Maria Cotera and Andrea Smith offer
different pathways to bring together the struggles of people facing different
kinds of oppression, in a manner that does not try to assimilate them into a
singular form of oppression or resistance. Their work aims at producing theoretical
and activist collaboration between different political struggles in a way that
respects the particularities of each resistance, while acknowledging the ways
in which narrowly defined goals may serve to increase oppression for another group.
They introduce a few key concepts that delineate how one can think across such
differences. Cotera (2008) introduces the concepts of collaboration, writing in
borderlands, and a praxis of love. Smith (2006) discusses approaching the
issues surrounding the organizing of people of color by looking at the three
different dimensions of white supremacy. These include slavery/capitalism,
genocide/capitalism, and imperialism/war.
Cotera’s book brings into dialogue three
literary figures situated in different political movements against the US
imperial state, Nora Zeale Hurston, Jovita González, and Ella Deloria (Cotera
2008). They show the ways in which structures of domination affect the most intimate
spheres of people’s lives, especially the lives of women. Cotera argues that these works provides a strong
critique of a patriarchal epistemology that tries to remove intimacy and love
from theoretical works, by deeming it to be merely “women’s work” (227). She
shows how these authors open up the possibility of collaboration through co-authorship
of texts, as well as, working across different kinds of boundaries like
rural-urban, class, race, and colonizer-colonized. These women authors chose to
write fiction to break the limits imposed by the rules of ethnography, to show
how intimate encounters across difference can also work towards social
transformation (231). Ultimately, Cotera calls for a passionate praxis by
scholars which encompasses collaborations across difference, and tries to
imagine new genealogies based on a “multi-vocal constituency” (231). This is
key to a transformative project, as it undermines the singular subject of
Western thought, and allows for all the multiple voices of the marginalized to
be expressed.
This multi-vocal constituency however,
can run into problems around actual activist organizing and Smith (2006)
addresses these issues through her rubric of the three pillars of white
supremacy. She speaks about the dismantling of the entire structure of
heteropatriarchy that characterizes any modern state, like the US (73). A
struggle against such a state involves uniting in a manner that acknowledges
the ways in which the struggle against any one pillar of white supremacy may
cause oppression to continue in another dimension. For e.g. a US centrist
approach to indigenous struggles, where people join the American army
propagates imperialism abroad (69). Thus, being aware of these interconnections
of the struggle is key to producing social transformation that does not replace
one oppressor with another (72).
I find that the idea of collaborative
texts, and forming nuanced connections between political struggles is
particularly useful in envisioning a practical approach to the project of decolonizing
theory and practice. It shows how even in a politics of resistance, if one does
not actively account for difference, then the movement can continue to
perpetuate oppression. Secondly, producing texts authored by a single subject equally
plays into the idea of the individual subject as the center of policy, and
transformation. However, this is a fiction as no text is ever produced by a
single subject, similarly no change is ever wrought by single “hero” figures.
Discussion
questions:
1. Can collaboration be effective even when
among authors who have similar positionality with respect to race, gender, and
citizenship? Is it only effective across difference?
2. Can collaborations produce ways to
challenge the heteropatriarchal State, whether through writing or activism?
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