The 15 Hierarchies: An Introduction to Decoloniality

We live in a free world. Free being a relative word, of course. There are situations when governments and the powers of one country are controlled by other, more powerful countries and conglomerates, and there are situations wherein some countries are blatantly occupied by others. In this post I am not talking about these situations. I want to talk about the situations we take for granted, wherein power equations and inequalities are so deeply embedded as to have become naturalised. This post is about the insidious presence of colonialism in situations wherein we assume its absence. The decolonial movement is relevant to us today precisely because of how deeply colonised we still are. My entry point into this discussion is an article by Ramon Grosfoguel called "Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality".

The article was one of my earliest introductions to decoloniality. As a movement decoloniality stems from the writings of certain Latin American thinkers including Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, among others. The term has been picked up by other thinkers and movements, and there is much debate about the difference between decoloniality and postcolonialism. To my mind, one point of difference between the two is that decoloniality is extremely critical of modernity and sees it as hand-in-glove with coloniality and colonial oppression, whereas postcolonialism is critical of colonial oppression without that hostile valence for modernity. Decolonial scholars argue that the beginning of modernity and colonialism were forged in the same crucible in the fifteenth century, when Europeans set out for different worlds to conquer and rule. It is not that there had not been invasions, hostility and violence prior to that, but that these colonial/modern invasions brought into being certain hierarchies that captured human selves and imaginations in very specific ways that we have not been able to leave behind even today.

Image courtesy Brandon Archambault, "Why I Can't Stand Junot Diaz: Decolonial Love is About Hate, Not Love", Snakes on McCain, http://snakesonmccain.blogspot.com.au, first published Sunday, Feb 23, 2014.

In his article, Ramon inverts our narrative of colonialism in one significant way, offering a vantage point similar to the one delineated in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Instead of setting out with the colonisers and following their exploits and exploitations, he considers colonialism from the point of view of a native in a soon-to-be-colonised space, and how their world and world views turned upside down. Ramon outlines 15 hierarchies that came to the colonised world through the coloniser, and outlining them 'as if they were separate' vividly hits home the realisation that these intertwined hierarchies form the systems that we live in and that shape us. I quote directly from the article below:

"European/capitalist/military/Christian/patriarchal/white/heterosexual/male arrived in the Americas and established simultaneously in time and space several entangled global hierarchies that for purposes of clarity in this exposition I will list below as if they were separate from each other:

1) a particular global class formation where a diversity of forms of labor (slavery, semi-serfdom, wage labor, petty-commodity production, etc.) are going to co-exist and be organized by capital as a source of production of surplus value through the selling of commodities for a profit in the world market;

2) an international division of labor of core and periphery where capital organized labor in the periphery around coerced and authoritarian forms (Wallerstein 1974);

3) an inter-state system of politico-military organizations controlled by European males and institutionalized in colonial administrations (Wallerstein 1979);

4) a global racial/ethnic hierarchy that privileges European people over non-European people (Quijano 1993; 2000);

5) a global gender hierarchy that privileges males over females and European Judeo-Christian patriarchy over other forms of gender relations (Spivak 1988; Enloe 1990);

6) a sexual hierarchy that privileges heterosexuals over homosexuals and lesbians (it is important to remember that most indigenous peoples in the Americas did not consider sexuality among males a pathological behavior and had no homophobic ideology);

7) a spiritual hierarchy that privileges Christians over non-Christian/non-Western spiritualities institutionalized in the globalization of the Christian (Catholic and later, Protestant) church;

8) an epistemic hierarchy that privileges Western knowledge and cosmology over non-Western knowledge and cosmologies, and institutionalized in the global university system (Mignolo 1995, 2000; Quijano 1991);

9) a linguistic hierarchy between European languages and non-European languages that privileges communication and knowledge/theoretical production in the former and subalternize the latter as sole producers of folklore or culture but not of knowledge/theory (Mignolo 2000);

10) an aesthetic hierarchy of high art vs. naïve or primitive art where the West is considered superior high art and the non-West is considered as producers of inferior expressions of art institutionalized in Museums, Art Galleries and global art markets;

11) a pedagogical hierarchy where the Cartesian western forms of pedagogy are considered superior over non-Westerm concepts and practices of pedagogy;

12) a media/informational hierarchy where the West has the control over the means of global media production and information technology while the non-West do not have the means to make their points of view enter the global media networks;

13) an age hierarchy where the Western conception of productive life (ages between 15 and 65 years old) making disposable people above 65 years old are considered superior over non-Western forms of age classification, where the older the person, the more authority and respect he/she receives from the community;

14) an ecological hierarchy where the Western conceptions of “nature” (as an object that is a means towards an end) with its destruction of life (human and non-human) is privileged and considered superior over non-Western conceptions of the “ecology” such as Pachamama, Tawhid, or Tao (ecology or cosmos as subject that is an end in itself), which considers in its rationality the reproduction of life;

15) a spatial hierarchy that privileges the urban over the rural with the consequent destruction of rural communities, peasants and agrarian production at the world-scale."

