THE PREVAILING CONTEXT
In these divisive times of social, cultural, political,
informational, and economic retrenchment and crises, those who
understand, seek, and participate in racial justice and decolonial work
can draw inspiration from a question posed by bell hooks: “What are the
actions I will concretely do today in order to bring myself into greater
community? With that which is not here?” (2003, p. 163) Being in
community (or building community) in both intimate and collective
settings offers the opportunity to create space for a local to global
range of resistant knowledges. We define resistant
knowledges as processes of thinking and acting against the grain of
coloniality in order to build collective consciousness and calls to
action for racial justice and social change.
Resistant knowledges often occur within community formations and can
emerge as “knowing as collective rhythm” (Gago, 2020, p. 164) and modes
of epistemic disobedience for the global majority research (narrative) ecosystem
(Fuh 2022). These collective rhythms reverberate knowledge along a
continuum of communities from those who intimately syncopate their
rhythms at the (micro) local level to those communities that aspire to
or are already vigorously beating their (praxes) drums to amplify their
resistant knowledges with global intentions. Authors are encouraged to
explore and ultimately explain their framing of community in their submissions.
Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose
safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through
that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences;
this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of
shared values, of meaningful community. bell hooks –
from: Teaching community: a pedagogy of hope (197)
Valentin-Yevies Mudimbe (1990, p. 14) reminds us that the term
‘colonial’ derives from the latin root colére, meaning to cultivate,
design or arrange, and that imperial colonists did this through the
violent re-organisation of non-European territories into Europe an
constructs of land and knowledge. Coloniality is both an epistemic frame
and a lived reality that subsumes language and bodies of knowledge,
land, and action; arranging and structuring our societies and
institutions into hierarchical research or
divisions of knowledge and power. In the words of Frantz Fanon, “the
business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands the much
bigger business of plunder”(1963, p.189).
Decoloniality, Avtar Brah argues, “enables us to prioritise and
foreground regimes of knowledge that have been sidelined, ignored,
forgotten, repressed, even discredited by the forces of modernity,
colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism.” (2022, p. 15) As such,
this call is interested in re-search (Smith,
2021) which counters colonial narratives in all their forms:
theoretical, empirical,or as praxes and manifest on micro
(intimate/personal), mezzo, macro (structural/systemic) levels.
Hyphenating “research” into “re-search” is
very useful because it reveals what is involved, what it really means,
and goes beyond the naive view of “research” as an innocent pursuit of
knowledge.
It underscores the fact that “re-searching” involves the activity of undressing other people so as to see them naked. It is also a process of reducing some
people to the level of micro-organism: putting them under a magnifying
glass to peep into their private lives, secrets, taboos, thinking, and
their sacred worlds.
(Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017)
We frame (counter) storytelling within the bigger picture of
storywork; an interdisciplinary methodology drawn from decolonial,
indigenous and black feminist re-search methods,
as well as the core CRT tenet/method. (Adebisi, 2023; Degado, 1989; Lee
& Evans, 2021; Miller, et.al.,2020; Natarajan, 2021; Smith, 1999;
Solórzano & Yosso, 2002)
Foluke Adebisi invokes the story of the British slave ship Zong,
which in 1781 threw approximately 130 African captives overboard, to
highlight that the telling of such colonial stories from the past are
too often temporally or spatially limited and hence reproduce harms
rather than repairing them. We must, she argues, “craft better futures
for us all and the earth on which we are precariously surviving. To
survive at all, we need new ways of thinking, being and doing in the
world.” (2023),and, in turn, limit (or optimistically reverse) the
effects of colonial epistemicide has on resistant knowledges. (Youngman,
2022; Yeon, 2023)
As Nuu-Chah-nulth Hereditary Chief E. Richard Atelo puts it, “as more
communities work toward protecting and revitalizing Indigenous
knowledges, they have also chosen to reframe and reposition these
incredible sources of knowledge as stories. They do so in order to move
away from any misunderstandings about the power and truths that are
embedded in the stories.” (2011, p.2) Stories, then, should not be
considered merely metaphoric or representational. Whilst it is important
to heed Tuck and Yang’s (2012) critique that decolonization is not a
metaphor, that does not mean that the topics of coloniality and
decoloniality cannot be engaged in ways that counter-narrate the
dominant epistemological and institutional frameworks in ways that
transcend empirical and abstract binaries (even those that metaphoric).
What local and global stories and counter stories of resistant
knowledges and (de)coloniality can you tell from your community sites
(the gathering of two or more represents the possibility of community)
of knowledge, information and learning?
THE GLOBAL CALL
This is more than a ‘call for papers’; it is call and response,
inspired by indigenous storywork practices and counter-storytelling
methodologies. We are a community of practice, and we are calling for
contributions that are rooted in communities, in order to respond to
current contexts of crises and manufactured culture wars that are rooted
in the dehumanization and domination of coloniality. Hence the question
framing this call: can we unmask coloniality through the re-search of
local to global communities? An unmasking that emphasizes authentic
self representation of identities; an unmasking that has evolved from
Fanon’s original articulation that reflected his time (Fanon,1952). An
unmasking which empowers re-search of local to
global communities by removing the mask of coloniality (that obscure
language) masquerading to provide distraction from the much bigger
business of plunder. (Fanon,1965)
We seek contributions within Education for Information’s full
editorial scope: thus inviting a broad continuum of theoretical,
empirical, and/or praxes based counter storytelling submissions related
to but not limited to information and education fields and/or
interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary work within the following areas:
REFERENCES CITED
Bell, D. A. (1992a). Racial Realism. Connecticut Law Review, 24(2), 363–380.
