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Niamh Cuddy - Positionalities and Emplacements

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Niamh Cuddy - Positionalities and Emplacements

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My mapping shows some of the new learnings I have gained so far and their interrelated and compounding influence on how I continue to view the world in all new ways.

Coming into this course, I would have thought I was a lot further down the line in my understanding of the structures that uphold colonialism and white supremacy and how they interact with the everyday experience. In hindsight, I was only knocking on the door.

I did my undergrad in Economics, Politics and Law here in Dublin. Throughout this course, my mind keeps going back to various modules that replicate and reinforce the White-Eurocentric understandings of the world—a viewpoint I can see now with the benefit of hindsight.  For example, when I took a module in Development Economics, we were taught to view the IMF as an institution of integrity, a structure essential in achieving financial cooperation. My lecturer attempted to include dissenting academics from South America, yet the majority of readings were all in favour and glorified the works of the IMF. Looking back, there wasn’t an equal platform that enabled any means of a counter-narrative that discussed the origins of the “centre-periphery” structure or why such fundamental power imbalances existed in the first place and exactly who such a system truly benefitted. How can an institution hail its ability in developing students critical thinking skills if they’re failing to provide the full scope and context to the subjects they’re teaching?

The tools this course provides better enable me to really question the institutions and not take any information, no matter how it seems to come from a position of authority, as default and true, but rather see it for what it is, a chosen narrative.

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For me decolonization is an action word and I began before I even became aware of the language to describe it. The process of unlearning was bookmarked by a moment in the classroom for me. In high school, I sat in my Advanced placement class (one of the two Black girls taking AP Government) and watched as my high school teacher began playing a video. In it several people discuss the harm of affirmative action. She switched the video off as it ends and continues on, lecturing us on why this legal action for equitable university placement was in fact discrimination. My blood boiling, I raise my hand and make a series of emphatic statements about the legitimacy of Affirmative Action and the need for equity in the university. At the same time, in my AP literature course, we read the Heart of Darkness. My high school teacher has us read sections aloud and she speaks excitedly about discovering African through this work. Again as the only Black, only African person in the room the unease grows.

Growing up in a staunchly racialized - city, state, country - the work of placement (placing yourself l) begins as soon as you become aware of the hierarchy you are born into. My consciousness only grows as I continue into and through my education.

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Inés Peralta Agüero. Positionalities and Emplacements.

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Inés Peralta Agüero. Positionalities and Emplacements.

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I really struggled to find a way to visually portrait all the things that have been going through my mind these past weeks. I’m trying to think of this as a ‘work in progress’ and let go of the final result for a minute, to at least put down in words what I’m thinking. I have been intentionally going back to the things I learned during my Eurocentric education at school and university as well as trying to better understand where I come from, analysing also my family genealogy, which is something we never really discussed at home.

When thinking about my positionalities and emplacements in relation to the political projects emerging from others' journeys and struggles, the first thing I realise is that I am living in a constant tension.

Through the reading in this module, I’ve been able to deepen the analysis on my personal journey and the embodiment of my experiences. Particularly, Juliet Hooker’s text has allowed me to question my personal experiences and learnings. During most of my life and particularly through my catholic education, I learned to feel compassion towards those who face difficulties -economic or otherwise. The term ‘solidarity’ was frequently used, mostly to talk about donations, but never to discuss the possibility of creating real change in other people’s reality. Hooker’s approach was particularly useful to think about solidarity as “an ethical orientation that moves us to action”. I can see that this was definitely not the case on the way I thought of indigenous communities, for example.

I grew up in a low-middle class family in a small city in Argentina and I saw my parents struggle and work hard to give us a better future. Naturally, this upbringing had an inherent idea of meritocracy behind, that I was only able to see for what it was a couple of years ago.

When I was 17 I received a full 'merit' scholarship to study in one of Argentina’s most prestigious (and expensive) universities. Right after I graduated, I was hired to work at one of the best companies in the world. Needless to say, I have struggled with what is commonly known as ‘Impostor Syndrome’ ever since, always feeling out of place, not good enough. In order to survive that self-consciousness, I realise now I have used meritocracy as a tool to overcome that shame and build my self-esteem. Believing that I had earned everything I have today has helped me feel more adequate and confident.

