RE: Afterwor(l)ding Toward Imaginative Dimensions
I am so focused on the imaginary world which is trying to whisper to me how to write a story that unlocks a heart - adrienne maree brown
One of my favorite reads of 2021 was Knowledge Justice edited by Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight. I know it’s a favorite because I keep thinking about it and weaving the book’s offerings into my personal and academic reflections. For months now it has stayed on my mind. And isn’t that what we say to people when we care about them: “I am thinking of you”, “you are on my mind”. So it makes sense to say that I care about this book, and why I decided to share this response with you my dear reader.
In “Afterwor(l)ding: Toward Imaginative Dimensions” the editors write “we believe deeply that something brought you to these voices and words; we know you found more than you were hoping for”. [1] And they are right. I feel a deep gratitude for the gift of language that was shared on the pages of this book. A language that names and identifies the pervasiveness of white supremacy and its harmful manifestations: epistemic supremacy, neutrality, vocational awe, and the apartheid of knowledge in LIS. This is more than just a word catalog. Leung and López-Mcknight remind us of George Lipsitz’s affirmation that “every site of knowledge is a site of liberation”. [2] The commitment of knowing and naming these harms brings forth the possibility for disruption and transformation.
As a Chicana and first year MLIS graduate student I was relieved to encounter the writings of information professionals engaging with a framework that validates my experience of reality. Isabel Espina, April M. Hathcock, and Maria Rios share in “Dewhitening Librarianship”: “CRT helps us relax and understand that it’s not us, it’s the racialized system that creates an ontological dissonance”.[3] It’s not easy to arrive at these conclusions alone in a world that tells us exactly the opposite, so to receive these messages, this much needed validation is healing. I don’t take it for granted, it’s the reason why I feel compelled to write this reflection.
Because the work is always ongoing, Sofia and Jorge know to leave us with this hopeful concluding message, a gentle invitation to continue expanding our understanding of liberation:
“It would bring us joy if BIPOC information workers committed to liberation engaged, debated, and assessed these ideas. We hope the work opens up new pathways of hope, imagination, and community, reshaping our relationships to the world, each other, and ourselves. The work, we hope, is always already in motion, and in the same moment, already where it needs to be, right here with you”.[4]
And so in reciprocity to the care of the editors and collaborators of Knowledge Justice, and with the hopes that it will bring them joy, I engage their ideas to move alongside them ‘toward imaginative dimensions’. However, after more than two years of pandemic and collective grief, I feel untethered and disoriented. I know where we’re headed to, but how do we get there?
The most grounding and hopeful answer to this question comes from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, from whom I learned that it is possible for us to touch the future in the present moment—”the future is being made out of the present, so the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment”.[5] This lesson on the interbeing of time means that we’re already there, in the imaginative dimensions we hope for, or in Thich Nhat Hanh words: “not only is the past here in the form of the present; the future is here too”.[6]We can touch the future in the present moment when we listen, because it leads us to compassion and understanding, thus moving us forward.
In “Being Assumed Not To Be: A Critique of Whiteness as An Archival Imperative”, Mario H. Ramirez discusses questioning whiteness and having honest dialogues about how we perpetuate inequality to liberate ourselves and in turn, inaugurate a praxis that listens.[7] I love this idea of a praxis that listens, and I wish we can continue envisioning collectively what this praxis looks like. I wonder how we can teach ourselves to listen, first to ourselves and then to all our relations. How can we include the practice of listening into our accountability models, especially in a field that has perpetuated so much harm?
I believe listening is necessary, it can be an antidote to the historical silencing we seek to address in LIS. It can also aid us in shattering colonial fantasies because it is about connection, about interbeing rather than distance and fragmentation. We need to compliment the courageous act of speaking up, of sharing our truths with the act of listening. We need to learn how to listen in a way that allows for the speaking up to be transformative. It matters that we think about who gets to be heard, and it matters more that we recognize ourselves as deserving of this compassion.
I feelthink[8] that to ‘inaugurate a praxis that listens’ we must recognize all that listening entails, and ask of us – physically, mentally, spiritually–so we can engage mindfully in this practice. In Memory Serves beloved literary ancestor Lee Maracle’s (Sto:lo) offers us great insight about the embodiment of listening:
“Listening is an emotional spiritual, and, physical act. It takes a huge emotional commitment to listen, to sort, to imagine the intent, to evaluate, to process and to seek the connection to the words offered so that remembering can be fair and just. Spiritually words are sacred; this makes listening a ceremony. And because it engages our imagination it is also an art form”.[9]
I pause this reflection for now and pray that we can find moments in the present to continue this dialogue on listening. I also hope that the next time you find yourself feeling lost or disheartened that you find comfort in remembering that the dimensions where love is, they’re already here with us, because we imagined them so.
[1] Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight, “Afterworlding: Toward Imaginative Dimensions,” in Knowledge Justice, ed. Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López McKnight (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), 330.
[2] Ibid, 325.
[3] Isabel Espina, April M. Hathcock, and Maria Rios, “Dewhitening Librarianship,” in Knowledge Justice ed. Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López McKnight (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), 226.
[4] Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight, “Afterworlding: Toward Imaginative Dimensions,” 332.
[5] Thich Nhat Hanh, You are here: Discovering the magic of the present moment (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2012), 51.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Mario H. Ramirez, “"Being assumed not to be: A critique of whiteness as an archival imperative,” The American Archivist 78, no.2 (2015): 352.
[8] Inés Hernández-Avila, “Reflections on Dignity from a Woman Who Walks Tall”, About Place Journal 5, no.3 (2019) https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/dignity-as-an-endangered-species/identity/ines-hernandez-avila/. I learned about sentipensar (to feelthink) from Professor Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nimipu/Tejana): “Mayan and Zoque thinkers in Chiapas have combined the two verbs, “sentir” [“to feel”] and “pensar” [“to think”] into the verb verb “sentipensar” [“to feelthink”]. The mind does not work by itself, but is in dialogue with the heart”.
[9] Lee Maracle, Memory Serves (Edmonton: NeWest Publishers, 2015), 21.
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