The Critical Race Theory collective’s Process,Promise,and Presentation of the Resistant Knowledges Discussion Part I

Abstract

It has been just short of 4 years (April 2021) since the first conversations began that subsequently resulted in what is now known as the Critical Race Theory collective (CRTc). Over this span of time we have been fortunate to develop a wonderfully collaborative relationship with Education For Information’s (EFI) managing editor, Fidelia Ibekwe as well as the IOS press editorial community. This relationship now offers the second CRTc produced special issue within the EFI series on the global state of race and race-related dispositions. Just as importantly, this is also our second free access effort with EFI and IOS press. Thus, allowing the collective to live in and demonstrate our value of access as a means to emancipatory literacy.

Keywords

coloniality communities Critical Race Theory decoloniality re-search resistant knowledges storymaking

The first issue (38:4) produced by the CRTc and published in December of 2022 focused on critical race theory (CRT). The experiences gained from our 2022 editorial endeavor led to this second special issue actually being a double issue: 40:4 (2024) and 41:1 (2025). This second (double) issue is our attempt to further extend the CRT conversations to a more global context. In debriefing after delivering the EFI 38:4 issue for publication, the CRTc set a modest goal of paying external reviewers in our next peer-reviewed journal endeavor. While the honorariums were modest, we indeed were able to achieve the goal set in 2022 in this 2024 experience.

As a collective we are mindful of the limited variance of our geolocations along with that limitation’s impact on our previous endeavors as well as current connections to critical race work. As a collective, our community predominantly resides in North America (US) with less concentrated community connections in Europe (UK) and Australia (Melbourne). This realistic understanding led us to ask how would some of the interdisciplinarily known tenets of critical race frameworks connect to a broader (local to) global application?

The Process

First, we sought a context that had the possibility to transcend geography and indigeneity. With that in mind, the gravitational pull to contexts of coloniality are relatively obvious. Yet, discussing aspects of coloniality, on the other hand, without appropriating the experience of colonization offers a complex set of challenges.¹

“We, at least in part, want others to join us in these efforts, so that settler colonial structuring and Indigenous critiques of that structuring are no longer rendered invisible. Yet, this joining cannot be too easy, too open, too settled. Solidarity is an uneasy, reserved, and unsettled matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor forecloses future conflict.”

Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang - Decolonization is not a metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 2)

Upon choosing coloniality as the focal point for a global discussion, we did not look to have “the” answer(s) but rather generate the Resistant Knowledges call for paper to assist us in forwarding the discussion.

Second, we thought that the foundational CRT tenets of counter storytelling and racial realism could help guide and anchor our path and process. As stated on the Resistant Knowledges call for papers, 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. (Adébísí, 2023; Degado, 1989; Lee & Evans, 2021; Miller et al., 2020; Natarajan, 2021; Smith, 1999; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

In turn, we anchored the collective’s intimate engagement with this work through Derrick Bell’s seminal CRT tenet of racial realism; 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 (Bell, 1992a). As such, 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, pp. 8, 16, and 91).

Third, Fezile Sibanda (Black Brit-ish Doctoral Researcher)² advanced the collective’s shaping of the Resistant Knowledges call for papers by introducing our community to Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2017) notion of re-search.

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.

Building on Smith’s work, my concern here is the context in which re-search methodology is designed and deployed.³ In particular, it concerns the relationship between methodology with power, the imperial/colonial project as well as the implications for those who happened to be the researched.

The Promise

The Heartwork

We as a collective initiated our editorial process with an authentic intention, mutual aspiration and focused energy to offer space for self-expression to potential contributors seeking to resist oppression by sharing and creating knowledge beyond colonial limitations. In June 2023, we set out with the hope that our developing editorial strategy would draw contributions across multiple continents (beyond and as well as North America and Europe) including possible contributors from the Global South. We were further mindful of the spirit of colonial violence in multiple locations, which made, and continues to make, visible heartwrenching and angering levels of dehumanization byway of genocide, ecocide, and other aggressions against human rights around the world, which (since July 2023) has only intensified. The state of divisive political discourses on a global level too has intensified; leading to an escalation in the divisiness (Barnett et al., 2021; Carothers & O’Donohue, 2019; Dimock & Wike, 2020).