I find this list incredibly useful, especially when I am trying to argue for an awareness of systemic inequalities. I think the list is pretty self-explanatory, but as illustration, let me caricature aspects of my life. Growing up in a liberalised world-view which set up the consuming individual at the apex of human being and took modernity for granted, I participated in most of these hierarchies. I read more English literature than Hindi, Gujarati or Indian literature in English translation; I knew more about Western art than Indian art. As far as Indian art was concerned, I could recognise only those that were very well-known (the Hussains and the Raja Ravi Vermas) or know folk forms of art without knowing individual artists (Madhubani and Mughal miniatures, for example). I saw the joint family system as a space of oppression (which it can be, but that need not be its only reality), the theories I used came largely from the West (from Plato to Derrida, I guess), except when reading postcolonial theory, wherein Said and Spivak would get honourable mention. I am still not outside of this system: I work on Gujarati literature, but I write out my conjectures and conclusions in English. I am part of a university system that is based in the West and studies 'India', just as I was once in an Indian university studying English.

As I said earlier, this is a caricature of aspects of my life. I have spoken up against oppression based on gender, sexuality or religion. I think those fights need to be fought, and decoloniality is not about a return to tradition only because it predates the colonial encounter. Decoloniality is about recognising that there are many different narratives around the world, and the Western models of liberalism and individualism are not universal and cannot be the sole arbiters of individual human lives around the world. Decoloniality is being aware of the limitations of modernity as a project, and deliberately being aware of other, perhaps more traditional, perhaps more alternative, ways of being. It is about being aware of the politics, not just of the world but of the institutions that we ourselves are complicit in. It is about being mindful of who you read and who you cite. A decolonial moment need not be complicated. The next time you consciously read a Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali or Marathi book, you are making a decolonial choice. The language of your childhood may no longer be a language you think in, but the good thing about languages is that they are never far from the surface.

NB: There is a decoloniality summer school in Barcelona for those interested. And for Ramon's article, email me if you want to read it.

Love In A Cold Climate

The world of English courtship, of noble families with sons and daughters and marriage on their minds, is familiar to all regular readers of English literature. Jane Austen almost immediately comes to mind. It is a world of manners and morals, a world of perforative elegance. It is popular to berate the modern world for being less elegant, and there is an entire nostalgia industry that cashes in on the charm factor of this world, such as the BBC adaptations of Austen and Victorian novels and Downton Abbey to name a few. When the presence and multiplicity of immigrants becomes too much to handle, it is good to have an all white world to return to. Ironically, this world evokes a certain nostalgia even among the colonised creatures whose history it never was, but whose imaginative geography it shaped.

I picked up Nancy Mitford's Love in A Cold Climate (1949) not expecting anything very different. I had heard it praised a lot, but that usually puts me off books rather than more interested in them. (I'm working towards changing this cynicism.) Mitford belongs squarely to the twentieth century, and what made me fall in love with her writing, was that it does too. It is still the world of English courtship, but it is no longer asexual or idealised. Instead, it is rendered from close up, with sympathy for its follies and an awareness of its darker shades. There are balls and gowns and big rooms, and small, furtive sexual encounters in those big rooms. To me, what stood out most about the book was the matter-of-fact tone it took to everything, rendering most things faintly comical even when they revealed selfishness, exploitation and conspicuous consumption.

To cite the most blatant example, there is an uncle, ironically nicknamed 'Boy', who is fond of feeling up young girls, and this 'habit' returns to haunt him when one of the girls he feels up, Polly, mistakes it for everlasting love and insists on marrying him. There is not a lot of angst or hand wringing about the abuse, and this universe has a moment of pity for the abuser, when he has to actually live with and love the girl he desired temporarily, or rather did not even desire in and of herself, but only as another girl to fondle. Our perceptions of these matters are so shaped by our own discursive frameworks of child abuse, paedophilia and punishment that this attitude can come across as cavalier. After all, he is an abuser and she is a victim, and how can any reading be otherwise? What this book did, however, is allow me to inhabit a world wherein the mores that governed human sexuality were different. What Boy does is not justified, but neither is it an exceptional act. It is one of the things that happens in the world, and thus it can be shown as banal; its tragic potential highlighted only when Polly insists on misreading Boy's propensity as love and desire. Not only that, this tragedy is not maintained indefinitely and is represented with as little hand-wringing as everything else.

