Envisioning a Cultivation: Migration Through Anticolonial Archives and Rememories Estefania Padilla, Mexico / Switzerland

Envisioning a Cultivation: Migration Through Anticolonial Archives and Rememories

By Estefania Padilla, Mexico and Switzerland

Introduction

Throughout most of my academic journey, choosing a topic and a methodology represented two very different and rarely intertwined processes of writing apaper. The overarching topic of my research was always chosen by me, as an all-knowing Western student, while the methods applied were mostly determined, at later stage, by time constraints, funding limits, or credit guidelines of the academic institution I was part of. This division meant that, as the main goal of any written work was to produce knowledge and to benefit my academic career, the research was always conducted regardless of the methods used and the impact they had,. Thus, the methodology applied represented a means to an end, a tool that allowed for the extraction of knowledge from other communities for my personal benefit and that of my university. Today, as I question knowledge production and aim for what Rodriguez-Castro (2020) refers to as knowledge cultivation, the methods and approaches I incorporate are not separated from my questioning journey but are weaved into the praxis that frames my research. My thesis will seek to address the epistemic erasure of Salvadorian migrant women in Mexico. The thesis will analyse the way in which Mexico and Mexicaness is constructed through the historical marginalisation of specific migrant feminine bodies and their (her)stories. More importantly, it will look at the ways in which women resist this epistemic erasure through the creation of anti-colonial archives and the sharing of rememories. The main research question is: In what ways are the (her)stories of non-white feminine Salvadorian immigrant bodies preserved and erased during the construction of a heterogenous Mexican state?

This paper seeks to explain the ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches that ground the thesis by answering the question: Why have I chosen anticolonial archive and rememory as the methodological approaches of my thesis? My goal is to take the reader through the thought process that lead me to anticolonial archives and rememories. This work will be divided into three different yet very related sections, each answering its own subquestion. The first section will start by stating the importance of the overarching decolonial approach taken by the research. The second section is concerned with the process of anticolonial archiving as an embodied experience that depends on human connections, and which allows for a continuum between the past and the present. Finally, the paper will address the concept of rememory as fragmented memories, how they are connected to anticolonial archiving, as well as how they are often forgotten due to the dominant conception of migration as a geographical movement of people.

The Starting Point: Why a decolonial approach to (this) research?

Within decolonial research, it is possible to observe distinct approaches to the process of knowledge cultivation. As opposed to knowledge production, which prioritises individualism and extractivism, knowledge cultivation aims for the co-construction and sharing of knowledge (Rodriguez Castro, 2021). Unfortunately, the cultivation done by the Salvadorian community in the context of mobility is often forgotten Thus, in my final Master’s thesis, I have opted for two specific methodologies/approaches within a decolonial praxis that focus on knowledge cultivation in the context of migration and allow for the co-construction of knowledge: anticolonial archive and rememories. However, before focusing on the 119

particularities of anticolonial archiving and rememories, it is important to identify the possibilities within decolonial research on migration. This first section of the paper will expand on the overarching decolonial approach I seek to take by answering the question: Why a decolonial approach to (this) research?

Borders as colonial practices

One of the main reasons I have opted for a decolonial approach when researching migration is to highlight the often-forgotten link between migration, the colonial wound, and modernity. Decolonial thought takes the commonality of a shared colonial wound as a starting point for its practices (Quijano, 1992). The shared colonial wound inflicted in what today is called Latin America includes the creation and control of institutionalised borders that define the countries which compose the once colonised continent. 1. How does our perception of migration change when we contextualise borders as products of colonialism and modernity? Bhambra (2018) points out that academia often fails to take into consideration the historical context during which the notion and discourse of a nation-state was developed (namely, during colonisation and the imperial expansion of the West). Nation-states were a notion developed by the West, for the West, and to benefit the West. She argues that this omission in academia results in the artificial separation between the constitutive state and the imperial state which offers an incomplete perception of history and social phenoma. Inspired by Bhambra (2018), I am now unable to look at migration in Latin America without recognising the colonial and imperial frameworks that denote the flux of communities and individuals based on imposed borders and nation-states. In other words, as migration today is mainly perceived as the crossing of borders of nation-states that were defined during the colonial era, I believe it is important to take into consideration the role these borders (and their study) play in the colonial matrix of power. The (study of) migration within countries that bear the colonial wound should, thus, be addressed through a decolonial lens. Failing to recognise the fact that borders stem from a colonial past contributes to the naturalisation of nation-sates. Consequently, there is a reinforcement of the epistemic privilege of the West as both enunciator and enunciated (Mignolo, 2010). My thesis touches upon migration between countries that share a colonial wound (Mexico and El Salvador). To avoid engaging in the epistemic marginalisation I seek to call out, it is crucial to properly contextualise migration and highlight the colonial past of both nation-states through the use of a decolonial approach.

Going beyond post-colonialism

As I explored the importance of highlighting the link between the colonial past of Latin America and the migration that takes place within the continent, I wondered if I had taken a post-colonial approach rather than a decolonial approach. In fact, a post-colonial approach to migration identifies the underlying effect that colonialism had on spatial practices that link former colonies and/to former colonial empires (Mains et al., 2013). However, mapping postcolonial relations between the geographies of the North and the South is not the goal of my thesis for two main reasons. Firstly, simply enunciating the problems of migration in the world would entail that I, as a student in a Western university, am an all-knowing subject that “maps the world and its problems, classifies people and projects into what is good for them” (Mignolo, 2010). Assuming the position of a detached and untouched researcher implies reproducing Western epistemic hegemony. Decolonial research, unlike post-colonial research, allows for the recognition that research “does not exist outside of trajectories of thought and action but firmly within” (Patel, 2016). In other words, decolonial research recognises the 120

limits and impossibilities of research. This isparticularly important for me as a Mexican whitemestiza who directly or indirectly benefits from the unequal power relations of nation-building and coloniality in Mexico (Rodriguez-Castro, 2020). Secondly, although my thesis seeks to contextualise migration within the colonial framework that imposes nation-states, I do not want to limit migration to the crossing of borders and colonialism, as it would place the central focus on Western heterogeneity and thus ignore and marginalise migrant’s experiences, practices of resistance and creation of liberated spaces (Esteva, 2013). Decolonial thought, unlike post-colonial thought, encourages the questioning of the established epistemological hierarchies that place Western ontologies as superior while also encourages a change through practiced resurgence and re-existence that displaces the ‘Western rationality as the only framework” (Walsh, 2018). A decolonial approach to migration recognises the effects of colonialism while also allowing for the exploration of new possibilities that do not focus solely on relations of oppression and marginalisation. So, why decolonial research? In sum, a decolonial approach to migration is crucial due to the link between borders and the colonial past of both Mexico and Al Salvador. In fact, approaching borders though a decolonial lens enables a deeper understanding of the role that nation-states play in migration. In addition, decolonial research, as opposed to post-colonial research, encourages the creation of new possibilities (co-construction, practices of resistance, etc.) without ignoring the impossibilities of research (the influence of modernity in education, the bias of the researcher, etc.).

Herstories and stories: Why anticolonial archive (as the main approach of the thesis)?

My thesis seeks to analyse the historical marginalisation of Salvadorian migrant women in Mexico. This interest in the historical aspect of this erasure does not mean that the paper will focus on solely in the past, as this would reinforce the dominant perception of the past and the present as mutually exclusive. Thus, the main methodology that will be used in the RP is that of anticolonial archival, as it allows for a clear connection between the past and the present while also highlighting the role people play in its creation. The following section will give an overview of what an anticolonial archive entails as well by answering the question: Why anticolonial archive (as the main approach of the thesis)?

People and communities as curators

Due to the fact that an anticolonial archive “[c]annot be found neatly compiled within a set of document boxes housed within a specificities institution” (Kamola, 2017), I have found that seeking a strict definition of what an anticolonial archive is results in a counterintuitive and counterproductive form of approaching the organic process of curation, networking and resistance that builds an anticolonial archive’s foundation. Thus, to understand it and the role it plays, it is perhaps more useful to look at who makes an anticolonial archive rather than what makes an anticolonial archive. It is equally important to contrast how this differentiates an anticolonial archive from a hegemonical archive that installs a “set of discursive practices that allow certain statements to be made while foreclosing other possibilities” (Taoua, 2003). Extensive literature has addressed the historical role Mexico plays as a migration corridor to the United States. Much has been discussed on the number of migrants that travel this route that connects Central America to the United States (Mata-Codesal, 2020; Mendeley, 2014; Infante et al., 2012). However, much less has been said on the immigrant Latin American community residing within Mexico. In the rare cases where this is addressed, little 121

attention is given to the migrants themselves, as their voices are suppressed by a discourse that assumes they are a monolithic group of sufferers that “drag out of their territories social evils such as insecurity, drug trafficking, prostitution and alcoholism” (Campos, 2016)2. This lack of representation (and misrepresentation) highlights the main shortcomings of nonanticolonial curation: erasure. One of the most defining aspects of an anticolonial archive, and the main reason I chose this methodology, is the focus it places on people and how they partake in the communal creation of an anticolonial archive. As opposed to a hegemonical archive that is defined by what it includes and excludes, an anticolonial archive is concerned with forming a common project though collaboration within a community (Kamola, 2017). In fact, a hegemonical colonial archive focuses on the preservation of Western epistemologies and knowledge, while an anticolonial archive is centred around people as well as their diverse connections and their cooperation. In other words, an anticolonial archive can be perceived a set of relations that we expressed and consolidated through the communal location, relocation and dislocation of ‘texts, ideas, structures, music, images, and the like” (Kamola, 2017). Zeffiro and Hogan (2015) state that when it comes to anticolonial archives, archiving is the by-product of the networking that takes pace during curation. In this context, curation refers not to the categorising of documents, but the process of unveiling and forming new relations that make an anticolonial archive. There is an emphasis on community-building through sharing histories. This way, the archive takes the form of people and interactions. At its core, an anticolonial archive is a community “engaged in the political struggles against colonial powers” (Kamola, 2017). It is an embodied community not only in the sense that it is curated by people, but also in the way practices are articulated into material forms that are then curated (Zeffiro & Hogan, 2015). In fact, an anticolonial archive is a community curating its own history. An embodied archive allows a population to undo discourses promoted by an authoritative hegemonical archive. Casimir (2020) explores the construction of colonised communities as sufferer and victims of their situations. He argues that when marginalised and conquered communities tell their own story, they have the potential to reinstall themselves “in their roles as agents” (Casimir, 2020). An anticolonial archival method highlights the communities’ agency and their capacity to tell and own their stories in order to counteract the official history compiled within a dominant hegemonic archive.