Regarding the different political projects I got involved with, I believe the first cause I joined was feminism, probably because it was the experience that stood out in my life as a personal struggle. It was easy for me to relate to the injustice created by gender inequalities so I was comfortable fighting for that and being vocal about it.

My experiences living outside of my country (both in Mexico and in Ireland) have also created a tension in me. On the one hand, I learned what it felt like to be an immigrant, but I was also always aware of how privileged I was for being ‘the right kind’ of immigrant: a young white professional working for a top company.

I only ever started identifying as a white latina when I moved to Ireland two years ago, when the huge difference between my experience and that of brown or black latinxs became more evident for me. This also had to do with the fact that I started getting more involved in learning about racial inequalities after George Floyd’s murder and the subsquent raise on awarness around this topics through the Black Lives Matter movement.

During this time in Ireland I have also been confronted more closely with a narrative quite common in Spain, where colonisation is seen as a historical process of developing true civilisation in Latin America.

When I mentioned the idea of ‘tension’ before, I think what I mean is that the more I learn about these topics, the harder it is for me to understand what my place and my role are. I identify as a white latina, but I am also deeply aware of how privileged I am today, even compared to most white Europeans. So while I stand in solidarity with the Latinx community and while I want to fight against socio-economic, gender and racial inequalities I am still very uncomfortable because I can’t fully define what my role in these struggles is.

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Mina Abida. Positionalities and Emplacements 

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Mina Abida. Positionalities and Emplacements 

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"To suggest things may be going on in our brains that we aren't fully conscious of, that we unknowingly make classist, sexist and racist presumptions… Well there aren't many comfortable ways to take that. And in the face of discomfort comes the mask of defence". I discovered these words from the actress Micheala Coel in a interview she gave three years ago. It is true that it feels better not to question the way our world works. It is scary to unlearn the narratives that have forged our identities. My mapping is all about challenging these narratives in order to position myself in a more open-minded, diverse and intersectional space. The bottom of my map represents all the knowledges and struggles I am standing on, as well as some of the colonial inheritances I internalized and accepted all my life. You can find elements from my two previous maps. Above them I represented the new knowledges, ideas and goals I am starting to develop. These new projects will help me position myself as a better feminist, activist and educator for the future. I have to turn to these and rebuild the ground I walked on for so long, so that I can (re)locate myself in a world that has many stories to tell instead of just one.

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I see my participation in Irish-speaking environments at primary and secondary level education as analogous to the knowledge projects of post-colonial cultures that are in the process of reclaiming their indigenous languages, however, I also recognise that growing up in a country where reclaiming the native language is supported by both education policies and the public, I am in a privileged position unlike other aforementioned postcolonial nations which lack one or the other.

As of 2018 there are over 40,000 students attending gaelscoileanna (primary level) and 11,000 students attending gaelcholaistí (secondary level) in Ireland. According to the CSO 2016 there are over 900,000 children living in Ireland aged between 5 and 18 this means that the amount of children in Irish speaking primary and secondary schools represent approximately 0.06% of their age cohort. As of 2020 there are 22,391 students attending Level 1 Maori medium schools in New Zealand, these are schools in which 81% to 100% of the curriculum is taught in Māori. According to the Independent Childrens Monitor of New Zealand there are 297,000 Māori children under the age of 18 living in New Zealand. This means approximately 0.08% of Māori children attend Māori-speaking schools. This is slightly more than the amount of Irish children attending Irish speaking schools, however, the Māori community of New Zealand faces a difficult task in getting the nation as a whole to reclaim this language as they are a minority community, and the majority of the public do not have a connection to this language in regards to their heritage and ancestry. The majority of people living in Ireland, however, do have a connection to the native tongue of the country and are therefore more willing to reclaim it as a whole.

In other post-colonial countries the situation is even more dire, for example, in Canada there are no schools yet that have curriculums taught mostly or completely through an indigenous language. Consequently, a number of the indigenous languages still in existence in Canada (of which there are approximately between 60 and 90) are in danger of becoming endangered or already endangered.