Lest the mention of abuse give the impression that this is a depressing book, I should clarify that the novel is satirical and witty. I laughed out loud right at the very beginning, as the author traced the history of the Montdore family: "they drag forth ancestors with P. G. Wodehouse names, Ugs and Berts and Threds, and Walter Scott fates. His Lordship was attainted — beheaded — convicted — proscribed — exiled — dragged from prison by a furious mob — slain at the Battle of Crécy — went down in the White Ship — perished during the third crusade — killed in a duel". This is a world that rests on shallow, hollow foundations, and isn't that funny? So Lady Montdore is always polite to young girls, even those who do not have a lot of fortune. This is not out of the goodness of her heart; rather it comes from the soundness of her mind. "'Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow." Polly rues this habit that all the young people have of being constantly in love with someone or the other. She had observed it in India, but had hoped that "in a cold climate" things would be different, hence the title. The book maintains a light and chatty tone throughout, which actually sets off the sexual encounters, familial conflict, homosexuality and murder quite well. Ok, I'm kidding, there is no murder in the book, but I wish there had been. I feel Mitford would have dealt with it lightly and exquisitely.

At one point in the text, two characters want to know what Polly and Boy's marriage is like. They ask their elder sister, Fanny, to find out, and when she points out that they do hear from Polly, this is their reply: "Do people ever sound unhappy on postcards, Fanny? Isn't it always lovely weather and everything wonderful, on postcards?" To me, the parallel to Facebook was striking. It is not a new world that we live in. The world of Love in A Cold Climate is not as different from our world today as it may seem to be superficially, and I don't know whether to rejoice or be sad about this.

Everyday

Everyday, during dinner, mid-way during the meal, Shabdita suddenly feels a lot of love for me. She insists on feeding herself, so by then her clothes, mouth, hands and face are full of food. Everyday she comes towards me, arms outstretched, to give me a hug. Sometimes the hug also means "I'm done now, so put me to sleep". Everyday she ruins my T-shirt, and all my clothes end up having food stains on them. Everyday I wait for that moment, and the day she is too grown up to do it, I am going to miss it. What is life without a grubby, food stained baby wanting to hug you?

Beyond Facebook and Twitter...

are Pinterest and Instagram. No, this is not a post about social media. I left Facebook, and then Twitter, almost four years ago. For one, they were addictive and I wasted a lot of time on them, and secondly, I had begun to dislike them for the way in which I found myself performing my life on them. This post, however, is not about those things. I may not have been on social media for a long time, but I am still quite addicted to the Internet. If you quit various forms of social media, barring blogging intermittently, what do you do on the Internet? Well, here is what I do.

Feedly

Feedly is my crack. It requires setting up, but once done, it is simplicity and beauty itself. Feedly is an RSS reader, which simply means that once you enter the names or URLS of the blogs you want to follow, you can read them all together. I follow a variety of different blogs, changing them as and when fancy strikes. Here are the ones that I enjoy the most.

Design*Sponge: A design blog that includes constellations from the night sky and design icons such as the Sony Walkman and the Chrysler building? Yes, please. Design*Sponge consistently offers high quality articles that open my eyes to the beauty of the world around me, and increase my knowledge of life's aesthetic pleasures. I also like An Indian Summer for its curation of various things Indian.

ModernMrsDarcy: With a name like that, how could I resist? Modern Mrs. Darcy talks of books, movies and tv shows, occasionally meandering into clothes and homeschooling. I also like A Penguin A Week, especially for Karyn's determination to read every book in the Penguin series that she has identified, no matter how forgotten or mundane.

The vegan blog Oh She Glows is my escapist fare. I ogle at all the beautiful pictures of the food, though I have not tried even a single recipe to date. Someday...! I also have a love-hate relationship with the Happiness Project, so I follow it for some time and then am off it, and then back again and so on.