Curation through time and space

Unlike a hegemonical archive that can be found between the walls of an institutional building, an anticolonial archive is not static in space or in time. It does not have a temporal or spatial beginning and ending, as it is in constant devolvement and flux (Zeffiro & Hogan, 2015). This continuity includes not only the anticolonial archive itself (texts, music, art etc.) but also the process of its creation. In fact, curating an anticolonial archive is a continued exercise of resistance that extends beyond an official state institution. This chacteristic stems from the interactions that form an anticolonial archive. As these interactions are not constrained to a particular time and/or space, neither is an anticolonial archive. In a hegemonic approach to archives, those who contribute to the curation of archives (normally individuals with a strong specialised academic background) are not necessarily those who will benefit from the archive.3 In fact, there is a clear spatio-temporal divide between the individuals who curate a hegemonic archive and those who gain from its creation. In an anticolonial archive this division is blurred as the main goal is the self-preservation of the community that forms the archives (Zeffiro & Hogan, 2015). In other words, since the readers and the writers of an anticolonial archive are the same people, an anticolonial archive goes beyond the boundaries of time and space that define hegemonical archiving. The benefits of 122

an anticolonial archive are generational and are not contained within a specific geographical place.

An anticolonial archive is not an engagement to the past but a way to discuss the present through the past and the past through the present. It is an interaction between historical locations, present moments and future possibilities (Kamola, 2017). It allows for a “reorganisation of archives following parameters other than the original order, […] such as by geography or theme” (Pattikawa, 2021). In the context of research on migration, it represents the possibility of creating a new emphasis that goes beyond the common unidimensional approach to migration as a temporally/geographically bound phenomenon. Why anticolonial archive as the main approach of my thesis? In sum, an anticolonial archive emphasises the role played by people in the construction of histories. It allows for a critique and provides an alternative to the dominant hegemonical archive concept which promotes stereotypes and depicts migrants as passive individuals. It is made by the community and for the community, without being restricted by time and space. When it comes to the epistemic erasure of communities in the context of migration, it is crucial to go beyond the spatial/temporal limited boundaries that often frame a hegemonical archive.

(M)others and memories: Why Rhee’s rememories?

Usted no me conoce, pero yo a usted sí. Usted mi mirada nunca vio, pero yo veo la suya en su herma. Usted mi risa nunca escuchó, pero yo escucho la suya escapar la boca de mi tía. Usted nunca me cantó, pero yo de mi padre oí salir sus melodías. Usted no me conoció, pero yo a usted la reconozco todos los días.

This part of the paper diverges from the previous in structure and objective. It will not only explain why I chose rememories as one of the approaches of my thesis but it will also expand on why anticolonial archive and rememories are inherently intertwined with each other and how they can work together. Moreover, as the notion of rememories is directly linked to the reason I chose to focus on the erasure of migrant women from El Salvador, this section will alternate between an explanation of the methodology and my own/family’s/community’s rememories. Following, Wilson’s (2008) approach to relationality, I will expand on my history so “that you know a lot more about me before you can begin to understand my work.” (p.12).

Archiving (and) rememories

My father’s mother was a Salvadorian woman that migrated in her early twenties to Mexico City. Before migrating to Mexico she was a student activist during very unstable times marked by a violent military dictatorship in El Salvador and was under constant threat. Once, my father once told me that my great grandma had to burn all of her daughter’s books because the police were going to raid their house in El Salvador. Owning certain books or writings about particular topics was enough to be incriminated, so the decision was made quite easily, and all the books were burned in the house’s backyard. In the dominant discourse, the written mode of preserving knowledge is considered to be the best and most efficient way to transmit knowledge across time and borders. In fact, writing is the “condition for [knowledge] to be considered rigorous and monumental” (Boaventura, 2018). However, it is important to question, for whom is this efficient? Who can transmit this form of knowledge? Who enables or hinders the transition of written knowledge? In the context of migration, we can ask ourselves: if knowledge and histories are transmitted

and preserved in books, what happens to those who cannot take their books across the borders? What happens to those who rely on the vernacular? Estrada (2021), describes memories and emotions as crucial methods of transmitting and accessing knowledge among a community, including the migrant community. Part of the epistemic erasure endured by marginalised communities comes from the delegitimisation of the vernacular, the emotional and the spiritual. As the topic of my thesis is the epistemological erasure of migrants, analysing the role memories play in the self-preservation of migrant communities that cannot (or do not wish to) rely on the written expression of history is a crucial aspect of the research. Thus, the concept of (re)memories will be introduce along with anticolonial archives. Kamola (2017) highlights the embodied characteristic of anticolonial archives, approaching non-hegemonical archives as (re)memories. She states that “looking back can also be understood as archiving” (Kamola, 2017). In fact, similarly to an anticolonial archive, (re)memories go beyond the borders of physical or temporal frameworks and require interaction to exist. It is thus possible to perceive memories as anticolonial practices perceived in everyday life (Salem, 2020).

Some (re)memories of (m)others

Rememories, as described by Rhee (2021), are the remaining fractured memories of people/places/things that do not hold the same physical space as those that remember them. Rhee states that “who we are is the work of rememory, a different way of being/knowing/doing that recollects our ghostly connections, relations and connectivity across geographies, culture, time and languages” (p. 20). As I read her text, I often wondered what the difference between a memory and a rememory was. In broad terms, I would interpret rememory as the act of connecting and weaving memories with other memories, people, places, spaces and times. My grandmother died of cancer before I had a chance to meet her. However, despite never having known her I constantly “bump into her rememory” (Rhee, 2021). These rememories I bump into are constructed by the individuals that connect(ed), the loved ones we share(d) in the physical world. These rememories are a communal collection of memories that my family has shared with me, and that we have interchanged among ourselves thought the years. We communicate, connect and learn through them. Your grandmother used to love this song. This is where we used to live when your grandmother was alive. This recipe was your grandmother’s. Rememories, like anticolonial archives, highlight the present not as “a transition or gap between the past and the future but as a rapture that always carries the possibility free” (Bhattacharya, 2021). About a year ago, I bumped into my grandmother’s (re)memory when I accidentally found out that my Nahuatl teacher had also taught her Nahuatl years before I was born.4 Suddenly, my present and my grandmother’s past were connected. Then was now and now became then, even though I was not present then (Rhee, 2021). Rememories allow for a deeper comprehension of the relationship that a community shares with the land and the people that remain separated in time and space. It challenges the notion of geographical disassociation as the ultimate separation between land and people. As I shared with my father how I bumped into my grandmother’s (re)memory, I saw how he bumped into the same (re)memory as the words came out my mouth. “I had completely forgotten my mother leant Nahuatl” he commented. Just as the creation of these rememories stems from us, their suppression does as well. Although rememories allow for an exploration of other sensibilities and feelings (a task that would be impossible with dominant methodologies), Bhattacharya (2021) invites us to question whose sensibilities have been counted and which ones count. When does a mother become an Other? When are mothers dismissed by knowledge and history?

In sum, incorporating rememories into my framework would allow for the exploration of non-dominant forms of knowledge transmission and cultivation such as orality and feelings. In addition, similar to anticolonial archives, it goes beyond the spatio-temporal divides that frame migration. Finally, it defies otherisation of mothers and the exclusion of female sensibilities.

Some concluding thoughts

My thesis will touch upon the epistemic erasure of immigrant bodies. More specifically it will analyse the ways in which the (her)stories of non-white feminine Salvadorian immigrant bodies are preserved and erased during the construction of a heterogenous Mexican state. I have opted to analyse this through an anticolonial lens to engage with epistemic disobedience and to avoid engaging in the erasure I seek to call out. The research methodologies/approaches that will be implemented in the thesis are those of anticolonial archive and rememories. Both approaches work beyond the spatiotemporal framework that often reduces migration to the crossing of time-bound boarders. In addition, there is an emphasis on community building and knowledge cultivation that is often forgotten in the analysis of migration. Moreover, both approaches question the otherisation of marginalised communities, namely women and migrants. Finally, I would like to conclude that the goal of my thesis is not to create an anticolonial archive nor to introduce the rememories of a community into academia. My main goal is to contribute knowledge cultivation and to tejer lazos or weaving ties while also exploring the new ways and working within the (im)possibilities of academia.

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Revolution from Within: Placing Decolonial Healing at the Center of Political Struggle

By Rachelle Sartori, USA

Introduction

When designing political strategy and a vision for change, social movements have many intellectual traditions and historical examples to draw from. Movements seek to win revolutionary battles by organising the grassroots, identifying and developing leaders, launching media campaigns, and executing public actions (Cycles, 2022). While these are essential components of movement building, this essay argues that decolonial healing must be prioritised in all political struggles. Using debates from Marxist political economy and decoloniality, this essay will examine how structural oppression impacts human bodies, keeping us sick and marginalised. It will then dissect why decolonial healing must be central to the political struggles within revolutionary movement building, and how we can integrate restorative practices into our lives and our organising.