I think that it is an important part of the decolonizing process to move the centre away from the English language as a default language for English-speaking post-colonial nations. Ceapaim go d’fheadfaí Gaeilge a úsáid mar uirlis san próiseas seo chun féiniúlacht nua a chruthú don tír, a faigheann réidh lenár oidhreachtaí coilíneacha, ach ag an ám chéanna mothaím gur baol é a cuireann seo thabhairt do náisiúnachas. [I think that the Irish language could be a good tool in this process in order to create a new identity for the country that discards our colonial inheritances, but at the same time I feel that this risks inviting nationalism.] So on the one hand, I consider myself privileged to be living in a country that supports reclaiming the country’s indigenous language both on the level of governmental support and support from the public, however, I am concerned that it is not possible to disconnect the Irish language from nationalist tendencies, and that this problematizes Ireland’s ability to form an identity that discards eurocentric and colonial inheritances.

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Positionalities and Emplacements. Alison Dobson

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Positionalities and Emplacements. Alison Dobson

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At the beginning of this semester this map would’ve looked a lot different. I would have ignorantly thought that I was a lot further down ‘the path’, closer to the orange side in: understanding, expanding my knowledge, hearing other perspectives and even moving the center. However, now looking back I’m only just beginning.

While I was exposed to certain peripheral voices during my university education it wasn’t nearly enough and much of what I learned was dominated by Eurocentric thought and voices. Not only that but when I did get to hear or study these marginalized voices, much of the work I did at the time was just in absorbing what I was being told, taking it as truth and never questioning it or applying it in a broader context.

I never thought to take what was being fed to me and apply it to the world around me to create a new lens through which I could see how the world operates and where I fit in to all of that. Again, I can see now my own ‘white innocence’. Because of how these subjects focused on colonialism in the French context I always saw the issues that were presented as ‘someone else’s’ problem as opposed to taking what was being taught to me and applying it to see the atrocities at my own doorstep in terms of direct provision or just general racism in Ireland.

This class has been the beginning of that journey for me; moving the center, trying to shatter this Eurocentric lens that operates as my default and that creates this sense of white innocence. I want to try and see-through new eyes.

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I really struggled how to visually conceptualize this mapping. I think at some level I will always be within the confines of euro-centric thought and knowledge systems and more specifically, American-centric thought and knowledge systems. I tried to visualize that through nesting circles with my circle getting closer to the periphery of the two broader circles. I think my positionality is very much within these circles at the moment and that my major struggle currently is dismantling the ‘stuff’ of the previous mappings and working to get farther to the edges of these inherited, presumed superior, knowledges.

Ideally the “outside” European and colonial thought visualization would be in a different plane however, I think this visualization works as well because in some ways the decolonial, post-colonial and "otherwise" knowledge projects both include and transcend European and colonial thought. Dr. Leroy Little Bear's talk really exemplifies this for Indigenous knowledge systems including and transcending standard Western thought. I included the knowledge projects that I have spent the most time thinking about and trying to learn more about in this visualization. I don’t think I am at a place personally or academically to really justify myself having any significant overlapping peripheries in specific knowledge projects in the “outside.” I think I likely go in and out of engaging with the ‘battles of others’ in the peripheries of these knowledges but not with enough significance or frequency to warrant a visual overlap on this mapping.

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Ijeoma Oluo writes “When we identify where our privilege intersects with someone else’s oppression, we’ll find opportunities to make real change.”

Tracing a somewhat overlapping understanding of my previous two mappings, I can only conclude that there is chaos and contradiction in my existence: an existence that simultaneously holds several truths of privileges and disenfranchisements.

I wish to come into these contradictions fully and address the conflict that my role in the community as an oppressor and as oppressed reveals. Looking at the difficult practice that is allyship work, I wish to surrender into it and let it change me.

As a sheltered, privileged oppressor person, growing up in India, my understanding of caste politics was to say the least, implicit in mannerism that can only be called wilfully ignorant, because caste is everywhere around you, if you’re privileged, you just choose to not address it, a supposed caste-blindness. A seminal text that I was introduced to much later than I should have been is Annihilation of Caste by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar which revealed to me as an oppressor caste person the complicit role all oppressor caste people play in the smooth running of state machineries by not actively trying to dismantle our oppressor caste habitus. Unlearning my oppressor caste politics is a lifelong practice that I believe and hope to place myself in alignment with in earnest.