Obviously, the exploitation of those who are most often targeted continues to reaffirm the vulnerability that anchors the legacy of coloniality. The inescapability of global capitalism is quite visible through the prism of exacerbation of all forms of economic disenfranchisement that relentlessly widen the gaps between those who are resource rich and those who are resource restricted. Equally disenfranchising is the erosion of corporate support to reverse global warming; as such, our planet’s irrefutable eco-crisis continues to give way to technocratic aspirations of the information industrial complex,⁴ most notably, enhanced artificial intelligence and mega data centers (Hassani et al., 2019; Knowles, 2021; Santamaria, 2024; Tozzi, 2023).

In offering this work, we, the CRTc realize and acknowledge the complexities and limitations of facilitating knowledge making through a lens contextualized as Resistant Knowledges. Yet, there are those who live their lives as resistance to forms of oppression. They share, create, and live out transformational resistant knowledges. A global effort to bring forth voices of resistance recognizes the ancestral and its relationship and guidance of the present along with creation of future possibilities (the heartwork). As a collective we strive to authentically engage in both the heartwork and the hard work; we present the Resistant Knowledges double issue as our engagement in both.

To take on both the heartwork and the hard work we had to (and did) stretch and grow as a collective by unmasking ourselves in many ways. This challenge was not simple nor easy and in many instances was not gentle. In spite of the stretch marks and growing pains, the editorial work evolved; and just as importantly, the collective evolved. As we note in the call for papers, Fanon’s original notion of unmasking has evolved to include multiple interpretations and iterations of his work over the seventy-plus years since its introduction (Fanon, 1952).

The Presentation

The Hard Work

In early 2023, when engaging Dr. Ibekwe about a follow up to the quite well received (2022) CRT special issue, EFI’s managing editor challenged the collective to stretch the breadth of our discussion beyond the binary of the US-UK discussion. While an US-UK effort is obviously an international engagement it is not quite a global discussion. As a community the collective accepted the challenge as presented by Dr. Ibekwe. The challenge put forth in the spring of 2023 became a call for papers in the fall of 2023.

We released the Resistant Knowledges call for papers in September of 2023.⁵ Within the chronology of the call we offered interested contributors an opportunity to share an abstract of their contribution for comments and suggestions from the CRTc Editorial Team prior to committing to a submission for peer-review. More than two dozen abstracts came through the Resistant Knowledges portal. The abstracts received spanned four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America; the total becomes five continents if we include a commitment for an interview from Australia. There was representation within the shared abstracts from both the Global South and Global North. As such, the initial engagement within the Resistant Knowledges call certainly suggested that the aspirations for a global discussion was possible. The potential and possibilities based on the quantity (and quality) of shared abstracts; however, did not fully translate into that same level of actual submissions for peer review… it seldom does. The double issue does not have a submission from Africa nor from the Global South. Yet, the topics for discussion certainly fully offer a step toward fulfilling our global discussion aspirations.

The scope within the call for papers offered author’s a rich texture and depth to consider in creating their discussions of resistance. Moreover, the wide range of theoretical, methodological, conceptual, and topical possibilities outlined provided an intentional measure of inclusivity in its breadth of intellectual approaches.

Ultimately, the abundance of shared abstracts resulted in 10 authors submitting contributions for full peer-review. The diligence of the CRTc editorial team along with our esteemed external reviewers provide robust feedback that truly reflects both the heartwork and the hard work required for transformational discussions. Subsequently, the 10 peer-reviewed contributions resulted in seven contributions to the Resistant Knowledges double issue. Additionally, the double issue also includes an in depth interview along with three robust book review-essays. When adding in the special issue introductions for each issue, The Resistant Knowledges (double issue) offers 16 unique points-of-view.