Why we struggle – a structural framing

Prior to examining why movement building strategy must place healing at the centre of political struggle, it is essential to understand the problem at hand and the structural roots of our collective somatic trauma. “Systemic inflammation [in the body] and its accompanying diseases have increased dramatically across industrialised societies” (Marya and Patel, 2021), and yet, instead of providing a sophisticated, root cause explanation of chronic and communicable disease, mainstream rhetoric focuses primarily on behaviours and lifestyle factors (ibid). Doctors blame the individual, an “indocile, undisciplined patient…the attitude of medical personnel [departs from] a hegemonic epistemology of the body” (Ureña, 2019). However, the disease within our bodies cannot be separated from our political, social, and economic environments, our ancestral history, and the power relationships within which we are embedded (Marya and Patel, 2021). Marxist political economy illuminates one aspect of this structural analysis by explaining the dialectical relationship between the bourgeoisie class which controls the state and owns all productive forces, and the proletariat which is forced to sell their labour power to survive (Marx and Engels, 1987). In this exploitive relationship, the bourgeoisie aims to maximise profits by cutting labour and production costs (ibid). Thus, they entrap the worker in brutal conditions, extending the working day beyond humane hours, and appropriating every ounce of their existence for work, while also forcing the proletariat into crowded, unsanitary, deteriorating living environments (Sartori, 2022). This inflicts deep somatic consequences, as these stressful experiences are held in the body as trauma (LePera, 2021) producing chronic disease, addiction, fragmented family relations, intellectual and emotional depreciation, and ultimately death by structural exploitation and oppression (Sartori, 2022). Other Marxist scholars and practitioners have augmented this explanation on the relationship between structural oppression and somatic consequences. One such practitioner was Rudolf Virchow, one of the founders of modern immunology. Virchow was a citizen of Berlin during the Revolutions of 1848, and yet also a participant in the uprisings against the European states (Marya and Patel, 2021). As a physician, Virchow witnessed famine, disease, and catastrophic conditions for the urban poor, and he was one of the greatest influencers in theorising that disease is not generated from within the body, but rather it is the body’s reaction to an external stimulus (Marya and Patel, 2021). He spoke out against racial hierarchy and 129

highlighted the importance of social conditions, emphasising that “oppression would lead to more pronounced manifestations of disease, and justice would enable healing” (Marya and Patel, 2021). While orthodox Marxist tradition highlights many connections between oppressive structures like capitalism and somatic trauma, it has less to offer when examining the consequences of other forms of oppression, such as patriarchy or white supremacy. Feminist Marxists like Maria Mies and Silvia Federici touch on this by connecting primitive accumulation to the differentiated working class, noting that the exploitation of workers for capital accumulation did not occur evenly but rather within hierarchies along the lines of gender, race, and age (Federici, 2005). Nonetheless, decoloniality brings forward a critique to orthodox Marxist analysis. While this tradition primarily explains inequality through social and class relations, recognising that racialised and gendered subjects are strategically and disproportionately exploited for the purpose of capitalist expansion (Marx, 1999), decoloniality roots the debate further, arguing that race, gender, and sexuality are man-made categories which were created through violent processes of colonisation, for the purpose of delineating which bodies are natural and at the top of the social, economic, and political order (Lugones, 2010). For colonised people and particularly women, oppression has always been intersectional, affecting individuals in a cumulative way based on their various social identities (Lugones, 2011). Thus, decolonial thought shows whose bodies are mostly greatly impacted by structural oppression, by whom, through what origins, and for what purpose. When exploring the structural roots of somatic trauma, Marxism and decoloniality have another key distinction. While Marxism is material in its essence, emphasising trauma and disease that forms in the body due to overwork and other challenging material conditions, decoloniality departs from the colonial wound, which is an “embodied, affective, and epistemological injury” (Ureña, 2019). Instead of centering the material, decolonial scholars begin with the epistemic domain and the coloniality of power which controls knowledge and determines what ways of being, doing, and living are acceptable by the colonial gaze (NdlovuGatsheni, 2020, p.1), again, rooting in the phenomena which created material conditions in the first place. Categorical and hierarchical colonial logics still reign today and inflict epistemic violence by delineating the boundaries of whose bodies are healthy and whose are abnormal (Trejo Méndez, 2021). Particular bodies, especially the “racialised-feminine” are seen as the ‘other’ and as less than human (Trejo Méndez, 2021). This process is operationalised in “medical praxis, research, and knowledge [which] reproduces dehumanisation, their legitimacy and control of truth founded on the assumed superiority of its logics of elimination” (Trejo Méndez, 2021). While Marxist tradition illuminates how oppressive structures like capitalism make us sick in more obvious ways such as through brute force, overwork, and extraction, the colonial wound departs from the insidious epistemic position; as an individual is denied their very personhood, they internalise this subjugation, which steadily degrades the body, mind, and spirit. Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and activist born in the French colony Martinique, combined revolutionary and decolonial theory for integrated praxis, and he worked as head of the psychiatry department at Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria, which was French territory at the time. He observed this process of internalising oppression very clearly with his patients who regularly faced the epistemic and thus ontological erasure of their identities under the French occupation (Keller, 2007). While many of his colleagues observed maladaptive behaviours in their patients, they attributed these symptoms to be part of the innate wiring of the individuals, deeming them “as an inherent primitive and an incipient criminal” ((Keller, 2007, p. 827). Fanon argued that the “generalised malaise they saw as common among North African immigrants…was a somatic manifestation of psychological pressures placed on a marginalised population suffering in a contemptuous host society (Keller, 2007). He “located the origins of Algerian violence in the mechanics of colonial society and in the psychological 130

formation of the revolutionary subject…[arguing] that it was the colonialist’s aggression that bred concomitant behaviour in the individual” (Keller, 2007, p. 828). He wrote a series of case studies which depict the shocking wounds inflicted onto colonised peoples, as well as their “psychotic reactions,” including a person’s “entire personality [being] definitively dislocated” (Fanon, 1963). Decoloniality brings a sharp critique to orthodox Marxist understanding of how structural oppression inflicts somatic trauma, by extending beyond class to not only include other lenses of oppression such as race, gender, or sexuality, but also by revealing how these social constructs were built in the first place, as part of violent colonising processes, deeming certain racialised, gendered, and non-heteronormative bodies as nonhuman, thus reducing them to machines of capital accumulation. Also, while Marxist tradition departs from the material realm, focusing on physical conditions and overt exploitation of working-class labour as well as the extraction of women’s social reproductive labour (Federici, 2018), decoloniality extends beyond the material, departing from the epistemic and embodied colonial wound, where knowledge is created and internalised. Here, it is understood how hegemonic forces slowly and deliberately dehumanise and destroy colonised peoples’ sense of personhood, installing violence among colonised societies while simultaneously erasing all traces of life and identity that existed there previously (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020). Through this process, individuals somatically internalise their marginalisation, suffering deep consequences in their bodies. While there are these key distinctions between Marxist and decolonial analysis on the impacts of structural oppression, they share an important similarity, namely that they both reveal the indelible embodied consequences of oppression. As structures like capitalism, coloniality, white supremacy, and patriarchy put more pressure on humans and environments, health will inevitably suffer; and yet, structural oppression is nearly invisible in mainstream healthcare, media, and narrative. Although not explicitly Marxist or decolonial, there are numerous contemporary scholars, practitioners, and activists who are speaking out about the connections between structural oppression and somatic trauma. One example is Staci Haines, founder of Generative Somatics and author of The Politics of Trauma. In her work, she presents a model called Sites of Shaping/Sites of Change, where she discusses how our conditioning and particularly our pains and our privileges are largely determined by sites outside of ourselves, namely family and intimate networks, community, institutions, social norms and historical forces, and finally spirit and landscape (Haines, 2021). “Hungarian-Canadian psychiatrist Gabor Maté goes as far to say that childhood trauma is the number one root cause of all forms of chronic illness” (Pain Society of Alberta). In their book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel discuss the forces of capitalism, colonialism, and supremacism, and how these complexes inflict harm to the human body, providing case studies from around the world which connect structural oppression to disease in the eight major organ systems (2021). They emphasise that it is part of the system’s design that certain bodies experience health crises more than others, and that this points to “questions about power, injustice, and inequity…bound in modern medicine within questions of colonialism” (Marya and Patel). Finally, Marya and Patel connect to the everyday lived experiences of people, noting that, “Experiencing daily trauma at the hands of law enforcement, acute poverty, hunger, discrimination, forced displacement, and disproportionate exposure to toxins – it all makes people sick” (Marya and Patel). A final example is the work of Resmaa Menakem, a Black therapist and somatic abolitionist who draws connections between racism and white supremacy and how these forces are held and maintained through all peoples’ bodies and nervous systems, highlighting the historical roots of slavery and the ongoing structural oppression of police brutality on Black and Brown people (Menakem, 2017). Through the work of these contemporary authors as well as Marxist and decolonial analysis, it is clear that the inflammation and psychosomatic pains that live within each of us are inextricably linked 131

to the oppressive structures within which we are embedded. Recognising this connection is the first step towards understanding why social movements must place healing at the centre of political struggle.