Over the last few decades, the community work that BIPOC folks have done in the field of transformative and restorative justice practices in the United States has moved me develop my own understanding of carcerality of being, of my punitive worldview until a few years ago. I owe an intellectual debt to the works Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Mariame Kaba, Adrianne Maree Brown, Mia Mingus and countless others who have shaped my understanding towards abolitionist work.

One of the key conflicts that I have struggled with in the last couple of years is finding my authentic voice in an academia that is structured on surveillance and policing. I find myself at a bridge on which I now stand: one end is the theoretical frameworks that have jargonised my academic work and on the other exists the praxis of community building that is tells me detangle the language that is not accessible to my community, a language that is not structured to serve us. Is a marriage of the two possible? Can academia be de-colonised to the extent that community exists within and from the very frameworks that we intellectualise over in seminars?

As I posit these questions, I find myself hoping and manifesting a dreamworld, where there is discourse and friendship and generative conflict and resolution, where there is empathy and laughter and joy, where there is accessibility, where needs are met, where there is safety and community!

P.S. I have added Jamila Woods’ Holy on my padlet, please give it a listen, a song that teaches radical love of ourselves before we embrace the world around us.

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I have been ‘wake-ned’ to a consciousness of my embodied pluriverse, of the creolisation of my African culture by the Eurocentric discourses that unconsciously shaped my embodied tacit and intellectual knowledge, and subtly imposed the hierarchisation of races on my African consciousness.
But in this wake, unknown categories are now clearly marked to me, and the parity of cultures and their related knowledge production is a vivid reality that gradually obliterates the hegemonic power of a singular culture. In this vein, it’s not ‘the west and the rest’, an ‘either white or…’ world scenario, but a rich multiplicity of knowledges opened to me, underpinned by the fact that “it doesn’t have to be white to be right”.
My work of self-decolonisation therefore begins with unlearning taken-for-granted realities which are underpinned by a Eurocentric worldview. This means re-learning my African past not from a white gaze, but from a black gaze that predates the intrusion of colonialization and slavery, and in the present critically examine hegemonic Western discourses in the light of indigenous onto-epistemologies.
I can name the unmarked categories, make the norm questionable, and engender my decoloniality of being. Now I can engage with other works from this position of empowerment and emplace myself in a space that intervenes in the reproduction of a Eurocentric centre. I intend to start this journey by embarking on a scholarly work that explores the lived experiences of African immigrants in Europe, using frameworks from the global south to foreground their experiences from their perspective.
From this, in the wake... in the now... my journey continues...

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Candace Thomas - Positionalities and Emplacements 

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Candace Thomas - Positionalities and Emplacements 

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I mostly found this cartography as a knowledge journey, which had me considering my own positionality in relation to, and distinct from, other materialities of onto-epistemologies and justice work.

Despite having a minority identity (impacted and shaped by colonialism/ eurocentric epistemologies) I am reminded that, I am not automatically equipped or entitled to apply my own lens or self-cultivated embodied life and perspective onto another minorities' conceptualisations/
analyses/mobilisations.

I am also beginning to consider recognition in relation to my positionality and the that of other minorities. I am in the process of applying critical reflexivity to question whether I view my identity in relation to white European/western identity.

In conducting my PhD research with Yazidi and Irish Travellers I will have to be conscientious about applying my own positionality as a white show-women. In order to avoid becoming self-involved/ creating a saviour narrative.

I will likewise need to be aware of group membership non-conformity and understand that individuals will have their own unique placement and positionality within communities.

I am also beginning to re-evaluate my use of intersectionality. Considering whether I have been mistakenly using intersectionality, out with the content and context intended by Crenshaw. I am beginning to question whether I have been using intersectionality to hierarchise/rank intersecting identities as opposed to a tool or knowledge journey in itself. A way in which individuals and movements experiencing one form of colonial/eurocentric oppression can take another into account.

