Love & Rage
"The act of me resisting colonialism in the colonizer's language is an ugly irony". Valeen Jules, Inching Forward
I got to hear Valeen speak as a part of my What is Decolonial Love? class facilitated by Rita Wong. In her poems, love and decolonial rage almost always come up together, so I asked her about their relationship. She told me that she believes the two are inseparable... "you can find me at the intersection of love and rage, where my identities collide"... "And I love and I rage as I rise"... Valeen also said that decolonial love is long, never-ending.
I'm going to remind myself of that as I share this story.
A couple of weeks ago, I got to hear the fantastic artist and scholar, Barbara Meneley, speak in our Decolonial Aesthetics class facilitated by Mimi Gellman. We were asked to read a literary conversation with Sandra Semchuck (James Nicholas) and Elwood Jimmy to contextualize our discussion with Barbara. In this article, Sandra spoke about a guilt she felt between her forced settlement through the diaspora as a Ukrainian Canadian. One quote that stuck out for me was "How do I protect myself from the truth of how white history betrayed me, made me complicit in terrible historical wrongs"?
In our conversation with Barbara, someone had asked if she felt guilt, and if so, how she deals with that through her work speaking about (or to) the legacy of colonialism. Barbara eloquently responded by stating that it is not necessarily guilt that she feels, but a responsibility to speak from a place-based position, to acknowledge her ancestral history and how that is implicit in her current relationship with her "place" contemporarily. In short, she was describing her responsibility to effectively engage with the decolonization of her settler status, as she lives and works in Canada, and in so doing, the conversations ultimately intersect with Indigenous people and history of this land.
This aspect of responsibility got some backlash from a peer of mine, suggesting that this all sounded like a "white saviour complex". I felt compelled to respond.
My first offering was a quote from white scholar, Amelia Jones, who said that white culture lacks “self-knowledge (or societal understanding) of [its] racial identification”, which inherently limits any opportunity for alter(native) ways of seeing/witnessing within the colonizer/colonized relationship.
I went on...."I think taking on the responsibility of where we are now, how we’ve gotten there through a historical legacy and being responsible for that history (or from a colonial settler perspective: that privilege) is the key. The strategies for trying to understand these historical/contemporary complexities might be taken up in a “white saviour complex” as you’ve suggested, but I have hope that as we ALL decolonize, this responsibility is place-based, and is enacted by understanding how to “speak nearby” as opposed to “speaking for”.
Then I thought to share another term that I have found useful for understanding responsibility that came up in Rita Wong's class – Generosity of method: an effort “to read subtleties and nuances as to how you affect the systems around you…how can we attend to that whole circuitry”.
His response to me was...hurtful. because it was filled with assumptions and like the quote at the top of this blog, spoken with the same language of oppression he was fighting against. He told me that my privilege that I am "so eager to to sacrifice is a part of my inheritance, that it is a lot harder for people of colour to be heard and acknowledged". He told me frankly that it is not my responsibility to speak nearby or speak for. He also stated that generosity is a light term.
I hear you and acknowledge you.
So, now here's where I'm at...
I'm trying to understand how decolonial love and rage work together to become inseparable, I don't have the words yet, but I think this is what I'm feeling. If I were to summarize that love/rage into a response for this individual, I'd start by stating what I hope and what I fear (in relation to our classes, him and in general)--
Hope: I hope that we can soften the oppressive language that might be weighing upon on tongues.
Fear: I fear that as marginalized people, our experience of being silenced, disrespected, mistreated and ignored, our pain has ultimately left us unable to remain open in our minds and our hearts. I fear that the trauma of oppression is so deeply embedded within us, that when we choose to speak UP and THROUGH its silence, we end up deploying the same colonial tactics being used against us; by instigating this learned oppressive language and speaking WITH it, rather than BEYOND it, we end up reifying its oppressive power.
See...there's another part that twists the knife of judgemental assumptions... he had found out that I am Métis and that somehow legitimized what I had shared with him, somehow eliminated his judgement and removed his initial assumptions of me. He went on to state that he is African Canadian, so that there was "no more confusion".
I hope this confusion can serve as a generous learning curve.
...It rips me up inside when we speak against one other.. it breaks my heart when listening never comes first, and "talking at" precedes "talking with". It hurts me when I see the tactics of oppression being used by the same people who've experienced its power generation upon generation. And it hurts me when someone who can so clearly understand what it is to live a "racialized experience", can simultaneously assume someone's identity is solely categorized by skin colour. Because I am an Indigenous woman, am I then excused of my fair skin and its associated privilege? Does the categorical status of Indian-ness categorically remove me from having to experience unwanted verbal aggression that attempts to denote what and where my privilege is lived? Does being Métis automatically eliminate any previously made racist remarks or assumptions of my "privileged" lived experience? Does my genealogy and my fair skin have to be at war in the world of how and where I am permitted to speak? Is it possible that the silencing qualities this individual inherently implied in his response to my own, is the very experience that has likely propelled him to take voice and respond in the first place?
If I have any expectation of anyone, including myself, it is to be tirelessly self-reflexive.
After all of this...here's my extended thought...one that always simultaneously hurts and surprises... I haven't been able to respond to him again, because I fear the aggression in his words, and their potential silencing of my own. I've noticed a trend that happens when speaking beyond the source of silencing: when it is in relation to a male, my voice first wavers, then cowers. And that's not to describe the individual I'm speaking with, rather, defines what occurs from a lifetime of speaking from beneath the powerful darkness of patriarchal privilege. Too many times in my life, my voice has been silenced, ignored, shrugged off, made to feel incompetent or unintelligent because I am a woman. Though I have an incredible want, perhaps need, to respond to him, I don't know how to, though know I should, though I know my response should be from a place of love and in the end, that's all I feel.. love.. and hurt. But the hurt isn't for myself.. I hurt because we all do.
In my vulnerability, I shared this with my partner who is from Ghana, West Africa. She gently shared with me the thoughts of black feminisms. She explained that one of the most frequent topics that come up among her peers is how black men exercise their patriarchal privilege by hiding behind their blackness. Power, privilege, race, class...how many times do we have to hear these words used synonymously or in relationship to each other before we decolonize? How many times do we have to hear these ugly words?
I speak from my place. and I hear you, speaking from yours.
Also? I don't think that generosity is a light term. At all.
If we want to be genuine in our generosity, there needs to be love and that sometimes means asking yourself to have love for your oppressor. That's no light task. It takes couRAGE and a decolonial self-LOVE to get to a place of understanding how to do that, let alone the doing itself.
Rebecca Belmore, Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother, 1991, 1992, 1996
"Decolonial love transforms. Decolonial love across cultures, classes, religions and orientations wins every time. Decolonial love is the highest form of liberation, because at your best, you are love". Valeen Jules, A Letter to KKKanda