Rationale – the power of somatic healing

Orthodox Marxist tradition offers a robust explanation for how capitalist exploitation makes people sick and marginalised. However, the tradition struggles to go beyond this, to explain the implications of this harm and how it may affect social organisation, relations, or social movements. One Marxist scholar and psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, managed to expound on the repercussions of structural oppression through his exploration of sexuality and family dynamics. “In his work, he made key theorisations, such as the connection between the patriarchal family and peoples’ internalised power relations which impact their political behaviour” (Sartori, 2022c). He hypothesised that as people internalise the power relations in their hegemonic nuclear family, they unconsciously seek to replicate this authoritarian leadership in society, thus highlighting potential political implications of this phenomenon. While this explanation provides new insights, it still falls short of illuminating the root causes which create the patriarchal, authoritarian nuclear family in the first place and how this may contribute to ongoing oppression. Thus, decoloniality provides a strong critique, as a decolonial history illuminates how colonial powers created, idealised, and universalised the nuclear family as the best form of social organisation, propped up by the nation state to facilitate capitalist life and to further isolate bodies that did not fit this dominant hegemon (McEwen, 2021). Decolonial scholar María Lugones brings knowledge into how the colonial gaze on family, as well as race, gender, sexuality, and class via the coloniality of power can further perpetuate harm by making us instruments of oppression. She speaks about her own internalised coloniality when she writes, “My body has come to know and experience the dominant gaze in different ‘worlds’…the ones where I am dehumanised and the ones where I have failed to delink from such gaze, therefore reproducing it or being unable to challenge it” (Trejo Méndez, 2021). Here, she pinpoints the first key reason for movements to place healing at the centre of political struggle: because by living within structures of oppression, our bodies become attuned to reproduce this oppression, keeping it alive. This can be observed at a cellular level, as trauma inflicted onto us interpersonally, historically/ancestrally, structurally, or through social norms is remembered in the nervous system (Menakem, 2017) As humans are wired for survival, the nervous system will then develop adaptation strategies to cope with this pain and dysregulation held in the body (Haines, 2021, p. 96). Oftentimes, the nervous system becomes calibrated to reproduce the original trauma in an attempt to resolve it. “However, the attempt to reenact the event simply repeats, re-inflicts, and deepens the trauma” (Menakem, 2017). When humans become somatically calibrated to reproduce structural oppression, this can manifest in a variety of ways with numerous different political consequences for social movements. One of the more tangible ways we reproduce trauma and oppression is in our daily interpersonal interactions. Dr. Rae Johnson, author of Embodied Social Justice, discusses the concept of microaggressions and how by living amongst power-over structures in society, we internalise the mechanisms of white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonial capitalism. She and others conducted a study and depicted how we (particularly white and male bodies) reproduce these biases in our interactions with people whose racialised and gendered bodies are demonised by hegemonic forces (Johnson, et.al., 2018). Because much of communication occurs in the embodied dimension and signals are transmitted through nonverbal cues like gestures, eye movement, and use of space (Johnson, et.al., 2018), we cannot refrain from committing microaggressions by making a cognitive choice to do so, as these behaviours are 132

not conscious to the rational mind. Instead, embodied change and embodied healing must be done to unwind the patterns of supremacy and domination ingrained within us, which will in turn allow unconscious behaviours like microaggressions to shift (Haines, 2021). This is of great relevance for social movements, because without somatic rewiring, our bodies will be attuned to recreating the very structures, values, and relationships we are organising to dismantle, thus inhibiting our activism and clouding our vision for transformation. Staci Haines broadens the discussion on reproducing structural oppression and power-over dynamics by taking it beyond the interpersonal sphere. She states how the United States is founded on power-over structures through settler colonialism and Christian nationalism, and how our bodies reproduce these structures on larger scales as well, such as through compulsive wealth accumulation and economic exploitation (Haines, 2021, p. 390), human’s desire to have power and control over earth, seeing earth as an object without its own agency, as well as through our pull towards private property and the commodification and private ownership of natural resources (Haines, 2021). Although current literature is less robust, links can also be observed between somatic trauma and right-wing populism. In the last several years, there has been a resurgence of altright political leaders as well as conservative narratives which scapegoat poor and marginalised people for social problems which have structural roots (Frankel, 2015). Electoral maps show that while low-income voters turned out more for Democratic candidates in the 2016 election, support for Donald Trump by these same voters increased by 16 points from the previous election cycle with Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate, despite Trump’s demonisation of the poor and threats to cut essential public programs (Slevin, 2016). While there are competing explanations which aim to rationalise this phenomenon, trauma is rarely discussed. In his article The Traumatic Basis for the Resurgence of Right-Wing Politics Among Working Americans, Jay Frankel integrates Ferenczi psychology, trauma, and political behaviour (Frankel, 2015). Frankel discusses how right-wing political leaders prey on and exploit people’s traumatic experiences when they speak about deporting immigrants who are allegedly stealing American jobs or cracking down on criminal behaviour and public safety. These promises speak to and provide easy answers for people’s deepest fears, feelings of shame, and everyday struggles, as many rural communities are economically and socially decimated. Frankel shares how through psychoanalytic trauma theory we can see that support for these political candidates may be connected to a “traumatic reaction [called] identification with the aggressor…[where] they would subordinate themselves to automata to the will of the aggressor” to seek comfort and safety (ibid). This is an essential consideration for revolutionary movements that are working to unite the grassroots for structural transformation. Instead of churning out numbers of people at public actions, deep organising which creates space for people to process their trauma, fears, and shame is needed to somatically unwind outdated stories within ourselves and make space for renewed political analysis. Another political implication of trauma and structural oppression revolves around white fragility. In his book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialised Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, Resmaa Menakem coins the term “white-body supremacy” and highlights how feelings of power, entitlement, and superiority are held in white bodies, historically conditioned that way dating back to settler colonialism and slavery (2017). Additionally, in her book White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo argues how covert, subconscious forms of racism stem from white people fearing the loss of their power and privilege in society (2018). Thus, to build intersectional movements across lines of division like race, gender, class, or sexual orientation, social movements must center healing to unravel learned patterns of superiority and inferiority and build coalition across the intersectional oppressions that people face. Finally, structural oppression causes individuals to develop chronic disease, struggle with addiction, or face challenges within interpersonal relationships due to past and ongoing trauma. As people are occupied by these difficult somatic 133

maladaptations to stress, they become less capable of being organised for a revolutionary movement, as their daily existence is usurped by dealing with survival emergencies. Revolutionary movements must centre healing and care to combat sickness which keeps us marginalised as we organise toward a better future. Marxist analysis explains how not only capitalist exploitation harms our bodies, but also how this harm is then internalised and perpetuated in society. Decoloniality takes this claim further by exposing the colonial roots of our harm and by arguing how human bodies then become instruments of oppression, as we recreate our experiences in our interpersonal relationships, our social organisation, our voting behaviour, and our contributions to ongoing white supremacy. One strand of decoloniality, Africana phenomenological social analysis, summarises this well by recognising “both the impact of the social world on the emergence of meaning and human identities, and how individual situations relate to the development and preservation of social and political institutions. The influence between self and society, in other words, moves in both directions” (Ureña, 2019). While humans are shaped by the structural oppression within which we are embedded, our internalisation of this process in the body simultaneously shapes society, which has stark political consequences. If social movements aim to birth a new future, we must place healing at the centre of political struggle, so that we may recover from our trauma and sickness and break the profound energetic connection which oppression holds in our bodies.

How do we do it? – A decolonial lens for revolutionary healing

Orthodox Marxist tradition points to organising a revolutionary class to seize productive forces as the ultimate path to liberation (Marx and Engels, 1987). However, given class dispossession, “how can we organise people who are diseased, addicted, and exhausted?” (Sartori, 2022). Marxism fails to offer guidance on organising praxis in the context of workers’ daily struggles. Meanwhile, decolonial indigenous scholar Lorena Cabnal asserts that “healing [is] a cosmic-political path for liberation and emancipation of bodies and the earth” – naming healing as praxis, or healing as the political organising work itself (Trejo Méndez, 2021). While Marxism fails to explore the ‘how to’ of healing, decolonial analysis provides ample insight into what revolutionary healing might look like. Historically, colonial medicine has hardly been about healing but rather an operation of power which “served as an instrument of surveillance and domination” of the colonised (Keller, 2007). Many of these tendencies still pervade today, and thus, decoloniality demands that we delink from the mechanisms, logics, and institutions of Western colonial medicine to truly cultivate healing (Trejo Méndez, 2021). For example, Western medicine heavily relies on the doctor-patient hierarchy and the medicalisation, institutionalisation, and technologisation of healing. Decolonial thought offers the path of the curandera which says that “everyone is a healer [and can reclaim] the power to restore and engage in healing practices beyond institutions” (Trejo Méndez, 2021). Western colonial medicine relies on binaries like health/illness and world/body and treats health as an end goal to reach, erasing all traces of past scars and illness through biochemical interventions (Ureña, 2019, p. 1642). Meanwhile, decolonial healing honours the Nepantla, or the state of transition, the “liminal space of becoming” (Trejo Méndez, 2021) while understanding restoring the body as “inseparable from the territory, ancestors, and the community” (Trejo Méndez, 2021). Additionally, decoloniality sees there is “healing beyond health”; healing is not a place to be reached but rather a life-long journey of inquiry into the body (ibid). Caution is placed on “the medicalisation of life and institutionalisation of healing as what may prevent societies [from developing] healthy ways of coping with suffering” while decolonial healing shows that to overcome historical trauma, we must develop a shared capacity to “deal with suffering that

would require us to acknowledge pain, to feel it and grieve it” (ibid), emphasising collectivity, tenderness, and reciprocity. Within this foundation, healing begins the moment we realise we have been colonised and become conscious of our colonial wound, or the ways in which we feel inferior (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014). “Healing is the process of delinking, or regaining [our] pride, [our] dignity, assuming [our] entire humanity in front of an un-human being that makes [us] believe [we] were abnormal [or] lesser” (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014). By freeing ourselves from our own colonial wounds, we can also move towards “liberation from systems of oppression that produce and require fragmentation to remain in place” (Trejo Méndez, 2021), thus simultaneously liberating society and our world. Through this process, we begin to detach from the colonial gaze that aims to delineate the boundaries of sick and healthy, and labels certain bodies as “objects of intervention” (Trejo Méndez, 2021). I personally have undergone this process, as I am asexual and have been made invisible by the modern medical system many times, as not having sexual desire is automatically pathologised as a hormonal imbalance or as some form of deficiency in bodily functioning. I have felt deep senses of worthlessness in the eyes of compulsive sexuality which vilifies nonsexual relationships. It was only through unpacking my own internalised oppression and trauma that years of chronic physical illness (seemingly unrelated to sexuality by the modern medical gaze) began to subside. I started to see beyond traditional markers of pathology to realise that the cause of my suffering was my own colonial wound and how hegemonic definitions of ‘normal’ devalued me within society. Through creative expression, building coalition, and detaching from hegemonic expectations of ‘normal,’ (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2014) we can begin to reclaim our inherent value and create new knowledge grounded in our lived experience, and space for new conceptualisations of health and identity (Keller, 2007).