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I was brought up in a euro-centric worldview and taught through the lens of Western knowledge. The literature I read and that was celebrated in my country was primarily European. I’m also a female and experience power imbalances throughout my life, deeply embedded bias towards females as those less capable of intellectual achievements. In terms of my own positionality, in my research so far I tended to use the Western knowledge and sources that claim to know better the needs of the less privileged and the best type of a society. I was very much influenced by the concept of ‘development’, however, as soon as I started to challenge the understanding of ‘development’ and explore the concept, I learned that the concept was a promise of material wealth made by Western countries to the post-colonial countries in the 1950s to prevent them from joining the Communist ideologies. I try to challenge the positionality in knowledge formation such as ‘civilized’ vs ‘primitive’, ‘scientific’ vs ‘rational’, ‘modern’ vs ‘traditional’. I also realized how ‘development’ is an agenda that leads to colonizing cultures, economies and people.
For example, I find myself sustaining neocolonialism through my indifference and participation in globalization, e.g. I contribute to economic imperialism (I buy products that are cheap only because someone is paid very little to produce them), I treat the English language as a power tool. I am also part of a corporate culture which is based on profit, dominance and competition. Such a euro-centric power struggle is based on power/hierarchy and not the autonomy of an individual.

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My brain does not work through maps, more via random thoughts and suggestions, therefore for doing this mapping I sat down and I tried to collect all the things that popped in my head in these last weeks, consequently to the readings and the lectures.

Starting from the question “where do I position myself?” I realized that the focus of all my studying in the last eight years was on art and culture, and it was deeply influenced by my conservative, catholic and Eurocentric roots (that I’ve put in blue on the left of the map). In red there are the things I’m working on this current moment, thanks to the readings that I’m doing and the journey I’m embracing. Thus, my “position” is mainly on reflecting on my past errors and trying to correct them, so decolonizing my mind, while embracing the fact that I’m a white western woman, and this means that what I have to do is mostly to sit down and listed (or/and read) to the experience and the thoughts of those who have suffered and suffer from these systematic oppressions. I really want to engage in doing my part in this battle but I need to realize that the voices that have to be heard around these topics needs space that I don’t’ absolutely have to take.

In green, on the right, I’ve put some of the quotes that really enlightened me in the last few weeks, and that pushed me further in this way of self-reflection.

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Luisa Baumgart Positionalities and Emplacements

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Luisa Baumgart Positionalities and Emplacements

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As a young white person studying  a subject that focuses on LGBTIAQ+ issues, I have found myself putting people in boxes whilst preaching an intersectional approach. Reading about Two-Spirit Critiques made me realize this. Though I am aware of different minorities having different experiences, when thinking academically, I not rarely put everybody who is not white in the "People of Color" category, without acknowledging Indigenous experiences (like Two-Spirit Critiques) separately.

Additionally, the literature that I have consumed throughout my academic career has more often than not left me troubled, trying to even understand the main points of the authors. Whilst most of my colleagues were in love with Judith Butler's approaches, I struggled understanding them when reading the original literature. The texts felt like they were written for individuals with the same knowledge as the author and not as a way to educate people who are keen to learn more in order to widen their thinking.

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Grainne N. Positionalities and Emplacements

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Grainne N. Positionalities and Emplacements

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As a student of English literature in a European, White-centric country, I have struggled immensely with the hierarchy of White/European or American literature versus all other literatures. From the beginning of my undergraduate studies, the syllabi of my modules were grounded in the concept of learning the “Greats” (read: Cisgender White Males, usually straight) first, and anything on the periphery was left for “later”. Modules focused on “key texts” by the “originators” of styles, themes or moments (mainly white and/or male), and brushed over periods and literatures with no thought for texts by women, BIPOC or literatures and knowledges of “other” cultures outside of the Anglo and Eurocentric positionalities. The hierarchising of white, male, Western thought, with an occasional splash of “colour” to cover the quota, not only encouraged and cemented Eurocentric thought at the heart of literary analysis, but it produced, and continues to produce, graduates with very little knowledge outside of this realm. Postcolonial thought was a passing lecture on Fanon in the midst of a theory-dense module, packed into the first term of second year, and only mentioned again if you really went looking for it. Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance was another all-too-brief encounter with a writer of colour, and again lasted only the length of one lecture. Women of colour were completely left out of the picture, and what startled me most was how most people were unaware that these “others” had even been writing, let alone that they had written great and powerful works. It was not until third year when I was really introduced to World Literature, not only as a brief concept, but in a module dedicated to foundational and developed knowledge of world literatures, in their many and varied forms. It was this module which finally struck a chord with me - not only because it was new to me, but because I connected to literature of the “other” on a level unexpected even to myself. As a teenager, queer literature, let alone queer of colour literature, was a rare occurrence (not as rare these days which is wonderful!), and one which was shrouded in shame. I am White, and Irish, but as a queer woman growing up in a small Irish town, in a large heteronormative family, I had always felt that I existed on the periphery of acceptable, I was terrified of doing, and being, wrong. When I was a closeted teenager, I saw an LGBT Iranian film called ‘Circumstance’. It was in Farsi, with English subtitles, and I watched it in secret when everyone else had gone to bed. It remains my favourite film, because it was the first time I felt represented (despite the fact that all I had in common with the story was my sexuality).