Bell, D. A. (1992b). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. BasicBooks.
Blaisdell, B. (2021).
Counternarrative as strategy: Embedding critical race theory to develop
an antiracist school identity. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education.
Brah, A. (2022). Decolonial imaginings: Intersectional conversations and contestations. Goldsmith Press.
Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press, Inc.
Fuh, D. (2022, September 5). Disobedient knowledge and respect for our African humanity. University
Gago, V., & Mason-Deese, L. (2020).
Feminist international: How to change everything. Verso. hooks, bell.
(2003). Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Routledge.
Miller, R., Liu, K., & Ball, A. F. (2020). Critical
Counter-Narrative as Transformative Methodology for Educational Equity.
Review of Research in Education, 44(1), 269–300.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X20908501 Mudimbe, V. Y. (1990). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. James Currey.
Natarajan, V. (2021). Counterstoried
spaces and unknowns: A queer South Asian librarian dreaming. In S. Y.
Leung & J. R. López-McKnight (Eds.), Knowledge Justice: Disrupting
Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory (pp.
141–157). MIT Press.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2017, September 26). Decolonising research methodology must include undoing
Puwar, N. (2021). Carrying as Method: Listening to Bodies as Archives. Body & Society, 27(1), 3–26.
Smith, L. T. (2021).
Decolonizing methodologies : research and indigenous peoples (Third
Edition.). Zed Books. Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002).
Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical
Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44.
https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103 Toliver, S. R. (2022). Recovering black storytelling in qualitative research: Endarkened storywork. Routledge.
Windchief, S., & San Pedro, T. (Eds.). (2019). Applying indigenous research methods: Storying with peoples and communities. Routledge.
Yeon, J., Smith, M., Youngman, T.,, & Patin, B. (2023). Epistemicide Beyond Borders. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 7(1/2).
https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v7i1/2.39251 Youngman, T., Modrow, S., Smith, M., & Patin, B. (2022). Epistemicide
on the Record: Theorizing Commemorative Injustice and Reimagining
Interdisciplinary Discourses in Cultural Information Studies.
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology,
59(1), 358–367.
https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.759
THE PUBLISHING CHRONOLOGY
- from 10/15/2023 through 12/15/2023 (prospective) authors can
submit an abstract of no more that 750 words (on one occasion) for
baseline feedback about their re-search counter narrative applicable to
this call. Abstracts can be sent to editorialteam@crtcollective.org
- author’s first drafts due Monday March 4, 2024 by 11:59 EST
- CRTc review of submissions March 5 through May 20
- author’s resubmission (response to CRTc reviews): May 21 through June 30
- CRTc Review of resubmissions July 1- 21
- CRTc delivery of submissions to EFI managing editor: July 22
- managing editor review: July 23 – August 30
- target publishing issue 4, 2024
SUBMISSION (AUTHOR) GUIDELINES
This Special Issue will follow Education for Information’s Author Guidelines.
Most Notably:
- Full-length articles and literature reviews should be between
5000-8000 words of text excluding the references. Commentaries, funded
innovative re-search protocols, short communications and book reviews
should be between 1000-1500 words of text excluding references.
- Manuscripts must be written in English. Authors whose native
language is not English are advised to consult a professional English
language editing service or a native English speaker prior to
submission.
- Manuscripts should be prepared with wide margins and double spacing
throughout, including the abstract, footnotes and references. Every
page of the manuscript, including the title page,references, tables,
etc., should be numbered. However, in the text no reference should be
made to page numbers; if necessary, one may refer to sections. Try to
avoid the excessive use of italics and bold face.
- Authors are requested to use the APA (American Psychological
Association) citation style and references must be listed alphabetically
in APA style.
Authors should submit their contributions for review through the CRTc Call for Papers Submission Form
THE HOST COMMUNITY / EDITORIAL TEAM
Beyond the naming of our international community as the CRTc, we also
strive to exist and persist in praxis as a CRT collective. Thus, we
approach this endeavor towards addressing two CRT lenses developed by
one of its founding scholars, Derrick Bell:
1) Through our awareness of the current divisive discourse as a global
reality as well as our effort to discuss, deliver, and disseminate,
resistant knowledges to what Bell positions as racial realism (Bell
1992a): noting racial progress is [being aggressively attacked to limit
recent gains as] sporadic and that people of color [those most at the
effect of all forms of colonialism] are [limited] to experience only
infrequent peaks [of success] followed by regressions; as such;
2) This special issue is our intentional effort to counterstory what Bell suggests as the permanence of racism, and, in turn, coloniality (Bell,
1992b), which aligns with the CRT founding tenet that racism and
[coloniality] are ordinary, pervasive, systemic and deeply ingrained and
embedded in society, thus, not aberrational (Delgado & Stefancic,
2017, p. 8, 16, and 91).
CONTACTING THE collective
Author’s are invited to reachout to the CRTc with general or specific inquiries for the special issuethrough email: editorialteam@crtcollective.org.
For those seeking to contact a specific CRTc community member, please visit the collective’s Contact Us page.