Conclusion

While bringing awareness to our colonial wounds, opening space for new knowledge to arise, building collectivity, and dismantling the logics of colonial medicine are all essential components of decolonial healing, Frantz Fanon’s theory of sociogeny brings this story full circle. Through sociogeny, Fanon argues there is a stark relationship between self and society (Ureña, 2019), and he connects somatic healing back to the context within which it is embedded. He asserts that “the invisible wounds of coloniality cannot be healed without radical changes in politics, in medical institutions, and in narratives about the full humanity of oppressed people” (ibid, p. 1643). Somatic and structural transformation work in tandem, and we need both to be free. Thus, as we understand the trauma inflicted onto us by oppressive social structures, the ways we are conditioned to reproduce this trauma, and the political consequences of this cyclical trauma, decolonial healing allows us to break free from these chains, shining a light on our darkest corners, and placing healing at the centre of all political struggle. Instead of ranking orthodox Marxist tradition and decolonial analysis against each other, a “pluralist platform” is more effective for guiding us in how to fight these political battles (Borras, 2019). The work of Frantz Fanon is an excellent example of how to do this. By combining revolutionary consciousness with decolonial healing praxis, we facilitate movement building which is more resilient, nimble, and effective, placing healing at the centre and fuelling ourselves as we catalyse a new future.

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Complementing the Idea of Conservation: Between Preserving and Green Grabbing, a case study: the Indigenous Community of Cirompang in Banten, Indonesia

By Nadia Gissma Kusumawardhani, Indonesia

Introduction

This essay is a collection of my thoughts to see how my views on the preservation of nature shifted from enthusiastic to sceptical. I was living inside the bubble of technocratic solutions as an engineer. In it, I thought nature could be rectified using technology and that both together could grow the economy. Asaresult,Iabandonedtheideaofpreservationasa given.However, after a few years and influenced by my shifting interest to agrarian studies (Fairhead, Leach and Scoones, 2012; Astuti and McGregor,2016;McCarthy, Vel and Suraya,2012;Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012) and critical geography studies (Harvey, 1998; Soja, 1989; Foucault, 1982), I changed my viewpoint, becoming sceptical of preservation, and considered its relationship to green grabbing. I also started digging into ongoing practices in “neoliberal conservation” (Ojeda, 2012, p. 358), which appeared to be a state-led project in cooperation with private businesses through some environmental agendas (like ecotourism, carbon sequestration, or biodiversity conservation park). My journey started during my undergraduate thesis on how customary values were incorporated into local land use planning of the indigenous community of Cirompang, Banten, Indonesia. During my three months fieldwork, I overheard a villager’s night patrol talking about a struggle against Gunung Halimun Salak National Park (TNGHS) authorities. The conflict started when a state-owned forestry company (Perum Perhutani III) dispossessed indigenous land and gave it a production forest (Hutan Produksi) status in 1978 with limited access to land that fulfilled livelihood for the local population. The community was also made to pay a harvesting tax of 25 percent from the total agricultural output on the claimed land by TNGHS. In 2003, the land was converted to a conservation forest because of a national park expansion plan, which further impacted the Cirompang community to access natural resources and caused deeper unrest for them. Such deals are known as ‘green grabs’ wherein environmental agendas are the core drivers for the land deals but involve restructuring rules and authority for land access (Fairhead et al., 2012). TNGHS claimed that the agricultural activity done by the Cirompang people ruins nature preservation. However, the community’s traditional efforts are already conservationist through their customary land tenure even before Indonesia was declared as a nation. They created a zone where land could be cultivated, reserved, and stay pristine (untouchable). The land claiming process by TNGHS also contradicted the Government Regulation No.69/1996, which states that communities have the right to active participation in deciding how their land is used. The Cirompang people have been fighting against the TNGHS since 1997, and as I arrived, their struggle had almost come to an end. Atthefinalstage, theindigenouscommunity succeeded in getting their land back based on the Indonesian Environment and Forestry Ministerial Decree No. 1548/2019 which assigned a customary status of 306 hectares of land to Cirompang community. However, a feeling of restlessness persisted, especially after a number of private companies approached the community with private business propositions, most of which were supported by the regional government (Interview, 2 February 2020). The community has rejected those proposals as they are afraid that they will degrade the forest's quality and disrupt their local land tenure. Finally, this essay will showcase the tensions that inevitably exist between state conservation and green grabs, in which “the notions of ‘green’ (what and who is green or not) 139

come to be defined and mobilised in particular ways” (Fairhead et al., 2012, p. 239). This is contrary to conservation initiatives of the indigenous community of Cirompang, which can be seen as an alternative form of nature preservation without green grabbing and its derivative impacts. This form of conservation by the community depicts a “post-growth” orientation on how enhancing wellbeing can be achieved alongside ecological transition and against growthobsessed economies (Gerber and Raina, 2018, p. 354).

A state-led conservation project and green grabs

My scepticism in conservation started with an understanding that the idea of conservation cannot be separated from its relation to capital accumulation. Thinkingof environmentalcrises inonlyecological terms is problematic since it simultaneously marks the limit to capital today (Escobar, 2007a). Capitalism has rooted its logic everywhere, and it has disintegrated relationships between nature and culture through modernity, created a duality (ibid). Therefore, the conservation proposal fallacy was created under the national park's name. It is a concept wherein we can only choose between preservation over the existing local community’s livelihood or expelling them as “the other” (ibid, p. 197). These practices have been collected in a top-down process of land-use conversion without recognising indigenous territories. It first happened in 1978 when Perum Perhutani III took over land management to be tree plantations, which benefited rich elites in timber productions but limited the local community to farm for their subsistence while steadfastly being forced to pay harvesting tax. The legal title of Perum Perhutani III in managing land showed how privatisation practices set a precondition for the commodification of land, through rights that outlined what resources could be used and by whom (Castree, 2003). Then in 2003, after a long process of extraction for agricultural productions, the deforestation crisis put pressure on Perum Perhutani III to stop the operation and convert it to conservation forest status as the expansionary TNGHS national park. However, this condition put the indigenous community in a worse position, as 56% of their land was dispossessed, thus disrupting their food sufficiency.

Pengelola Kawasan large (ha)

Total areaofCirompang’s customary land 637,501

TNGHS land claims in 2003 361,701

Total area can be accessed by communities after dispossession 275,799

Average ofland ownership (455 households) 0,6/households

Average of land ownership (1.414 persons) 0,19/person

Table 1: Land Ownership Average After Land Claims by TNGHS Source: Participatory Mapping by RMI in 2009

The data shows a significant change in the average of land ownership by indigenous people in Cirompang aftertheconservationagendabyTNGHS,whichlimitedtheirsubsistence practices (RMI, 2009). Capital was therefore dispossessing, as this process increased restrictions on local resources which it justified by deploying narratives of degradation (Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012). The new trends of green economies and climate change have further shaped political action that leads to increased governing of indigenous territories and shifts in their land uses for the desires of influential groups (McCarthy et al. 2012; Astuti and McGregor, 2016). TNGHS thus claimed land as “a disciplinary function” (Foucault, 1982, p. 361) over Cirompang’s customary territories, which served as a preliminary condition for 140

capital accumulation with the agenda of forest regeneration (Harvey, 1998). In my reflections I returned to Escobar (2007a) and landed on a question – to what extent can preservation be achieved in isolation from the processes of green grabbing and their dispossessions? And how can one unmask this duality as a modernist approach to balancing the interests of the environment and humans within conservation practices (Escobar, 2007a)?

Nurturing nature without exclusion: an alternative and its precondition

The indigenous people of Cirompang have been inhabitants oftheir areas since 1873, and most of their activities are dependent on land resources. There is a customary tenurial arrangement in spatial planning that has already established conservation initiatives. Based on their customary law, forest areas of the Cirompang people are distributed into three zones consisting of a housing and cultivation zone, a reserve area, and a sacred/pristine forest (an untouchable area). The reserve area is a saving area that only can be used in specific amounts of increasing population and is represented by ‘customary court’ (Interview, 5 June 2019). In contrast to the reserve area, highly valued conservation initiatives lay on sacred/pristine forests, which deposit water for entire villages. This area is in the highest terrain, with wildlife also living there, so they protect the area to sustain the life of non-human nature. To this, I have seen that conservation is already a part of their culture. They hold their relation to non-human creatures as one ofintimate response-ability through their customary tenurial planning (Haraway, 2015, p. 164). By gently defamiliarising the making of kin, as not necessarily between humans but also unexpected others, they propose an alternative precondition for conservation of all living beings (Haraway, 2015, p. 161). This destroys dualist forms of modernist thinking regarding preservation, which holds that conservation practices should be done separately between nonhuman and human activities; thus, they show that resource inclusion for the land-user should also be considered. In 2020, a son from the customary headman, Ateng, called me to give an update after victory over the state’s recognition of them as the indigenous community and their customary land certification. However, apart from such glory stories, Ateng also revealed his discouragement after several companies approached their land for business.

“We have been asked for joint business. They (private companies) are coming from various sectors such as mineral water production, ecotourism, carbon market and fruits trader. We were told that what we needed to do is provide the land. One of them asked for a leasing mechanism, and the other want us to joint their company as community partner. But we are afraid to lose our customary land again if we accept their offers, we do not believe in big money. For me, as we still have our reserve land and people can still be harvesting, In shaa

Allah that is enough for us” (Personal communication, 20 January 2020) His response reveals how the monetisation of land is not a big deal as they have sovereignty over their land, which is evidence that societies and nature have co-existed with each other (Borras and Franco, 2012). Therefore, land ownership is a precondition to have sovereignty in protecting the area where conservation is established. This is a state's responsibility to legitimise indigenous territories and not necessarily put economic investment on land and rather to reconnect land and its user relations (ibid.). Finally, it also shows how political consciousness is necessary to conservation practices, not just to respond to questions of capital accumulation, but also important to maintaining the spirit of preserving nature for matters of collective need.