Since that World Literature class in third year of my undergraduate studies, I began to understand that stepping outside of the Eurocentrism of my prior education was imperative if I was to learn anything. My Masters was in Renaissance Literature, another area of literature deeply entrenched in Anglo/hetero/patriarchal thought and hierarchy of knowledge, but I was adamant that literatures outside of the UK and Europe had relevant contributions to make to the canon of the period. Eventually, through my own research, I came across Muddupalani, a Tamil courtesan and erudite scholar from the 1700s, who wrote a celebrated epic erotic poem, a century before British Imperialism swept the country, banning this text, along with many others. The role of British Imperial control in banning erotic texts, and any semblance of female sexuality, in many parts of India at the time, was a key critical interrogation of my Masters thesis. As a White academic, it is incredibly important, when studying literature of any culture outside of your own (and indeed even within your own) that you do not confuse Western research structures and knowledges with superiority or dominance of thought. As such, it is integral that you delve deep into the cultural contexts and histories of the peoples you are studying, without assuming ownership of the knowledges you borrow, and the knowledges which arise from the research. The readings from the last two weeks in particular have highlighted the importance not only of the inclusion of “othered” texts and cultures, and the decolonisation and dehierarchising of knowledges, but the significance, in particular regarding Native studies, of sharing the acquired knowledge with the community.

One of the key struggles with writing a PhD, particularly in literature, is the hierarchies of knowledge which exist, and have existed for centuries, within the canon and the academy. The collage represents the journey of my university studies, from the literature and theory rooted in deeply misogynist, racist, heteronormative and patriarchal colonial “knowledge”, through the development and introduction to other world literatures, to my current position rooted in postcolonial and critical racial deconstructions, and the misunderstanding and mistreatment of afab bodies across cultures (many rooted in colonial inheritances). I still have much to learn, and am learning new ways to read, listen and research, every week.

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Dominic Murphy- Positionalities and Emplacement

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Dominic Murphy- Positionalities and Emplacement

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I started by thinking about my own positionality and how I have benefited materially from an oppressive system. I then thought about how I attend a western university and the role that such institutions play in knowledge production.

I cannot pretend to have suffered materially, politically or socially as so many sadly have. All I can hope to try to do, through my academic work and political activism, is to challenge the structures of oppression in order to open up spaces for the marginalised to assert their own knowledges and counter-hegemonies and seize their liberation and freedom.

I then just included the first authors/academics/activists/liberation fighters who came to mind when I think of those who have given everything to achieve what I mentioned in the last paragraph.

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raghdhilal- positionalities and emplacement 

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raghdhilal- positionalities and emplacement 

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How my region was portrayed to the world was always through a Eurocentric lens. Even the name “middle east” was given based on its location to Europe.

We were presented as “undeveloped”. According to a white supremacist categorization putting Europe on top of the pyramid, therefore, considering whatever is different as “less”.

We were seen as camel riders, exotic dancers, simple minded/ “primitive” creatures, uncultured savages. Simultaneously, our lands were considered as a strategic geographic location for exporting goods, and exploiting natural resources and raw materials.

The Walt Disney animation “Aladdin” actually sums up the invented image of the Arabs’ way of living; a thief who lives in a torn house, inside a small village located in the middle of the desert. And falls in love with a princess who is dressed like a belly dancer, and let’s not forget the practice of magic and sorcery, which is opposite to the “European rationality”.

Even now, we are still positioned and emplaced by the world in a similar way, only using different terminologies. Such as “third world countries”, “terrorists”, oil exporters, and political followers.