Each issue consists of four sections, namely: Resistant Re-search, Resistant Pedagogy, Resistant Commentaries and Counterstories, and Resistant “Views.”

In this issue (40:4), Edith Méndez, is a researcher, educator, and mother who aims to create a culturally rich environment for her son. Her research combines Chicano/a and Mexican studies, Cultural Heritage and Archival studies, and oral storytelling. Edith’s Resistant Re-search contribution, Cultural Heritage Re-search: Reimagining the Collective Memory of Copándaro de Galeana, Michoacán, is ethnographic critical research. This intimately personal resistant discussion addresses the dichotomy of exploitation versus empowerment present in archival aspects of cultural heritage preservation methods. In turn, Edith addresses specific subtopics, emphasizing autonomous movements, identity and representation, and community resilience.

The issue’s Resistant Pedagogy discussion is authored by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz an associate dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at NYU Libraries, adjunct assistant professor at Pratt School of Information, and volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives. In Ancestral Calls: What if Learning is Bearing Witness? and other Derivativities of June Beer, Shawn offers resistant perspectives of artist-activist-scholar-librarian June Beer of Nicaragua via a close reading of her poetry while tracing connections of field-specific library pedagogical practices that may be drawn from the ancestral calls evident within her work.

In Information and Intersectionality in the Digital Millennium, Mondo Vaden, stresses the importance of virtual and non-traditional information sharing mediums to create better information access outcomes for people experiencing multiple forms of oppression simultaneously. This Resistant Commentary, more specifically, shares how non-mainstream media platforms and formats like Tumblr and zines, are a valuable potential contribution to the discourse on coloniality, decoloniality, and how resistant knowledges manifest according to the needs of the people who create them. Mondo, who is a Deaf Black Trans Intersectional librarian, artist, and activist with 10+ years of experience with tech, data, libraries, and connecting people with information and resources. He also authored a contribution in the CRTc collective’s Education for Information 2022 special issue (38:4).

Isabella Zou is a Chinese-American educator, writer, dancer, and scholar whose ancestors are from 湖南 (Hunan), 辽宁 (Liaoning), and 江苏 (Jiangsu). Zou is currently a Yale (university)-China Fellow based in 长沙 (Changsha) whose research interests include Indigeneity and decolonization, Black feminist theory, queer performance, movement improvisation, and liberation pedagogies. Isa provides this issue with a Resistant Counterstory, In Learning settler colonialism in my K-12 education: a re-search counterstory, she examines the entrenchment of settler colonialism dominant in the U.S. K-12 education system through an analysis of her own educational experiences in the Eanes School District in Austin, Texas by utilizing the analytical frameworks of critical race theory and TribalCrit.

The Resistant Views section has two contributions: an interview authored by Ramona Naicker and a book review written by Marilyn Clarke. In Archival Practices and Indigenous Perspectives: Yarning with Dr. Rose Barrowcliffe, Naicker shares her “yarn” with Dr. Rose Barrowcliffe, a Butchulla Aboriginal woman and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie University. Together they share about Dr. Barrowcliffe’s work to integrate Indigenous perspectives within archival practices towards better discoverability and access to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander records for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is worth noting that Ramona Naicker is a Librarian at Deakin University in Naarm (Melbourne), who specializes in critically appraising research for racial bias.

Marilyn Clarke, works at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London (UoL) the national research library for Law. Her work focuses on delivering inclusive services to all library users as well as leading on decoloniality and anti-racist approaches towards social justice. Through the book review, A personally reflective review of Avtar Brah’s Decolonial Imaginings: Intersectional Conversations and Contestations, Clarke shares her connection with Brah as an instructor in her master’s program and how that experience has influenced her moving forward. The combination of reflective essay and book review works quite well within the Resistant Knowledges discussion of this issue.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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