Another post-growth development practice in the Global South

This case study highlights one more example of post-growth orientations in the Global South, especiallyinthe ecologicaltransitiontowardsconservationpractices thataredistinct from green grabs or local resource exclusion (Gerber and Raina, 2018). In disengaging from a modernist duality between society and nature, the Cirompang people’ practices put greater weight into local knowledge for producing a more humane and ecologically sustainable universe (Escobar 2007). The measurement of wealth is not dominated by huge amounts of money but rather by balancing the calculation between human needs and non-human creatures’ lives, echoing a notion of making kinship with unexpected others (Haraway, 2015). Nature preservation with green-grabbing practices is a form of capital that stabilises its spaces and practices to have preconditions for its accumulation. A facilitative nation-state that provides space for such an enclosure is a part of mainstream development by elites. It enforces particular institutional arrangements to provide all the materials in one place for growth production (Harvey, 1998, p. 95; Borras and Franco, 2012, p. 4). However, in postgrowth logics, economic-obsessed growth must be dismantled from its development machinery, thus green grabbing or any otherexclusioncanbeavoidedinpreservationpractices. This enables a focus on an ecological transition that highly values human-and-non-humancreatures’ intimacy in creating a peaceful space to live.

References

Astuti, R. and McGregor, A (2016) ‘Indigenous land claims or green grabs? Inclusions and exclusions within forest carbon politics in Indonesia’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 44(2), pp.445–466. doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1197908 Benjaminsen, T.A. and Bryceson, I. (2012) ‘Conservation, green/blue grabbing and accumulation by dispossession in Tanzania’, The Journal of Peasant Studies 39(2), 335–355. doi:10.1080/03066150.2012.667405 Borras jr., S.M. (Saturnino) and Franco, J.C. (Jennifer) (2012) A ‘land sovereignty’ alternative? towards a peoples’ counter-enclosure. Available at: http://repub.eur.nl/pub/38546 (Accessed: January 5, 2022) Brockington, D. and Duffy, R. (2010). Capitalism and Conservation: The Production and

Reproduction of Biodiversity Conservation. Antipode, 42(3), pp. 469–484. <doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00760> Castree, N. (2003) ‘Commodifying what nature?’ Progress in Human Geography, 27(3), pp. 273–297. doi:10.1191/0309132503ph428oa Escobar, A. (2007a) ‘Worlds And Knowledges Otherwise’. Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 179–210. doi:10.1080/09502380601162506 Escobar, A. (2007b) ‘Post-development as Concept and Social Practice’ In Exploring Post-

Development: Theory and Practice, Problems and Perspective, pp. 18-32 Fairhead, J., Leach, M., and Scoones, I. (2012). ‘Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?’ Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), pp. 237–261. doi:10.1080/03066150.2012.671770 Foucault, M. (1982) ‘Space, Power, and Knowledge’, in James D. Faubion (ed) Power:

Essential Works 1954-1984, pp. 349-364. London: Penguin. Gerber, J.F., Raina, R. S. (2018) ‘Post-Growth in the Global South? Some Reflections from

India and Bhutan’, Ecological Economics. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.02.020 Haraway, D. (2015) ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulhucene: Making Kin’, Environmental

Humanities, 6(1), pp.159-65. doi:10.1215/22011919-3615934 Harvey, D. (1998) Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge. Indonesian Central Government. ‘Peraturan Pemerintah No. 69 Tahun 1996 tentang Hak dan

Kewajiban, Serta Bentuk dan Tata Cara Peran Serta Masyarakat Dalam Penataan Ruang’ [Government Regulation No. 69 Year 1996 on Rights and Obligations, Technical

Procedures of Society’s Participation on Spatial Planning]. (Accessed: 2 January 2022). KLHK. ‘Keputusan Menteri Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan Republik Indonesia

No.1548/2019 tentang Penetapan Hutan Adat Kasepuhan Cirompang’ [Environment and

Forestry Ministerial Decree No. 1548 Year 2019 on Indigenous Community of

Cirompang’s Customary Forest Stipulation]. (Accessed: 2 January 2022). McCarthy, J.F., Vel, J.A.C. and Suraya, A. (2012) ‘Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes, virtual land grabs, and green acquisitions in Indonesia's

Outer Islands’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), pp. 521–549. doi:10.1080/03066150.2012.671768 Ojeda, D. (2012) ‘Green pretexts: Ecotourism, neoliberal conservation and land grabbing in

Tayrona National Natural Park, Colombia’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), pp. 357–375. doi:10.1080/03066150.2012.658777 RMI. (2009) ‘Profil Cirompang. Dan Laporan Pemetaan Partisipatif Masyarakat Adat

Cirompang’ [Cirompang’s Profile and the Participatory Mapping Report]. RMI: Bogor Soja, E. W. (1989) ‘Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory’,

London: Verso.

The Hardest Stories to Tell are Your Own, but When Does a Story Truly Become Yours to Own?

By Mariya N. Khan, India

We are told that academia is a space where the limits of reality do not apply, and that exploring knowledge is a joyous journey. I have found it to be untrue on many accounts. Firstly, your discourses are only safe to materialise once they engage with the already existing hegemonic discourses of reality – the creativity and truth of marginalised voices are drowned out by the rational, capitalist, and colonial imaginations of the world we inhabit. Secondly, knowledge acquisition is an act of immense privilege and often marked by feelings of guilt and doubts. I claim this not only in anger, but as a preface to the story of my thesis. Bot, ke labh aazaad hain tere, Bot, zubaanab tak teri hai Speak out! For your words are free Speak up! For your tongue is still your own.12 Being at ISS meant that I had access to resources unavailable to most people in the world, and I was excited to use this opportunity to immerse myself in topics I would never have the opportunity to indulge in. It seemed like the perfect time and place to formulate my research around debates I had so patiently waited to speak of with authority, but I just could not bring myself to do it. I did not gift myself the luxury of picking a research topic that would interest me the most- I chose my topic to practise justice in the smallest way I knew how. Tera sutwaan jism hai tera Bot, ke jaan ab tak teri hai Your body remains yours-ramrod, erect. Speak out! For your life is still your own.13

“Young Muslim activists house demolished in India,”14 “Muslim teenager killed at a protest in India”15 “Muslims killed, more than 3000 arrested by police during protests against anti-Muslim citizenship laws”16 “No justice in sight for young Muslim boys Mohammad Sameer, 15, and Mohammad Saif, 16, killed during attacks in Delhi that cost 44 Muslim lives”17 “Man beaten to death by mob for being a Muslim in India”18 “Banning the hijab threatens access to education for Muslim girls in India”19 “22-year-old Muslim vendor tortured in Police station in India”20 The Indian state manufactures proof of its fascism in the form of blood and extreme violence inflicted on the Muslim body every day and it somehow is never enough proof. Stuck between a hateful population hellbent on the annihilation of Muslims, killing, lynching,

12 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Bol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faiza hm edafa izn ewtranslations.blogspot.com/2012/10/faiz-bol_30.html 13 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Bol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faiza hm eda fa izn ewtranslations.blogspot.com/2012/10 /faiz-bol_30.html 14https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/13/act-of-vendetta-afreen-fatima-on-her-house-bulldozed-in-india 15https://edition.enn.com/2022/06/22/india/muslim-teenager-shot-islam-protest-police-intl-hnk-dst/ind ex.html 16https://freepresskashmirnews/2022/02/17/23-muslims-killed-more-than-3000-arrested-by-up-policeduring-anti-caa-protests-report/ 17 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/the-living-memories-of-the-2020-delhi-riots-in-india 18 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/the-living-memories-of-the-2020-delhi-riots-in-india 19https://www.devex.com/news/in-india-hijab-ban-threatens-access-to-education-for-muslim-girls-103114 20https://maktoobmedia.com/2022/06/05/up-muslim-vendor-tortured-in-police-station-5-cops-booked/

murdering, dehumanising them and a state that not only enables but perpetuates this violence, Muslims in India today have no allies. We are our own allies. The constant struggle of my people against the violent homogenising nation-making made it important for me to challenge the narrative around it since the existing discourse is shaped through the interaction of Western colonial logics with the upper-caste Hindu majoritarian colonisation of the academic spaces. Dekh, ke tere aahangar ki dukaan mein Tund hai sholay, surkh hai aahan Look! How in your smithy’s forge flames soar; iron glows red.21 I have always liked my morning coffee bitter, but the taste of it has learned to sit on my tongue as a lingering feeling of all the words that I cannot spit out. ‘A little sugar would go a long way, Maano,’ baba has often said to me jokingly, in hopes of seeing his daughter speak from love, instead of anger against the world. But to me, anger is not the absence of love, it is a reaction to preserve the highest forms of love. Therefore, my thesis is an act of anger, in resistance to the colonial constructs of nation-states and the majoritarian Hindu (re)colonisation of India, and it is an act of love– love to those who are left on the fringes of this nation-making project, love to those who dare question this violent project, love to those who have been silenced by this project, love to those who refuse to become subjects of oppression. My thesis will look at the role of anti-Muslim violence in the contemporary Hindutva nation-making in India, as informed by Muslims in India. Khulne lage quflon ke dahaane Phailaa har ek zanjeer ka daaman How the locks have opened yaws and every chain, unlinked, now spreads.22 India has had a long history of being a multi-religious society, wherein Islam found its way into the Indian subcontinent through traders in the South and conquerors in the North dating all the way back to the 7th century AD (Engineer, 1991). The Indian subcontinent was ruled by the Muslim Mughal empire, before they were overpowered by the British during the colonial era. The British adopted a 'policy of neglect' against Muslims since they saw the Muslim population as a major threat to their rule in the subcontinent (Belkacem, 2007). Despite being the foremost anti-colonial force against the British, the Muslims were viewed through the lenses of doubt by the Indian National Congress, the political organisation spearheading the Indian freedom struggle. This added to the skepticism of Muslim leaders regarding the future of Muslims in the country after independence and thereby demands were made for a separate state– Pakistan. With independence from the British in 1947 came the partition of the Indian subcontinent into the Islamic state of Pakistan and the secular, democratic republic of India. While partition saw the biggest mass migration in the history of the world on both sides of the borders, many Muslims decided to 'stay' in India which they envisioned as their own country, such that today Muslims make up almost 15 percent of the country at around 200 million. Not long after the establishment of India, its democratic and secular values began eroding, wherein independent India became a breeding ground for militant Hinduism which has seen its surges at different points in time throughout the 1970s to the 2000s (Deshmukh, 2021). While there is a case to be made for the idea of India, that came into existence vis-avis the birth of Pakistan, to be unsecular and anti-Muslim since its inception, the coming of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party- the BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) into power in 2014 has