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In this mapping, I recounted the struggle to apply academic theory and activism, in a constructive way. As a white Irish person, I am beginning to realise that while I do have a role to play in decolonial work, I also need to reflect on what this role is, before jumping into it. In the past 2 years, there has been this surge in online activism, and while some of it, has undoubtedly been beneficial, I struggle with what this means, for white people. Emma Dabiris book, 'What White People Can Do Next", expertly outlines the issues that these superficial surges in academia and activism, can cause. It has left me wondering about my place within it all.

This weeks outline, is about my realisation that I have spoken over people in the past, and my consideration of how to avoid this, while remaining proactive, in the future.

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Positionalities and Emplacement - Berta Quinonero

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Positionalities and Emplacement - Berta Quinonero

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My mapping is a portrayal of the knowledge structures that shaped all previous world conceptualisations I had.
I decided to fragment all of the positionalities I would have subconsciously chosen to embody and represented them under the four major categories I identified as the most relevant within my own journey, both through this and other modules, that have made me question my own epistemologies and the sense I make of the world, and the way I exist in it.
Under each of the main headings I separated the concepts in a left and a right column. All left columns represent the assumptions that I would have once accepted without questioning as external factors such as schooling and my direct social environment would have somehow “imposed” it on me, along with the limitations I then carried on using on myself. I went to a religious school and even though I consciously chose not to relate any of the embodiments to religion as they were not values I, or my friends ever stood by, I know that my education promoted the Western society as the norm and the Eurocentric conception of the origins of all knowledge.
On the other hand, all right columns contain the values I am currently working on, such as examples of terms I wouldn’t have been familiar with, like the way in which the term Eurocentrism denotes one of the major restrictions of my “unthought” emplacement. And these have been aided by the understanding of the world of those people I was never introduced to until now. The silenced voices of realities that my society never told me about and that are now lending me new sets of lenses through which to look at what looks like a very different world to me.

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Positionalities and Emplacement- Brigid Molloy

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Positionalities and Emplacement- Brigid Molloy

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For this mapping, I decided to divide it into two halves. On the left, there are examples of the knowledge projects based in Eurocentric understandings that I subconsciously or consciously learned about during my time at school or during my undergraduate degree. The invention of race, the gender binary and a whitened understanding of Europe are examples of knowledge projects I credit with being subconsciously taught from a young age. I was never explicitly taught these assumptions, but they remain things I have to continue to decolonise myself of. I studied Sociology for my undergraduate degree, where it is accepted that the theories of white men are prioritised, as is the case in other related disciplines. Being given the space to challenge this is rare. I remember learning about the centre-periphery theory and finding it enlightening, so it has been interesting to learn from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, for example, how this still relies on a Eurocentric understanding, wherein the West remains centred.

On the right side of my mapping, I have included examples of new knowledge projects I have learned so far from this module and also generally in the past year. As mentioned before, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s lesson is important as well as Rinaldo Walcott’s understanding of settler colonialism. What these knowledge projects listed on the right have in common is their challenging of Western, hegemonic ideas which are typically presented as undeniable. This mapping documents my evolution in learning- what I want to learn and the new onto-epistemologies that have been presented to me.

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In this mapping, I took a literal approach and located myself in relation to other embodied journeys and struggles with pinning down my emplacement. These positionalities can be identified with the black pins. With showing multiple pairs of knowledge politics, I demonstrate the divide between modes of making sense of the world. Even though, I don’t believe that e.g. Eurocentristic perceptions should be superior to pluriverse approaches or that stock stories should remain as default in storytelling, I grew up with these knowledge systems. Hence, I placed the pins onto the Westernised tiles, even if I find myself in the process of distancing myself from these realities.

Challenges that occurred during the making process of this pinboard are noted on the scratch pad on the bottom of the picture. The biggest difficulty was to decide whether to depict different onto-epistemologies in a binary way or not. To simplify the layout and demonstrate the contrast, I chose this binary layout in the end. Not every onto-epistemological pair component stands in opposition to the other one, but a vast division can be identified. The empty lines on the scratch pad offer the possibility to note further thoughts or struggles during the process of unlearning and reimagining knowledge production in a non-hegemonic way.