped up and categorized, that, while originating during the eras of European Colonialism, still persist to this day.
Toward a Decolonial Feminism - Maria Lugones
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
Decolonizers of the imaginary
Wynter Sylvia 1492 A New World View
Toward a Decolonial Feminism
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
Decolonizers of the imaginary
Decolonizers of the imaginary
Capitalism, coloniality, modernity
SOLARPUNK: Life in the future - Beyond the rusted chrome
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
This is meant in an expansive sense, where colonized subjects and what is commonly referred to as nature is included
Eurocentric assumptions on what it means to "conserve" certain lands go against the very things that are done to preserve biodiversity. There is not a mechanism by which we can meaningfully protect lands from "on high", away from an intimate understanding rooted in place.
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
Toward a Decolonial Feminism
I don't find issue with the concept of "difference". I am not my phone, or my mom, or my favorite animal. At the same time, we have to be able to separate the idea of difference from the idea of colonial difference, and understand the ways that material and social processes shape the ways that difference in general is constructed. Ossified understandings of difference, like "I am a man and men do X" are antithetical to liberatory change.
Toward a Decolonial Feminism
Decolonizers of the imaginary. Not that there's overlap here between acknowledging 3rd & 4th world folks ways of being and knowing and a flattening of the "nature-culture" dichotomy that is generally espoused in 'colonized imaginaries'
This system tells me to assimilate or to stop existing. I choose neither, and go towards full spectrum resistance and abolition.
The golden rule is treat people how you want to be treated. The platinum rule is treat people how they want to be treated. I think there's an innumerable number of options in this range, depending on how well we can understand what other beings need. By not pedestalizing any one being over the other while understanding the deep history and present, we can move towards that. I want to make it abundantly clear that we cannot just "jump" towards that moment, as things like reparations and land back need to happen. It's a yes and situation. We should understand that every being deserves what it wants as long as it doesn't systematically/power structurally prevent someone from doing the same. And to this end, there are certain, non-privileged/marginalized/invisibled beings that will have needs that reflect a different reality visavis self-determination.
I am not saying to stay in dangerous, toxic, harmful situations. I'm saying that changing the places you're already in has more radical potential, if you're specifically looking for that, than getting a commune established out of arms reach from society.
Anarchist Calisthenics, by James C. Scott
A DIY Guide to Creating Spaces
Anecdotally, it seems easier to imagine vastly different economic, political, and social systems, but it is harder to imagine different technologies, and even harder to imagine different ways of interacting with spatial-temporal dynamics. Much of politics is actually about space and how it is occupied, and we should lean into anarchic, decolonial takes on "geography", "urban planning", and "architecture" among other fields so we can really take seriously how we are addressing all the things we need to.
How the worldās favorite conservation model was built on colonial violence
Contradiction (logical): when a subject, object, or phenomena is said to have features or properties that canāt exist at the same time and be factual. For example, All apples are fruits. If someone were to say that some apples are not fruits, that is a logical contradiction, because there is no way to substantiate that claim through information, reasoning, or data. Logic is all about āinternalā consistency, where the āinternalā refers to the relation between the claims being made and the things being compared. Within the system of interest, in this case the āsystemā of fruit classifications, of which an apple is an element, the claims and conclusions should be supported by the characteristics of that system. Contradiction (dialectical): In dialectics (or a dialectical process), contradictions can take the shape of logical contradictions, (All X are Y ā Some X are not Y | No X is Y ā Some X are Y) but they only need to take the shape of tensions between elements in a system more broadly. Itās all about the relationship between elements.
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Screw you Yin Nezha - an unedited rant (spoilers included)
You know who I hate? Fucking Yin Nezha.
The Poppy War series is one of the best fantasy series I've read to date and I'm growing into an even bigger fan of RF Kuang as I'm delving into her new work Babel.
But The Poppy War series keeps pulling me back - and Nezha, you who was left alive, you're the reason why.
After I finished the series, and the subsequent stages of grief that followed, I quickly looked up content that imagined a world where Rin and Nezha ended up together - somewhere my little heart could rejoice in the fruition of my ship and I could move on happily. But no.
Yin Nezha is a lil twat who is undeserving of love - and a testament to Kuang's brilliance. As I thought about what could have been different, my thoughts fell to Nezha, what he could have done differently. Because my boy's sense of duty made him repeatedly, cruelly and totally push Rin off the edge of sanity - the girl he claimed to love.
I think about his defeat - that even then, he didn't let Rin rest, he didn't concede, didn't give her a chance to create a country that might just, against all odds, succeed. I think about why - and the answer is clear: he never once saw Rin as his equal. Yes, he was forced to acknowledge her power, but who Rin was, her ideas, her character, her identity, were always, fundamentally, beneath Nezha. Allowing such a world even a chance was an idea to be scoffed at all the way to the end.
Nezha's love exists only within the colonial matrix of power - his duty supercedes all, and that is why he can never claim to love Rin.
What's even more ridiculous?
He is as pathetic as Rin says he is. His delusion causes him to be more outwardly emotional than she ever allowed herself to be. His emotion compels you to feel sorry for him, to ignore the power imbalance, because look at Rin and how powerful she is - and he is by all means the coward Rin says he is. He does not have what it takes to challenge the colonial matrix of power, and she does. While we all know that Rin is a crazy ass mf, we must acknowledge that she is never allowed to win - and that is the conclusion of the book.
Towards the end, I'd grown tired of Rin and her insanity and it was easy to place the blame on her and leave it at that. But you, Yin Nezha, are the true villain [aside from obv the Hesperians] - and congratulations, you won.
A new study on Stony coral by a group of scientists from New York, California, Israel, England, and Germany is very concerning for all life on this planet. According to the study published in Scientific Reports, Stony coral is exhibiting similar behavior traits as during the last mass extinction some...