21 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Sol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faizahmedafaiznewtranslations.biogs pot.com/2012/10/faiz-bol_30.html 22 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Bol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faizahmedafaiznewtranslations.biogspot.com/2012/10/faiz-bol_30.html

accelerated the Hindu nation making project such that it has been actively adopted by the state. According to Kamat and Mathew (2003) the Hindu nation making project in India has its roots in the Hindutva movement which can be traced back to 1925 when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, literally, National Volunteer Corps) was founded for "propagating Hindu culture." The Hindutva movement is organised under the organisation called the Sangh, wherein RSS is the militant and ideological wing, and the BJP is the political wing. The primary objective of the RSS is the transformation of lndia into a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation) through the imposition of upper caste Hindu social and religious practices onto the diverse population of the country. Ideologically the premise of the Hindu Rashtra is based on the creation of two groups- insiders and outsiders, those who belong to the Hindu family and those who fall outside the fold of Hinduness. In the words of the Supreme Leader of the RSS, Golwalkar (1939):

“The foreign races in Hindusthan [India] must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, and must loose (sic) their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu

Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges far less any preferential treatment? not even citizen's rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for them to adopt.” "Foreign races," ironically here do not refer to the British who were the colonisers at the time, but to Muslims in the subcontinent. Thereby, at the crux of the establishment of a Hindu nation-state is an anti-Muslim sentiment, where Muslims are painted as "invaders" and "outsiders." The political wing of the Sangh, the BJP, voted into power in 2014 and then again in 2019 via vast majorities, is currently ruling the country. While lslamophobia has always been rampant in India, it is now state backed. Bol, yeh thodaa waqt bahut hai Jism-o-iubaan ki maut se pehle The short time left to you is enough. Speak up, before the body and its tongue give out.23 Muslims, the most marginalised community in India as per the report of Sachar Committee (2006), have embodied silence for centuries. The White Man's world teaches you to read silence as weakness because it operates to erase your voice and I was no exception to accepting that as the truth. However, Sara Motta's understanding of Silence (Motta, 2018) has taught me to listen to Silence–and more importantly, to view Silence as more than just absence of a voice. I rarely ever meet any Muslims from India in academic spaces and their absence is rendered in my mind as silence. If I do not speak, I have thought to myself, nobody will. The fear of my people being erased in silence sometimes is bigger than the fear of being erased altogether. I am used to others not speaking up for us, but my fears often translate into anger when I see that my own people constantly shy away from talking– they go out of their way to ask me to not be as loud about the horrors of the violence. This silence, the reluctance to talk, the absence from spaces, their protective urge towards my voice, made me look at Indian Muslims as cowards and hypocritical. But this silence has a name- it is called survival. The Hindu nation making has not only enforced Silence onto Muslims through physical violence, but it has also instilled Silence as a form of second nature onto Muslims. Sara Motta (2018) very rightfully puts it when she says, "[W]hen we dare to speak the truth of the violence, when we speak through the vulnerability and pain of our enfleshed experiences, we feel the full force of the Law and the Rational Truth. We are rendered mute as hysteric, liar, or deviant, or in the

23 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Bol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faizahmedafaiznewtranslations.blogspot.com/2012/10/faiz-bol_30.html

worst case, perpetrator." Dissent has been turned Seditious in India. All and any Muslim voices are under direct attack of the state for doing the bare minimum exposing the truth. As I write this paper, countless Muslim journalists, lawyers, academics, students, and activists are being actively harassed, intimidated, arrested by the State. Those who are not silent are being violently gagged and censored. Motta (2018) claims that silence is not the absence of knowingbeing- people whose bodies are used as sites of extreme violence for the expansion of a capitalist homogenising nation-state project are not oblivious to it, they understand the project better than the perpetrators of it. However, the ever-present threat of violent interventions onto the bodies of the community makes it not safe to speak. I have been raised on the Urdu proverb, ‘Jaan hai to Jahaan hai,’ which roughly translates to, ‘If you have a life, you have the world’, meaning a living body can do more for the community, than a dead one. Silence of the oppressed communities is not the death of their conscience, it is resistance. Sara Motta (2018) says that when permitted, speech is only allowed in the script of the 'master' such that the oppressed communities reduce themselves and reproduce their stories in categories that are used to name, shame, and tame them. My thesis is a deviation from the act of Silence as resistance, and I can choose this path only because of my immense privilege, therefore it becomes my responsibility to not reproduce in my work any colonial, capitalist, majoritarian structures of any of my oppressors. Conducting ethical research is a continuous practice and not a final act- I intend to do my part by bringing in acceptance of Refusal as explained by Tuck and Yang (2014). By virtue of my birth the story of Indian Muslims is also my story, but it is not a story I own. The same privilege that affords me the space and freedom to talk about the horrors of the nation making project while escaping the violent machinery of it, is also what distances me from telling the story with absolute authority. I am an outsider to the pain, sorrow, apprehensions, and fear of Indian Muslims- I am only an observer. I entered this research with the intention of not only challenging the dominant narratives around nation-making, but also documenting the stories of people that are constantly being erased by and drowned in state propaganda. However, as Tuck and Yang (2014) point out- damage centred research often leaves communities with a narrative that tells them they are broken without any actual reparations. According to the scholars, they do not mean to argue for Silence, but instead to make a distinction between different kinds of stories. While stories are meant to be passed along, not all of them as social science research. Making this distinction between the stories L hear during the journey of my research is important to practise Refusing. Refusal of research is not easy in this context, because social sciences have an obsession with inviting oppressed communities to speak only of their pain. However, no research is bigger than the people it tells the story about. Therefore, it is important to remember that at the end of the day the research is conducted for the people and not for the fulfilment of the researcher. Refusal is thus the true test of a researcher.

Bot, ke sach rindaa hai ab tak Bot, jo kuch kehnaa hai keh-Ie! Speak out, for truth still survives Speak out! Say whatever you have to say!24 Between Silence and Refusal, I aspire to use my anger to tum my thesis into a product of love.

lnquilab Zindabad! Long Live the Revolution!

24 Excerpt from the Urdu poem, Bol (Speak) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, alongside its English translation. Retrieved from http://faizahmedafaiznewtranslations.blogspot.com/2012/10/faiz-bol_30.html

References

Belmekki, B. (2007) ‘The impact of British Rule on the Indian Muslim Community in the nineteenth Century’, ES: Revista de filología inglesa, (28), pp. 27–46. Available at: http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/17339. Deshmukh, J. (2021) ‘Terrorizing Muslims: Communal Violence and Emergence of Hindutva in India’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 41(2), pp. 317-336, doi:10.1080/13602004.2021.1943884 Engineer, A. A. (1991). ‘Remaking Indian Muslim Identity’. Economic and Political Weekly, 26(16), pp. 1036-1038. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4397952 Golwalkar, M.S. (1939) We Or Our Nationhood Defined. Bangalore, India: Bharat Publications. Available at: https://sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/Misc/We-or-Our-Nationhood-Defined-Shri-M-S-Golwalkar.pdf. Kamat, S. and Mathew, B. (2003) ‘Mapping Political Violence in a Globalised World: The

Case of Hindu Nationalism’, Social Justice, 30(3 (93)), pp. 4–16. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29768205. Motta, S. C. (2018). Liminal subjects: weaving (our) liberations (Ser. Radical subjects in international politics). London Etc.: Rowman & Littlefield. Sachar Committee (2006) Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India. New Delhi: Cirrus Graphics Pvt. Ltd. Available at: https://www.minorityaffairs.gov.in/sites/default/files/sachar_comm.pdf. Tuck, E. and Yang, K.W. (2014) ‘R-Words: Refusing Research’, in Humanising Research:

Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities. SAGE Publications, Inc., pp. 223–247. doi:10.4135/9781544329611.

The Story Behind my Thesis: Plus-Size Black Women Healing from Anti-Blackness and Fatphobia Within the U.S Healthcare System and Society

By Nadia C.E. Ndiaye, Senegal and USA

Introduction

It was 10 am on a Wednesday, and I was in the Transitions for Social Justice Lab. Before the break, my course leader, Rosalba, reminded us to think about a story within our thesis for our final assignment. While she was explaining the specifics, my mind wandered. I asked myself “what is the story behind my thesis, and why am I writing about it?” But I could not remember. Once we went for a coffee break however I had the harsh reminder that I had not eaten anything since 4 pm the day before. My memories came flooding back. Throughout my life, my body and my race have been policed within the Western (specifically American) contexts I grew up in. Since the age of eight, I was always told to lose weight, in order to become closer to whiteness, closer to being accepted. As a consequence of years of unsolicited health advice and unsolicited comments regarding my appearance, I developed unhealthy habits with food and body image, and these habits became my coping mechanisms. When I decided that I wanted to be healthier and reject the Eurocentric beauty standards established in spite of my identity, I began researching how I can recover. While conducting research, I realised that it would be difficult for me, and people like me, to receive the psychological and physical treatment that we deserve. Based on my observations, plus-size Black women trying to receive treatment for eating disorders face intersectional discrimination due to their race, gender, and size (Jouwe 2015). I was devastated knowing that the institutions established to heal me will only further perpetuate the colonial ideologies that caused my pain (Motta 2018, p.7). That’s when I remembered why I chose this thesis topic. I wanted to use this intersectional injustice as the focus of my master’s thesis, with the aim to provide solutions on how to improve the human rights, including the human dignity, of marginalised bodies like my own. The Transitions for Social Justice Lab emphasises the importance of storytelling and utilising acts of liberation, such as learning, nurturing, and hosting. This story will interact with the act of healing, which leads to the central question: What exactly do racialised, gendered, and plus-size African American bodies need to heal from? This story will illustrate the need for plus-size, feminised, African American bodies to heal from the hateful dialogues attacking them, and the mistreatment they experience when seeking medical treatment due to racist and fatphobic approaches in medicine, especially for eating disorders. This story is important to me not only because it is one of my own personal stories, but because it is important to acknowledge the complex forms of pain that larger Black bodies in the Western world experience and take the appropriate steps towards the healing process. Larger femme-presenting Black bodies, as well as all (marginalised) bodies, must be given the right to health, the right to human dignity, and the right to heal from the long-term effects of colonial socio-economic and medical structures (Motta, 2018; Ureña, 2019). In order to better understand the story behind my thesis, the topic needs to be further explained and contextualised.