I follow two Indian blogs: Jabberwock by Jai Arjun Singh and Baradwaj Rangan by, well, Baradwaj Rangan. I like their takes on cinema, and Jai Arjun's book reviews are always enjoyable. I owe my introduction to contemporary Indian graphic novels in English to Jabberwock.

On minimalism, I read the usual suspects: Zenhabits, The Minimalists and The Minimalist Woman. I used to follow various other blogs on this topic, but I like to think that I have internalised minimalism to the point where I am minimalist about the minimalist blogs I follow too!

I also like this irreverent and highly relatable blog called GenerationMeh. And surprisingly to me, I follow Seth Godin's blog. I nod in agreement when Seth talks about perseverance, rigour and quality, though he is talking about marketing and consumer relationships while I am thinking life and academia in my head. I especially like the way he uses brevity to increase his impact, which I find myself sadly unable to emulate.

I read a wide variety of parenting blogs, perhaps more than is good for Shabdita or me. I keep changing them though. The ones that I like the most and have been following regularly include Not Just Cute, An Everyday Story and Janet Lansbury. Not Just Cute and Janet Lansbury are about respectful and intentional parenting while an Everyday Story follows the project based homeschooling adventures of a family in Canberra, and has the most inspiring photos and ideas.

So you can see how Feedly keeps me busy. Every day, I have around 10 to 15 blogposts/articles to read on a variety of topics, leaving me carrying out various arguments in my head. It makes for a good day. Also, on a self-promoting note, if you set up Feedly for yourself, you can follow my blog on it too!

Apart from Feedly, I also use Dropbox and Evernote a lot.

While reading or writing, I keep the document in Dropbox, and so can access it from different computers and my phone, which spares me from emailing it to myself all the time.

As for Evernote, I have many different notes in it, and I intend to consolidate them someday in an organisational frenzy. For now, it is a great space to store snippets and ideas, and indulge my fetish of making all sorts of lists. Inspired by a blog post I read, I kept a list of the books I read in 2013, and am now keeping one of those I am reading in 2014. Looking at the list at the end of the year was illuminative: it made me aware of the directions in which my reading was headed (more parenting), what I had enjoyed and what not (some books that are so much fun in the moment can seem dissatisfying later - 'why did I waste so much time on this one?') and suggest possibilities ('I loved this one so much that I am going to track down more books by this author'). I'm toying with the idea of starting a new list, this one of all the films that I see this year.

Another useful aspect of Evernote is that I can make notes of different arguments as they occur to me, then shifting them around and assigning them to papers or chapters. I also have a list of ideas for potential blogposts, and one beautiful day, I shall turn them all into substantial blogposts and inflict them on you. Another app that I use alongside Evernote is Houzz.

As the name suggests, Houzz is an app of home design ideas. I save pictures of rooms I like, in Ideabooks on Houzz (that lets you save pictures that you see on Houzz directly) or by pasting pictures I like into Evernote. These pictures are, at one level, pure fantasy. I am unlikely to become an interior decorator or incorporate every idea into any one home that I have, but these pictures and the possibilities they suggest bring delight, joy and colour into my world. Here is a picture from one of my notes, a great space to curl up with a book:

Last but not the least are Zinio, the Kindle App and Podcasts.

Zinio is an app that lets you read magazines. I use Zinio and my local library subscription together, and download almost every magazine possible, and then read them now and then. I credit my reading of Martha Stewart Living and Australian Architecture to Zinio, as I never actually picked them up in a library. Only having to click on a link to issue a magazine makes you willing to try everything!

Similarly, the Kindle app allows me to buy ebooks as well as download various free ones. In terms of the free ones, there is more chaff than wheat. I like working through them, and deleting the ones which seem irrelevant.

Podcasts are a relatively new discovery for me. I like listening to a podcast as I get some work done alongside. The difference from a radio is that here you can select what you want to listen to, though I actually like the varying rhythms of the radio and not knowing what is going to come up next. This is why I subscribe to podcasts selectively and am less enthusiastic about trying new ones out. They may be wonderful, but I am perfectly content with ABC national radio and You Tube playlists for Indian music. The podcasts I listen to regularly include SBS Hindi and After the Jump, which is the podcast of the Design*Sponge blog. I also like The Broad Experience, which talks about women's professional lives. Finally, I like the Radio Lab for making science interesting to me.

So these apps are my additions to my leisure time, my variations on reading or watching television. In a day spent running after a toddler and protecting everything else in the world from her, it feels good to sit down with my laptop or iPad, with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, and opening up a transient world with the other. You're welcome to peek into this world or build another of your own.