Coming from a colonised society, influenced my perception of coloniality. Initially, I had thought of coloniality as merely political, a view through the lens of superiority and inferiority, mastery and slavery, idealism and non-idealism, belief and unbelief, and other such dichotomies. As I reflect on my learning in the Coloniality of Data course, I realise how profoundly this narrow understanding has shaped my interactions and perspectives about life and the world. My encounter with the course deepened my understanding of coloniality, unveiling aspects that I had not previously considered.

Firstly, I tend to find that knowledge production plays a central role in perpetuating colonial ideologies. Such knowledge that is given epistemological privilege leads to categorisation. These categorisation legitimises colonial practices and shape our understanding of what it means to be humans in the world. These affect our experiences and worldviews through predetermined knowledge frameworks. Wynter’s (2003) argument provided an instance of how categorisation  enforces coloniality through deterministic ideas. I found these, however, to be central to the perspectives of people, but their coloniality is seen in how, at each instance, they make claims of superiority. They were generally used to conquer people and make distinctions that put one person above another. While these may be accounted for as a history of knowledge production, my thinking goes further to explore that these may have established systemic processes for the current division being meted out in the form of racial discourses, gender violence, and other forms of unethical violence against other humans. I had thought knowledge was perspective based, but for it to influence others as a means of mastery confirms its epistemic and deterministic potential. On the positive, it spurs me to question things more granularly to establish what it means to truly perceive the world.

One question I tend to ask is, “What if knowledge had not been determined?” Knowledge, as I knew it, was a “truth” that was established by another and has been passed on. Training and nurturing are examples of the determinism of knowledge. My encounter with the Earthseed verses from Octavia Butler explained how these affect interaction, experience, and understanding of the world. But then, when people encounter different knowledge, it challenges what we are already informed about, as change. Change becomes a reaction to knowledge during an encounter. It seemed to me that these reactions could form the reality of new knowledge, but it becomes important to realise that at every instance of knowledge, of change, or of perception, there is the potentiality of many other possibilities. An instance that resonated clearly with me was Rashne’s analogy using the photographic camera. The discussions opened an avenue for me to see how knowledge production is a form of influence. For instance, the output of a photograph does not tell the holistic situation but is dependent on factors such as: what the person behind the camera commands, the objectives of the object (a human in some cases). This was one way coloniality was realistically expressed, and I tended to juxtapose it with the reading of Barad, which brought the concept of these possibilities to representationalism.

Reading through Barad’s writings, I see that knowledge production has always been a debate, from constructivism to realism. Barad’s argument was that representationalism and poststructuralism are forms of inter- and intra-actions, beyond what is physical. I found this discourse to be one that challenged the several theories I read about matter in my undergraduate studies in chemistry, most especially how Barad situated Neils Bohr and Heisenberg theories as philosophical theories and perspectives of inter- and intra-action with matter. I had never thought about these theories as philosophical concepts and perhaps, a representation of man’s interaction with the world and matter. These interactions, I think, created culture. So I quizzed, “Can culture be differentiated from nature?” Barad states that both realists and social constructivists’ ideas agree that scientific knowledge gives access to the material world, but the disagreement is on whether what it represents is really how our world is (nature) or social activities (culture).

Through this course, I now understand that coloniality is a nonlinear phenomenon, and my response to colonial information could itself be a manifestation of coloniality. The intricate entanglement of coloniality, extends beyond the obvious human-human interactions to encompass human-matter interrelations and vice versa, permeating abstractions such as intentions, actions, and processes (Wynter, 2003; Barad, 2007). This expanded my understanding and challenged my initial, limited perception of coloniality. As a result, I have developed a more nuanced and holistic appreciation of coloniality, recognising its pervasive influence on our lived experiences, worldviews, and the construction of what it means to be human.

Reference

Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press, pp. 39-70

Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation — An Argument. The New Centennial Review, Vol 3 Issue 3, pp. 257 – 337. DOI: 10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.

The Entanglement of Coloniality / Onyebuchi Enechukwu / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2023-24) by is licensed under a