Abolitionist & Decolonial Methodologies

 

 

As a disclaimer before diving in, both abolitionist and decolonial methodologies are complex, evolving theories and practices with rich literatures. This guide includes only a preliminary overview of each of them as an encouragement to those who are interested in radical approaches to research and teaching to dig in further. 

Abolition has its roots in the original anti-slavery movements. But it continues today in response to the ongoing oppression of Black people in the United States and beyond. Tuck and Yang (2018) contend that contemporary abolitionism “is shaking the anitblack institutions that underwrite whiteness as property, that sanction murder, captivity, torture, and disposal: namely, the prison industrial complex” (p. 9).

A painted wall with silhouettes of the “Justice” figure and a raised fist with the words, Economic Justice for All People, Political Power, and Community Control.
Image by Sarahmirk via Wikimedia Commons.
 In the context of the university, Sandy Grande (2018) contends that settler colonial and white supremacist structures, among which she includes US higher education, rely upon recognition as the means of solving historical and contemporary inequality and injustice, and yet “recognition” presupposes the legitimate authority of those oppressive structures. Grande writes, “since the settler university can only ‘remove to replace,’ it was not long before the revolutionary and redistributive aims of Black radicalism were supplanted and absorbed within the political project of liberal pluralism, transposing the anti-capitalist critique with a politics of recognition” (p. 56). Grande calls instead for “refusal” as the mode of resistance for BIPOC students, researchers, and others.

Decolonial methodologies for teaching and research assert that the structures, hierarchies, and methodologies of the academic setting (among other sites) are designed to perpetuate the scaffolding that shores up settler colonialism and white supremacy while tacitly undermining Indigenous and other knowledge systems and ways of organizing and understanding the world. As Scott Lauria Morgenson (2012) asserts, “By exposing normative knowledge production as being not only non-Indigenous but colonial, [Indigenous methodologies] denaturalize power within settler societies and ground knowledge production in decolonization. … Whereas ‘activism’ in a settler society may invest social justice in state rule, decolonization anticipates that rule’s end” (p. 805). In the face of massive inequality and environmental collapse, the question of envisioning the end to colonialist mindsets is not merely an academic one. 

The experiences of Black and Native American peoples in the United States vary but their oppressions both stem from logics of settler colonialism. Patrick Wolfe (2006) argues that “Indians and Black people in the US have been racialized in opposing ways that reflect their antithetical roles in the formation of US society.” As Wolf describes, Black people’s enslavement was vital to the economic success of white settlers and so any relationship to Blackness made one perpetually Black, “fully racialized in the ‘one-drop rule.’” The existence of Native Americans, in contrast, was perceived by settler colonialists as a threat to white economic dominance or, as Wolfe writes, “As opposed to enslaved people, whose reproduction augmented their owners’ wealth, Indigenous people obstructed settlers’ access to land, so their increase was counterproductive” (p. 387-88).

The histories of peoples oppressed by white supremacy and settler colonialism thus overlap and diverge in crucial ways. One can imagine an addition to Wolfe’s formulation that considers the experience of various immigrant groups and Chicano/as and others whose ancestors have long occupied lands even as national borders have changed around them. Indeed, Laura Pulido (2018) has made the case that Chicano/a researchers need to reconcile the colonization of Chicano/a people alongside Chicano/a’s history of colonizing Indigenous peoples. She writes, “Here, we must draw on our most sophisticated understanding of place—how to understand a region as a palimpsest, a border zone, and a boundary simultaneously?” (p. 314). Recognizing these divergences and overlaps between Black, Native American, and others’ experiences under settler colonialism can deepen the complexity and rigor of work with students and community partners. They also underscore the necessity that work for and with communities is developed in partnership with community stakeholders to ensure that the work is not extractive or otherwise re-perpetuating systems of oppression. Faculty should also be careful of taking academic knowledge about intersecting systems and histories of oppression and “lecturing” community members about their own history and experiences. In short, this work is complicated but that makes it all the more important to do.

Faculty Efforts

 

University of Oregon faculty have been doing community-engaged learning and participatory action research alongside tribal partners and Indigenous elders and wisdom-keepers.Their work provides helpful examples of doing teaching and research grounded in decolonial and/or abolitionist methodologies.

 

 

Going Further

Working in abolitionist and/or decolonial methodologies can be productive for scholars and teachers engaged in PAR and community-engaged learning. For those just starting in this kind of research and teaching, structuring in this way may be a valuable starting point for reframing your work and its goals. For all, decolonial methodologies help to break down the rigid academic hierarchies that reify who does, can, and should hold knowledge and power.
Native American elder in regalia lifts up her hand.
 Kyle Whyte, Chris Caldwell and Marie Schaefer (2018) endorse the notion of “collectives” as a counter to the dominant hierarchies and systems, including the notion of Indigenous peoples as locked in historical amber: “Indigenous and settler collectives overlap, have borderlands, and hybrid social formations that have different expectations of the terms of negotiation and diplomacy.” (Grande [2018] also concludes her essay with a similar suggestion.) Whyte, Caldwell, and Schaefer (2018) add, “For many Indigenous peoples, collectives are not anthropocentric. That is, they do not exclude animals, plants, and ecosystems as members with the responsibilities of active agents in the world. In many cases, plants, animals, and ecosystems are agents bound up in moral relationships of reciprocal responsibilities with humans and other non-humans” (p. 155). What would it mean for teaching and research to think in terms of collectives rather than hierarchies? Of reciprocal relationships rather than “us” doing something for “them”? How can your teaching and research, in collaboration with community partners, shift the world away from white supremacy and settler colonialism and toward Black liberation and decolonization? Decolonial and abolitionist methodologies help frame, answer, and forward these questions.

Further Reading

 

  • “Decolonial Theory and Methodology,” Andrea Riley Mukavetz. Composition Studies, 2018.

 

  • “Rethinking Knowledge Systems for Urban Resilience: Feminist and Decolonial Contributions to Just Transformations,” Katinka Wijsman and Mathieu Feagan. Environmental Science and Policy, 2019.

 

  • Toward What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. Eds. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Routledge, 2018.