On decolonial critical homeworks

IN decolonial and related thought circles there is a lot of thinking and talking about “safe spaces” and “safe languages.”

Awareness of social justice issues and consciousness of the need for struggles for liberations is prevalently being referred to as being “woke” in simple reference to being “awakened” to injustices and “informed” of the need for struggles.

Safe spaces and safe languages are more than simple political correctness or politeness but are a serious process of creating an environment at work and at home where everyone can feel not only free but also dignified.

Wokeness therefore becomes the critical homework of all decolonial and other activists in ensuring that the humanity and identity of every human being is not minimised in word and in deed.

Rules of grammar are frequently being challenged and being expanded to contain increasing Wokeness.

For instance, talking about “oppression” is considered being rigid and self-centred of any activist. “Oppressions” is the word that is becoming accepted as it signifies that there is no one form of oppression but a multiplicity of them.

Some people are oppressed on the grounds that they are black in a white ruled world, others on the grounds that they are women in a world controlled by men, and others on the grounds that they suffer certain inabilities of body and mind, yet others on the grounds of being poor in a world where wealth means life itself. For that reason, Wokeness deciphers that there are oppressions and not just oppression.

There are dominations not just a singular domination. It follows therefore that there is no one liberation struggle but liberation struggles that seek liberations from oppressions and dominations of different kinds.

To declare one big liberation struggle that does not have “Wokeness” to the fact that there are different oppressions and dominations is to be oppressive in that one creates an unsafe space and uses unsafe language towards those whose oppressions and dominations are not taken into account.

Wokeness demands an intersectionality of thinking where one is able to think of and understand many directions and dimensions of oppression and liberation at the same time.

A black woman, for instance, is marginalised and oppressed in the world first as a black person, secondly as a woman and then as a black woman under the oppressive authority of black men, she is less than a white woman in the hierarchy of oppressions and dominations. Two feminists, one black and another white, have a difference of race and that of class between them and so they experience different dominations and marginalisations even if they can forge solidarity in their struggles. A white feminist can still enjoy superiority over and even oppress a black man.

Wokeness entails the ability to understand intersections and layers of oppressions and dominations; and the ability to understand that there can be oppressors amongst the oppressed.

A black man who is marginalised and exploited at work for the reason that he is black is a victim of racism and possibly that of class domination. When the same men abuses his wife and kids at home he becomes an oppressor who practices violent partriarchy in his family.

A person who is oppressed in one department of life may himself or herself be an oppressor in other provinces of life.

There is no permanent oppressor and permanent oppressed persons. An awareness of this crisscrossing of oppressions and dominations, and how they overlap into each other is referred to as “intersectionality.” The awareness that one’s oppression is not the only oppression and that one’s struggle for liberation from domination and oppression is not the only struggle is being woke by virtue of possessing intersectional consciousness.

The awareness that there can be domination and oppression within a liberation struggle is fine critical Wokeness. Amongst comrades there might be solidarity but that solidarity does not erase inequalities.

Wokeness in students Activism education. Feminist students who carried out protests within the protests by demanding an end to gender-based harm and the rape culture at the university campuses made news. Within the same protests, students that have disabilities of body and mind staged their own protests demanding an end to ableism. Some foreign students had posters that demanded an end to xenophobia and nativism.

University workers that were marching alongside the students demanded an end to outsourcing and permanent work contracts for their members. Memorably, the Sasco leadership let out a huge cry, asking comrades not to divide the movement and sabotage the struggle by making minor demands when big demands were afoot, such demands as Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall!

The protesters within the protests would have none of that, they demanded that Sasco should learn to be woke and practice intersectionality, that is push for the abolition of all different oppressions at the same time, not privilege a few oppressions as the only injustices. Fees was found to be oppressive and exploitative of poor black students. The statue of Cecil John Rhodes and other colonial symbols in university campuses were found to be offensive and alienating.

But all that did not mean that struggles against rape culture, sexual harassment, the marginalisation of the disabled and exploitative work contracts for general workers were supposed to be post-poned.

Unsafe Languages: “Inspiration Porn.”

To indulge in “inspiration pornography” on disabled peoples is to watch their success as an able-bodied it person and use it as your personal motivation that you can even do better. The safe thing to do is to admit that, as they say, disability does not mean inability, and that disability does not cancel one’s humanity.

In one incident academics were having a seminar that sparked a heated debate. After a female disabled academic had finished her heated contribution and was readying herself for questions from the floor, a colleague of hers in form of a well-meaning male professor asked to say a word, and he started his contribution by saying “what she is trying to say is….”

Throughout her presentation the same male academic had been jotting little notes and pushing them towards her, probably to help her in her articulation of issues. He had to leave the seminar room rather very fast as feminists in the audience felt he was using unsafe language and creating an unsafe space by patronising a female intellectual who can think and speak for herself in her chosen area of expertise.

He was accused of trying to own her black and brilliant mind by pretending to interpret her thinking when he was just trying to say women, or disabled peoples do not think properly on their own and they need the assistance of men and able bodied individuals.

Most unsafe language is used, and most unsafe spaces are created, by well-meaning people that are simply blind to their own oppressiveness and dominance.

The Decolonial Critical Homework The knowledge that every one of us is a potential oppressor is perhaps the beginning of decolonial wisdom. The understanding that there is an oppressor in each one of us is important. To be sensitive to other people’s oppressions and to our own power and privilege that we can use against others is even more important.

Decolonial critical homework is the liberatory and humanising courage to go inside our mindsets and heartsets to deal with the oppressor in us before we confront the oppressor outside. In that way we can be able to use safe language and create safe spaces for other people around us.

Sometimes, in thinking that we are being kind to the poor, sympathetic to the disabled and supportive to the oppressed, we use languages and carry out practices that enhance rather than undo their unfortunate conditions. How liberating to others is our daily language? And how humanising and empowering to others are our daily conducts and practices? Both these are serious decolonial questions to ask ourselves on a daily basis. Mabhena South