This week, at the
same time as I was assigned to read “Decolonizing Methodologies”, I was also
assigned to read many essays by Michel Foucault in another course. This was a
happy coincidence, as I actually found many similarities between the
methodologies used by Linda Tuhiwai Smith and the methodologies used by
Michel Foucault. One major similarity between the two authors is their practice
of ‘critiquing the unseen’ and ‘making visible the invisible’. A major focus of
both of their works is to bring to light the ways in which structures which
have become hegemonic in our modern lives were built and enforced.
In
a famous debate with Noam Chomsky, we watch Michel Foucault turn questions around
throughout the debate – rather than answering questions about reason or human
nature, he insists on questioning why ‘reason’ is such a dominant way or
knowing and dissecting the origins of scientific and philosophical concerns
about human nature. In his writings, he uses a thorough examination of European
history to describe the origins of many modern ways of thinking and living. Rather
than simply using the typical ‘tools’ of philosophers (such as reason), he critiques
the very existence and value of these tools.
In
a very similar way, I see Linda Tuhiwai Smith as using the first section of her
work to critique the very tools that researchers are expected to use in their
work. This makes her work self-conscious and self-critical in an exciting way:
She is using writing and using history, the very tools which have been used to
oppress indigenous peoples, to shine light upon the oppression of indigenous
peoples. In academia, we have come to take writing and research for granted as
the highest forms of scholarly inquiry. Smith uses a historical view of the
colonization of indigenous peoples to highlight the origins of European
understandings of writing, ‘history’, and research and critique the many
imperfections of these concepts. This is the similarity I find between Smith
and Foucault – using a historical inquiry to deconstruct structures which have
become so hegemonic that they are taken for granted and almost invisible. In
some ways I do see this as using the ‘masters tools’ to ‘dismantle the master’s
house’ – although perhaps Smith would disagree with me there, seeing as she
quotes Audre Lorde on the very first page of Chapter 1 (‘the masters tools will
never dismantle the master’s house’).
This
methodology used by Smith could be very relevant to my own work. My research
focuses on LGBTQ, immigrant and disabled communities (and especially upon
people at the intersections of those communities). Each of these communities are faced with ‘dominant
culture’ narratives about them that are often untrue and used to devalue their
knowledge and ways of knowing. For example, majority views of disability state
that disability is a Bad thing and an objective/essential individual deficit.
This makes it challenging for disabled scholars to create work about
alternative understandings of disability (which ring much more true for us) –
we will always be going against the hegemonic views. It is the mission of
Critical Disability Studies (similar to Critical Race Studies or Critical
Feminism) to take a close look at these hegemonic structures and deconstruct
them in our work. In my former work as an occupational therapist, I was using
dominant culture methodologies to understand and write about disability (using
the ‘medical model’), in my new work in Critical Disability Studies, I must
find new (‘decolonized’, if you will) methodologies for looking at the disabled
community.
Discussion Questions:
1.
I see many parallels between the ways in which
colonization subjugated indigenous people and the ways that heteronormative ‘majority’
culture has subjugated queer people. For example, both systems of oppression
use writing, research, education systems and media to accomplish their aims.
Colonization is also directly to blame in many cases – for example, many
indigenous cultures had additional genders or understanding of genders that
were considered acceptable. Colonization deemed these understanding
unacceptable and suppressed them. My
question is: To what extent can queer and trans communities use decolonizing
practices like those that Smith describes to promote self-determination and
empowerment? How can research on queer and trans communities be ‘decolonized’?
2.
As in the above question, I also see large
applications of the decolonizing practices Smith describes to the disabled
community and other marginalized groups. However, I wonder, to what extent
might a borrowing of ‘decolonization’ practices (especially by white/European
descent folks such as myself) represent the same kind of appropriation and
cultural stealing that Smith criticizes in her book?
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