Contextualisation of thesis

My thesis will discuss the stories of the fatphobic, racist, and sexist discrimination experienced by plus-size Black Americans in the American healthcare system. The story of my thesis will take a human rights approach since it is examining how these forms of discrimination have negatively impacted the human dignity of larger African Americans. Specifically, through looking at the 151

violation of one’s access to health and the violations of one’s access to “all the rights and freedoms” (Harrison, 2018; Strings, 2019; Cowles, 2022; United Nations, 2020). Intersectionality – the primary theoretical framework for my master’s thesis – is characterised as the examination of how race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, etc. impact the privileges a person may (not) experience (Jouwe 2015). Another concept, and its accompanying social movement, relevant to the story of my thesis is the Body Neutrality Movement. Body neutrality focuses on having an intuitive relationship with your body through de-prioritising one’s physical appearance, while simultaneously appreciating your body and mind’s abilities (e.g your body’s ability to listen to music). Furthermore, body neutrality and the Body Neutrality Movement emphasise the importance of showing kindness, patience, and compassion towards yourself and your body (Fuller,2021; Kessel, 2018; Cowles, 2022). I chose the Body Neutrality Movement rather than the Body Positivity Movement to help share this story, considering that the Body Positivity Movement has erased the marginalised bodies that created the movement, and implicitly reinforced the importance of conforming to Eurocentric beauty ideals in order to feel valued. Consequently, larger (Black) people may be encouraged to continue with their disordered eating habits (Kessel, 2018; Fuller, 2021). The Body Neutrality Movement accentuates how healing requires discovering which healing processes are most compatible with your positionality. This reflects the dynamism and subjectivity within healing. Regardless of how subjective healing processes may be, the larger goal of freeing the larger and feminised Black body from the white male gaze is the priority (Motta, 2018). I felt as if this story needed to be told in academic spaces, for there is very little information linking the Body Neutrality Movement with human rights, especially when it involves the human dignity of marginalised bodies in the Western world. Telling the stories of how Black women like myself will not (or have not) receive full access to their human rights will help human rights academics further re-examine the contested interpretations and approaches to human dignity (Düwell, 2011; Daly and Barak, 2021; United Nations., 2020). Furthermore, the negative experiences of plussize Black women suffering with eating disorders illustrate how issues revolving around development do not only occur in the Global South, since the Global North’s inability to acknowledge the colonial wounds they have perpetrated onto their former colonised subjects (e.g. by devaluing their bodies) are causing problems in the development sector, such as access to adequate healthcare (Ureña, 2019; Strings, 2019; United Nations, 2020).

Healing from fatphobic and anti-Black discourses in the United States

Larger and femme-presenting African American bodies need to heal from the problematic discourses that were made to dehumanise and disparage them. These fatphobic, racist, and misogynistic narratives targeting Black women were utilised to strengthen the colonial identity of Anglo-Saxon settlers (especially women settlers) in the United States, and these discourses were established by popular magazines in the 1800s (Strings 2019). Popular American magazines, aimed at women, spewed their horrid beliefs that larger Black women cannot be humanised because we were simply not human. In actuality, 1800s America viewed curvaceous Black women as lazy “pigs” because they differed from white societies and their white gazes (Strings, 2019; Motta 2018). Magazines like Harper’s Bazar represent how colonial wounds can be created, and how they are in fact “the epistemic rupture enacted by the European encounter in the Americas, […] which resulted in the devaluing of [the] non-European” (Strings, 2019; Ureña, 2019). These beliefs also imply that Black women in the West need to assimilate to whiteness, including thinness, in an attempt to decrease our dehumanisation (Motta, 2018; Strings, 2019). Assimilating to whiteness through thinness can have dangerous consequences, from substance abuse to severe eating disorders (Kessel 2018). These explanations help us “make sense of the traumas inflicted upon” African American women and Black women in the Western world, yet it is not a justification for our trauma (Motta 2018). Thankfully, body neutrality is a healing tool that enables us to comprehend the functions of 152

our bodies and how they work beyond “the White patriarchal gaze of capitalist-coloniality” (Motta, 2018). For instance, the Body Neutrality Movement reminds us to be appreciative of our bodies’ ability to show empathy towards ourselves, others, and the environments in which we live in (Dall’Asen, 2021). Moreover, this social movement encourages us to listen to our bodies’ needs, such as our bodies’ need to rest from daily hardships (which includes institutional oppression) through sleeping or practicing acts that will bring us inner peace (Kessel, 2018; Fuller, 2021). An example of an act that can provide inner peace is the act of being in silence. Being in silence, rather than being silenced, is “a weapon, a tactic of survival, and a place of possibility” (Motta, 2018) that can occur without confronting the colonisers who are unable to even acknowledge the pain they have caused African American women like me (Ureña, 2019). In the context of healing from fatphobia and its racist origins, an example of being in silence can be expressing words of affirmation to ourselves and other larger, feminine, and racialised bodies. We must remind ourselves that our beauty and value come from the resilience of our ancestors who gave us strength and enabled us to survive up to now. We must use our words of encouragement to go beyond Eurocentric understandings of beauty and health, for we know that these understandings were established to minimise our existence. That being said, mentioning the counterarguments to being in silence is significant towards sharing this story of healing, in order to demonstrate how diverse healing is as an act of liberation. Ureña’s article mentions how Frantz Fanon approaches healing through “break[ing] the silence of the wound” by expressing his resentment towards colonialist hierarchies yet mentions how this form of healing did lead “to a wall of miscommunication” (Ureña, 2019). Personally, I believe a combination of both Fanon’s and Motta’s approaches to healing could be beneficial for those who resonate with this story. I believe voicing our frustrations towards social and institutional systems that function at the expense of (larger) Black people is the first step to obtaining justice and gaining proper access to our human rights. As mentioned by Ureña, this form of advocacy does not guarantee social and institutional reform (Ureña, 2019). Therefore, we must work on ourselves and within our communities because we, our ancestors, and our descendants, deserve structural and personal justice no matter what.

Healing from the United States fatphobic and racist approaches to health

Racialised, gendered, and plus-size African American individuals need to heal from the pain caused by American practices and approaches to health. The United States medical care system – alongside American society, politics, culture, and economics – continues the legacy of dehumanising the Other’s body by assuming that Black women do not feel (as much) pain as white people, therefore our pain is undermined and overlooked (Ureña, 2019; Taylor, 2020). Plus-sise Black women who are suffering from eating disorders are further neglected. This is because the health sector has embedded fatphobia into their system, thus making it incredibly difficult for larger women with eating disorders to seek treatment. This is illustrated through an array of real-life scenarios, from prioritising weight loss during eating disorder treatments to being denied insurance coverage due to not fitting the stereotypical characteristics of eating disorder patients (Muhlheim, 2021; Strings, 2019; ASDAH 2022), The Body Mass Index (BMI) is another example of why healing needs to occur within larger Black women along with the US medical system (Harrison 2018). This medical system uses the white male coloniser’s body as the standard for health, which puts larger people’s health in jeopardy. This is especially true for Black women since they are genetically able to be healthy at heavier weights (Lowen 2019). Convincing marginalised bodies that they are unhealthy based on the fatphobic and racist ideologies used to create an inaccurate medical tool can lead to people unnecessarily fixating on weight loss, and subsequently developing dangerous eating behaviors (Ureña, 2019; Harrison, 2018; Lowen, 2019). As a result, stories regarding the intersectional and medical violence against racialised and gendered bodies will continue to be produced.

Given our juxtaposition to whiteness and the patriarchy, plus-size Black women in the West have their humanity questioned and denied (Motta 2018). This reflects how, as Fanon experienced, the medical field rejects knowledge that “exceed[s] the perceived boundaries of the discipline” for not aligning with its problematic “classification systems” (Ureña, 2019). There are various possible healing solutions for this socio-institutional problem. One of Frantz Fanon’s approaches to healing “highlights the importance of nurturing relationships that are not rendered pathological by oppressive hierarchical systems” which include “healing the physical, affective, and epistemological wounds of anti-black racism” (Ureña, 2019). The Body Neutrality Movement reflects this approach since it rejects the idea that one should love their body based on how their body fits into oppressive standards of beauty while prioritising intuitive living (Harrison, 2018; Dall’Asen, 2021). The Body Neutrality Movement also symbolises the possibility of taking proactive initiatives to challenge the coloniality within contemporary social and medical systems that are tailored to degrade non-white, noncisgender, non-straight, and non-thin people, such as re-educating ourselves about what it means to be in good health alongside advocating for the demolishment of medical practices that harm larger (Black) communities (Ureña, 2019; ASDAH, 2022b).

Conclusion

It is now 10 pm on a Wednesday, and although the Transitions for Social Justice Lab is over, my healing journey has just begun. My story, and the story of other plus-size Black women in the West, demonstrates our need to heal from colonial narratives and practices that are racist and fatphobic. We can heal through using body neutrality, advocating for our rights, being in silence with ourselves and our communities, and/or unlearning colonial understandings of health and beauty. This journey can expand in many ways. For example, this story can dive into the correlations between healing and refusing, such as refusing the idea that only smaller white bodies are entitled to human dignity when being medically treated. Hopefully, the story behind my thesis is just the start of a larger story about achieving social and racial equality in America’s social and medical sectors. Because the world deserves to heal. We deserve to heal. I deserve to heal.

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