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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

Photo of a wall at Vidyodaya School, Gudalur

RHEA KUTHOORE

October 18, 2022 · 5 min read

O ancestral spirits!
How now do we escape,
From the conspiracies of time,
Concocted on the flames
That from the sweltering earth rise?
Where all is slowly being roasted alive,
The air, the forests, and the soil,
And man – in body and in mind?

- Lament in Songs (Geeton Ke Bilaap) through Jacinta Kerketta

While working with young people over the last few years, I have often pondered what and how I/we come to know. In an effort to ‘decolonise’ aspects of our curriculum and pedagogy, I carefully considered my students’ relationship with languages, the narratives of the texts we read (including how students felt about it) and pedagogy’s focus on the spoken and written word. Decolonisation, in this manner, added a specific epistemological approach to my work and drew my attention to how colonialism had and continues to destroy, dominate and undervalue colonised people’s ways of knowing. I continue to wonder about what is missing from my understanding of decolonisation: what else can education ‘do’ to hamper settler colonialism?

In ‘Decolonisation is not a metaphor,’ Tuck and Yang posit a conception of decolonisation as “material, not metaphor” (Tuck and Yang 28) because “until stolen land is relinquished, critical consciousness does not translate into action that disrupts settler colonialism” (Tuck and Yang 19). They suggest that “decolonisation is not a swappable term for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools” (Tuck and Yang 3), “is not an approximation of other experiences of oppression” (Tuck and Yang 3) and hence is “incommensurable” (Tuck and Yang 31). Their arguments stem from several other problems pertaining to decolonisation. First, they are concerned about how settlers can reconcile their guilt and become complicit because of the easy metaphorisation of decolonising (Tuck and Yang 1). Due to equivocation (Tuck and Yang 17), the metaphorisation of decolonialism conflates the latter with other forms of oppression and fails to recognise the distinct obligations towards repatriation of Indigenous land and life.

In this paper, I read Tuck and Yang’s argument closely to reveal how decolonisation (as put forth by them) is also a metaphor, while still upholding their claim that decolonisation is not a metaphor. In other words, I show how decolonisation is both a metaphor and not and importantly so.

Central to Tuck and Yang’s reasoning of decolonisation as “material, not metaphor” is that settlers had/have to “erase” Indigenous people by recasting their land as property and resource and making them into “ghosts” (Tuck and Yang 6). The use of “ghosts” to describe (metaphorically) the consequences of colonisation/destruction of land/people sheds light on how decolonising (or ghost busting, metaphorically) must pay attention to the past in the the present (as ghosts are beings from the past in the present). Moreover, the inevitable choice of the ‘ghost’ metaphor, when discussing the importance of land repatriations to decolonisation, is revealing of the significance of analogies when speaking about that which is incommensurable. How else can one communicate to their listeners who share no common languages or experiences?

The poem by Jancita Karketta, a writer belonging to the Oraon Adivasi community, tells us of a desire to “escape the conspiracies of time.” Addressed to “ancestral spirits,” the voice in the poem refers to time, divided as past, present and future, as being a mere ploy. Drawing parallels between the voice in the poem and the ghosts created by the destruction of land/life, I wonder if colonialism causes a sense of loss that pierces through a conception of time as past/present/future? If such is the case, then, can decolonisation ever be non-metaphorical and non-poetic?

Another crucial aspect of the argument put forth by Tuck and Yang is that critical consciousness, developed through an epistemological approach to decolonising, is inadequate and is not indeed decolonising unless “land or power or privilege” (21) is given up. Although the importance of relinquishing power or privilege of land to decolonisation cannot be iterated enough, the role and nature of critical consciousness in unsettling settler colonialism is being understated and overlooked by the authors. Just as critical consciousness may fail to translate into meaningful action, what are the implications of land, power and privilege being given up without the pursuits of critical consciousness? What if critical consciousness, learning from a native feminist spatial discourse, provides “paths and routes to heal the rifts and borders that maps of difference (such as settler/indigenous space) continue to construct in the wake of colonialism (Goeman 184)”? How can we be wary of dangerous equivocations such as “we are all colonised”(Tuck and Yang 17) and also be discomforted by a stable settler/Indigenous distinction? As decolonial scholarship aims to recenter alternative frameworks that have been oppressed and devalued (Aufseeser 2), it is always symbolic (a metaphor) of new and old ways of knowing that are yet to be uncovered or discovered. For this reason, overlooking alternate translations of “stolen,” “land,” and “relinquishing,” ignores possible actions that could disrupt settler colonialism in different ways.

In conclusion, I have shown how decolonisation as incommensurable, material and here, intertwines with decolonisation as epistemological, metaphor, and elsewhere to create rather than kill the very possibility of decolonisation. Specifically, when understood as a metaphor, decolonizing enables one to make speech possible through analogies, to perceive loss as unbounded by time, and to listen for alternative frameworks of knowing. I have also learnt, through this paper, that it is equally crucial for education and pedagogy to consider the ways in which it may be permitting communities to be both critically conscious and yet complicit in their actions. In other words, if critical consciousness does not account for repatriations of land, then decolonisation is not doing its duty of ghost busting!

Citations

(1). Decolonisation is not a metaphor by Tuck and Yang

(2). Notes towards a nativc feminist spatial practice by Goeman

(3). Decolonising children's geographies by Aufseeser

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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